Minds of Diabetes: Dr. Pere Santamaria

Welcome to Minds of Diabetes: Scientists from the World of Diabetes Research! This segment is an ongoing project to document the best and brightest minds in diabetes research, with a particular focus on scientists from Alberta, and share their exciting work.

Today, we meet Immunologist Dr. Pere Santamaria. Dr. Santamaria works out of the University of Calgary as a professor in the Microbiology, Immunology, and Infectious Diseases department. He is the chair of the Julia McFarlane Diabetes Research Centre and a member of the Immunology Research Group, the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, and the Calvin, Phoebe and Joan Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases. Santamaria's work is focused primarily on autoimmunity, antigen-specific therapy, and nanotechnology.

Important Terms:

Nanomedicines: the use of nanomaterials (tiny matierals less than 100 nanometers) for diagnosis, monitoring, control, prevention, and treatment of diseases

Immunosuppressant drugs: Drugs used to stop the immune system from attacking healthy cells and tissues. They are often prescribed after organ or islet cell transplantations to avoid rejection. Unfortunately, they also limit the immune system’s ability to fight disease and make patients more susceptible to infections and illnesses.

Autoimmune Disease: A disease caused by the immune system, the body's natural defense mechanism, attacking healthy cells and tissues.

Get to know Dr. Santamaria’s work

Type 1 diabetes is triggered when the body's immune system erroneously attacks and eliminates the insulin-producing cells in the islet cells of the pancreas. Restoring islet cell function and the body's ability to produce its own insulin without needing immunosuppressant drugs would be the ultimate treatment. Dr. Santamaria has taken a novel approach to overcome this hurdle by turning to a new class of drugs based on nanomedicine. Santamaria believes these drugs can potentially treat multiple diseases caused by autoimmune attacks. He hypothesizes that these nanoparticles can be designed to reprogram the immune system. Rather than immune cells attacking insulin-producing beta cells, the nanoparticles can train the immune cells to help the beta cells.

Success in this study would eliminate the need for dangerous immunosuppressants to treat diabetes and other autoimmune diseases.

Get to know Dr. Santamaria

The answers to these questions have been collected from multiple interviews Dr. Santamaria has given. All sources and citations will be listed at the bottom of the post.

How did you end up in diabetes research?

Dr. Santamaria grew up in Manresa, Spain, on a small farm. He had always been active and supremely curious as a child. However, by the age of 14, he fell ill. Santamaria explains, “I ended up spending months in hospitals, first to diagnose the cause of the problem and later to treat it. It was myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease.”[1]

“I entered medical school in 1978 and became a doctor, completing a residency in Immunology and a PhD at the University of Barcelona. I was drawn to its complexity. My interest in Immunology was also influenced by having had an autoimmune disease during adolescence…I did post-doctoral work at the University of Minnesota focusing on studying the immunogenetics of Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease.”[2]

“Diabetes became the focus of my work because I was fascinated with its complexity. I also saw how type 1 diabetes impacted young people and their families, and how devastating it was for those affected by it.”[3]

How did you end up in Alberta?

The University of Calgary recruited Santamaria in 1992 to lead a research team and continue his work with autoimmune diseases.[4]

What is your favourite part about research?

“Just as I did as a curious child on that farm in Spain, I continue to look forward in search of new and beautiful things in my surroundings that too often we do not see. There is still a lot of work to do.”[5]

What is the worst part about research?

Funding research is often challenging for many researchers, especially in the early phases of new projects. Santamaria has experienced the issue first-hand.

“From the beginning, we were living by the seat of our pants. It was hard to attract interest from investors…funding did not materialize. Friends and colleagues who believed in us and the promise of the idea became early investors…but it wasn’t enough to start developing the drugs.”[6]

Dr. Santamaria’s Research Goal:

“My ultimate dream is to help cure all autoimmune diseases, an opportunity that is now in sight.”[7]

References:
[1] Mike Fisher, “The lifelong journey to medical discovery: How an autoimmune disease led one CSM researcher on a lifelong pursuit to help others,” University of Calgary Cummings School of Medicine, https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/about/csm-news/lifelong-journey-medical-discovery

[2] Fisher

[3] Rosalind Stefanac “Hope on the Horizon for type 1 diabetes,” Diabetes Canada, https://www.diabetes.ca/about-diabetes/stories/hope-on-the-horizon-for-type-1-diabetes

[4] Fisher

[5] Fisher

[6] Fisher

[7] Stefanac