Luke Brewster and Olamide Alabi's efforts to combat diabetes featured in VA Research Week video
MAY 2022
In celebration of National VA Research Week, May 16-20, 2022, the VA Office of Research and Development has produced a series of videos emphasizing the theme of "Science in Service of Veterans," with each video concentrating on an area of research that is striving to improve veterans' lives through health care discovery and innovation.
Diabetes care in veterans and the work for a cure are the focus of the installment, "Fighting for Veterans, Life and Limb," which illustrates the continuum of research progress by linking the legendary, VA-supported breakthroughs in insulin production and techniques for the early detection of diseases pioneered by the team of Rosalyn Yalow, PhD, and Solomon Berson, MD, in the 1950s through the early 1970s, to the current diabetes-based work of Emory vascular surgeon-scientists Olamide Alabi, MD, and Luke Brewster, MD, PhD.
Dr. Alabi is working to lessen the disparities that exist in higher rates of lower extremity amputation for veterans of color, and investigating potential methods to increase blood flow to combat the effects of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and diabetes so that veterans don't have to lose their legs and even their lives. Dr. Brewster's research seeks to develop novel therapeutic agents for regenerative therapies by studying mesenchymal stem cells taken from amputated tissue in hopes of discovering ways to repair the cells so they can be delivered back to diabetic patients to prevent the need for amputation.