Grant recipients
In accordance with the grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Danish Diabetes Academy is allocating co-financed PhD scholarships of each 550.000 DKK, Post Doc fellowships of each 600.000 DKK per year, and a number of Visiting Scientist grants.
The list below features the Danish Diabetes Academy funded PhD and Post Doc fellows, who have received a grant in 2015-2016 and a complete list of Visiting Scientist 2013-2016. Additionally, recipients of exchange travel grants 2016 are featured.
In normal physiology, glucagon from pancreatic alpha cells plays an important role in maintaining glucose homeostasis via its regulatory effect on hepatic glucose production. Patients with type 2 diabetes exhibit elevated plasma glucagon levels in the fasting state, and glucagon concentrations fail to decrease appropriately and may even increase in response to ingestion of glucose and after ingestion of a mixed meal.
Excessive chronic production of ROS is associated with skeletal muscle insulin resistance. Glutathione is the most abundant endogenous antioxidant in the cell and thus, a crucial protector against ROS and insulin resistance. Based on previous studies, we speculate that glutathione supplementation improves skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity and that this effect may be ascribed to a reduced level of ROS.
Heart failure (HF) is a common disease and there is a definite need for new treatment modalities for HF patients. Diabetes and insulin resistance is found in more than 40% of HF patients. Metformin is presently the most commonly prescribed oral anti-diabetic drug, and experimental data and registry studies show beneficial effects of metformin in HF, but human in vivo data are lacking.
Skeletal muscle mitochondrial function is impaired in conditions of aging and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) suggesting that diminished skeletal muscle mitochondrial oxidative capacity is linked to the pathogenesis of aging- and lifestyle-related diseases. Therefore, understanding the regulatory mechanisms responsible for the aging- and T2DM-related decline in mitochondrial oxidative capacity in skeletal muscle is crucial in developing therapeutic and lifestyle-related strategies to maintain skeletal muscle metabolic function in these conditions.
The prevalence of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is increasing in Denmark as well as worldwide. The obesity epidemic is one of the main drivers behind this development. Since conventional obesity treatments are seldom long-term successful, focus has turned to surgical treatments of obesity and T2DM. One of the most common bariatric procedures, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery (RYGB), does not only result in large, sustained weight loss, but also appears to substantially improve obesity-related co-morbidities including T2DM.
Diabetic nephropathy is a common complication that affects 10-30 % of diabetic patients and is characterized by albuminuria, hypertension and kidney tissue changes. Hypertension is known as a leading risk factor for heart disease, death and disability worldwide making it a great health burden. One of the strongest predictors of a poor outcome in diabetes and cardiovascular disease is the degree of renal damage as measured by aberrant loss of plasma albumin into urine.
The overall aim of this PhD project is to explore the influence of the oral microbiota on cardio metabolic traits in 702 well phenotyped individuals at different risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus from the ADDITION-Pro cohort. In a closer look, we have four different goals for this project: