Over 154 Years of Service to the Furniture Industry
Furniture World Logo

Wanek Family's Gift To City of Hope Will Advance Diabetes Research

Furniture World News Desk on 1/16/2017


City of Hope recently announced that a cure for Type 1 diabetes (T1D) in six years is the new goal for City of Hope’s Diabetes and Metabolism Research Institute. Through the generosity of the Wanek family and gifts from anonymous donors, the institution will be able to devote more than $50 million over the next six years to an innovative research effort that seeks to find a cure for T1D.

The family’s gift will establish the Wanek Family Project for Type 1 Diabetes at City of Hope.

City of Hope, which has a long and groundbreaking history in diabetes, conducted research that led to the development of synthetic human insulin by Arthur D. Riggs, Ph.D., in 1978. Insulin is still used today by an estimated 1.5 million Americans with type 1 diabetes, (T1D) and 27 million with type 2 diabetes (T2D).

Funding for this transformative research is being led by a gift from the Wanek family, who founded and currently owns Ashley Furniture Industries, the world’s largest home furniture manufacturer. The project will create a series of highly-focused programs based at City of Hope that will use an integrated approach to curing T1D, including immunotherapy approaches, as well as research into beta cell transplantation and preventing the body from rejecting those insulin secreting cells.

“City of Hope is best positioned to take on this challenge,” said Robert W. Stone, president and chief executive officer of City of Hope. “This is thanks to our 40-year institutional legacy of pioneering treatment and research advances in diabetes.

“City of Hope is extremely grateful for the Wanek family’s significant gift that will enable the institution to forward type 1 diabetes research, the results of which will have worldwide impact,” Stone added. “We invite others to join the Wanek family and City of Hope as we continue to move even closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes.”

“City of Hope scientists’ research has revolutionized the understanding and treatment of diabetes,” said Todd Wanek, CEO of Ashley Furniture, speaking on behalf of his family. “It continues today as physicians and scientists gain systemic understanding of diabetes as a complex, multifaceted disease.”

“Our family is extremely confident that City of Hope is the institution that will find a cure for the more than 1 million Americans who battle type 1 diabetes disease every day,” Wanek said.

City of Hope’s goal to cure T1D will focus on three core areas that are crucial in treating both types of diabetes:

  • Immune modulation – Research is already underway at City of Hope to unlock the immune system’s role in diabetes, including T cell modulation and stem cell-based therapies that may reverse the autoimmune attack on islet cells in the pancreas, which is the cause of T1D. City of Hope’s Bart Roep, Ph.D., previously worked at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, where he was instrumental in launching a phase 1 clinical trial for a vaccine that aims to spur the immune system to fight, and possibly cure, T1D. Plans are developing for a larger, phase 2 trial to launch in the future at City of Hope.

  • Beta cell expansion and replacement – Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes both develop due to the dysfunction and demise of insulin secreting beta cells. Researchers will work to improve methods of boosting and replacing beta cells, as well as imaging them, to encourage long-term survival, said Fouad R. Kandeel, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair, Department of Clinical Diabetes, Endocrinology & Metabolism, chair, Department of Translational Research and Cellular Therapeutics; director, Islet Cell Transplant Program and associate director, Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute. The Wanek Family Project studies will derive new innovations to correct the beta cell dysfunction in diabetes.

  • Preventing diabetes complications – Both T1D and T2D are associated with similar complications such as accelerated heart, kidney, neural and eye diseases that greatly increase morbidity and mortality rates. Scientists will work on intervening at the genetic level to reverse complications and seeking ways to predict the development of complications in order to prevent them from occurring.



Distinguished City of Hope diabetes research faculty who will lead these efforts include:

Bart Roep, Ph.D., Chan Soon-Shiong Shapiro Distinguished Chair in Diabetes and professor and founding chair, Department of Diabetes Immunology, will lead the Wanek Family Project; Arthur D. Riggs, Ph.D., Samuel Rahbar Chair in Diabetes & Drug Discovery Research; director, Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute and director emeritus, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope; Fouad R. Kandeel; Rama Natarajan, Ph.D., National Business Products Industry Professor in Diabetes Research; professor and chair, Department of Diabetes Complications and Metabolism and member, Molecular and Cellular Biology of Cancer Program; Debbie C. Thurmond, Ph.D., Ruth B. & Robert K. Lanman Professor and founding chair, Department of Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology; and Defu Zeng, professor, Department of Diabetes Immunology and Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation.

More about City of Hope: City of Hope is an independent research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. Designated as one of only 47 comprehensive cancer centers, the highest recognition bestowed by the National Cancer Institute, City of Hope is also a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, with research and treatment protocols that advance care throughout the world. City of Hope is located in Duarte, California, just northeast of Los Angeles, with community clinics throughout Southern California. It is ranked as one of "America's Best Hospitals" in cancer by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a pioneer in the fields of bone marrow transplantation, diabetes and numerous breakthrough cancer drugs based on technology developed at the institution. For more information, visit www.cityofhope.org.

More about the Wanek Family: Ashley Company founder Ron Wanek, along with his wife Joyce; their son Todd and his wife Karen and their children Cameron and Gabrielle; and Ron and Joyce’s daughters and sons-in-law Katie Forsythe and husband Mark, and Shari Wagner and husband Kevin; have all dedicated philanthropic activities to medical research and education.

Understanding that the health of our world is also reliant on science, Ashley and the Wanek family have long focused on medical research, in addition to the newly-announced City of Hope program. The family has raised and made personal gifts of tens of millions of dollars toward medical research organizations, including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, and the Mayo Foundation for Medical Research. Due to their continued philanthropic support toward regenerative research, Mayo has developed in their honor the Todd and Karen Wanek Family Program for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a childhood heart disease.