Memorandum
Dr. Andrew Hattersley (University of Exeter, UK) has been awarded the 2016 EASD-Novo Nordisk Foundation Diabetes Prize for Excellence, which will be officially presented on September 14 at this year’s EASD conference in Munich, Germany. The award recognizes Dr. Hattersley’s substantial contributions (over 500 peer-reviewed publications!) to our understanding of the genetic causes of diabetes. He has identified 15 different monogenic types of diabetes, cases of the disease caused by a single altered base among three billion bases in the human genome – a remarkable feat. His Exeter team has also shown that a certain type of monogenic diabetes, diagnosed during the first six months of an infant’s life, is better treated with tablets rather than lifelong insulin injections – just one example of how his research has fine-tuned approaches to diabetes care. A special EASD committee has selected Dr. Hattersley as this year’s winner. He will receive DKK 6 million (~$900,000) from the Novo Nordisk Foundation – DKK 1 million as a personal award and DKK 5 million for research purposes. We’re delighted that Dr. Hattersley has won this prestigious prize, the world’s largest personal diabetes-related research award, as he is truly at the forefront of the movement to enhance precision medicine and improve patient care. Dr. Hattersley’s work in basic science addresses real-world issues in the diabetes field, from optimizing drug therapy to personalizing patient care, and we look forward to hearing his award lecture at EASD on “Defining heterogeneity in diabetes to improve clinical care.”
-- by Payal Marathe, Brian Levine, and Kelly Close