The gift that keeps on giving
All this was made possible by donations from the community, including a generous $16 million gift from Dennis "Denny" Sanford, a prominent businessman and philanthropist in the region. This gift pales in comparison to Sanford's even more generous gift of $400 million, which will fund a number of programs involved in the larger Sanford Health System. Sanford Health is the largest integrated health network in the area and home to several research programs, including the Sanford Project, which is all about finding a cure for type 1 diabetes - within the benefactor's lifetime. This is Sanford Children's flagship research program.

Ruth Krystopolski is vice president of growth and development for Sanford Health and has overseen this project since its inception. Sanford wanted his funding to go toward a cure, but it was up to a team of experts and researchers to determine the target and trajectory of the research.
"First we had to identify and select a disease focus, and we needed something that we could find a potential cure for within Mr. Sanford's lifetime," says Kystopolski.


Researchers looked at incidence rates and funding models and narrowed down disease processes and then wrote full white papers on all potential contenders. With diabetes mellitus presently affecting an estimated 500,000 to 1 million Americans, and with more children at risk of developing this disease than most other chronic illnesses, it stood out from all the rest as one of the most serious and potentially the most curable pediatric diseases. In June of 2008, it was announced by the expert advisory panel that type 1 diabetes would be the focus of the Project.

Now that the project is underway, the Sanford Children's Hospital is recruiting leaders in diabetes research and is getting ready to move research operations into a separate 300,000 square foot facility early next spring.

"There is a lot of energy and time being spent doing background on experimental and translational research in both in vivo and clinical models and pharmacology," says Krystopolski.

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