Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes

An affiliate of Children's Research Institute

The late Packers great Max McGee and his wife, Denise, knew intimately the challenges of living with diabetes. Diabetes is prevalent in their family. Max's brother fought diabetes in his lifetime. Today, the McGees' son, Dallas, lives every day with this life-threatening disease.

The McGees wanted to make a difference. They wanted a cure not just for their own son, but for the 1.6 million American people living today with Type 1 diabetes. Their hope was to secure support for the creation of a new, state-of-the-art diabetes research center. Thanks to their efforts and generosity, Children's Hospital and Health System established The Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes in 1999.

The search for cause and cure

Doctors and scientists do not yet understand the cause of Type 1 diabetes. Without understanding the cause, there can be no cure.

We know that like cancer, high blood pressure and other diseases, there is a genetic component to Type 1 diabetes. Genetics does not necessarily mean hereditary. While diabetes is prevalent in some families, like the McGees, only 10 percent of newly diagnosed cases occur in families where that history exists.

In this case, genetics refers to how genes are "switched on" and "switched off" throughout a person's life. Genes are activated and deactivated at different times, and for different reasons. The questions are:

• Which genes play a role in diabetes?
• How do those genes function in a person without diabetes?
• How do those genes function in a person with diabetes?
• What makes the genes function differently in each case?

These are the questions posed by scientists at The Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes. The center is one of the few in the world that is asking these particular questions and looking to the emerging science of genetics to discover the answers.

We need your involvement so that we can continue our efforts to discover the cause of Type 1 diabetes. Contact Marty Vogel at (414) 266-6100 to find out how you can help.