• Diabetes is a severe, life-threatening disease resulting from an impairment of the body's ability to turn glucose into usable energy.
  
  
• People with diabetes either produce too little insulin (a hormone made by the pancreas used to regulate the level of sugar in the blood) or are unable to use insulin effectively, resulting in an abnormally high concentration of sugar in the blood.
  
  
• Research scientists at the Strelitz Diabetes Center at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia under the direction of Dr. Aaron I. Vinik, MD, Ph.D., Director of Research, have been working with a gene called INGAP (Islet Neogenesis Associated Protein) as a possible cure for diabetes.
  
  
• The research has shown that the products of the INGAP gene stimulate the regeneration of islet cells, which produce insulin in the pancreas and regulate its production to meet the body's needs.
  
  
• Dr. Vinik's research team has been working on INGAP research together with their collaborators at McGill University in Montreal, Canada under the leadership of Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, M.D., who is the Director of Surgical Research at McGill University and the Center for Diabetes Research at Montreal General Hospital in Montreal, Canada.
  
  
• Contrary to some views that pancreas and islet transplants will eventually succeed as the cure for diabetes, Dr. Vinik and Dr. Rosenberg believe that the cure for diabetes lies in finding a way to provide patients with the ability to generate new insulin-secreting cells from their own pancreatic cells.
  
  
• At the 1999 Cosmopolitan International Convention in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, the delegates approved the support of the INGAP diabetes research efforts as a new Cosmopolitan International Project. This support was reaffirmed at the 2000 Cosmopolitan International Convention in Rapid City, South Dakota when the delegates approved a commitment to raise $150,000 each year for the next five years for INGAP research to find a cure for diabetes.
  
  
• U.S. Cosmopolitans contribute to the INGAP Diabetes Research Project through contributions to the Cosmopolitan Diabetes Foundation directed to go to the INGAP Research Project at the Strelitz Diabetes Institutes at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia.
  
  
• Canadian Cosmopolitans contribute to the INGAP Diabetes Research Project through contributions to the Cosmopolitan Foundation Canada, Inc. directed to go to the INGAP Diabetes Research Project at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

For U.S. Contributions to INGAP Diabetes Research: 

Mail Donations to: Cosmopolitan Diabetes Foundation P.O. Box 4588 Overland Park, KS 66204-0588 Please make checks payable to: Cosmopolitan Diabetes Foundation. Inc. (NOTE: indicate on check memo line For INGAP Research)