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.
Dual-hormone treatment with insulin and low-dose glucagon is a sparsely explored area except in artificial pancreas (automated) systems. However, dual-hormone treatment has the potential to improve the quality of life and glycemic control in a majority of patients with type 1 diabetes, including both patients treated with multiple daily insulin injections and with insulin pumps. Stable, liquid glucagon formulations with similar action profile as the current unstable glucagon products are under development by more companies including our collaborator Zealand Pharma.
Exercise elicits phenotypic alterations in skeletal muscle which impact positively on muscle function and metabolic health. Many of these adaptations are orchestrated by AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTORC)1, but the subcellular locations of the signaling and its exact molecular links to Diabetes-relevant downstream processes such as autophagy and mitochondrial function remain unclear.
The endocrine pancreas plays a key role in regulating the nutrient uptake and metabolism. The pancreatic β-cells respond to nutrients in the blood by increasing the insulin secretion, which in turn increases the storage of nutrients.
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is associated with metabolic inflexibility during not only food intake, but also during exercise. Furthermore, substrate recruitment from adipose tissue and liver is essential during challenges like exercise and fasting. However, knowledge of the underlying mechanisms behind exercise- and fasting-induced regulation of liver and adipose tissue metabolism and substrate recruitment during metabolic challenges as well as the alterations with T2D is limited.
Background: Although type 2 diabetes guidelines for several years have recommended poly pharmacological therapy of well-established risk factors, the mortality rate in type 2 diabetes patients is increased by almost a factor 2. A potential mechanism could be linked with activation of the mineralocorticoid receptor, which has been linked with increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
The overall objective of this PhD project is to define the molecular networks responsible for the putative changes in insulin sensitivity in human skeletal muscle in response to treatment with nicotinamide riboside (NR), a member of the vitamin B3 family with potent effects on metabolism in cell culture systems and rodents.
As emergence of precision medicine brings along the great promise of health-care decisions tailored to the individual, the discovery of early risk factors becomes paramount. The growth of longitudinal biomedical data including nation-wide registers, genetics, health records and metabolomics creates a unique opportunity to develop novel methods for predicting of onset, trajectories and outcomes of complex diseases early and in a non-invasive manner.