SIR HANS KREBS PRIZE LECTURE: From base change to better care in diabetes

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Professor Andrew Hattersley is the Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Exeter, UK and a practicing consultant diabetologist at the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital. He trained in Medicine at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. His postgraduate education was in London, Oxford and Birmingham.

Working with Professor Sian Ellard he has taken Exeter from being a centre with no genetics laboratory in 1995 to now being the top international laboratory for monogenic diabetes with over 25,000 referrals from 108 countries. They have discovered 27 genes which when mutated cause monogenic diabetes.Importantly he has gone on from gene discovery to find the best treatment for monogenic diabetes. He has shown that the commonest forms of both familial genetic diabetes and neonatal diabetes can be treated with tablets instead of insulin resulting in better blood sugar control. Recent work has focused on “Precision Diabetes” identifying subgroups in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes with different treatment responses.

He has published over 600 papers with over 110,000 citations, given over 350 national and international lecturers and received many international and national awards for his work including being appointed as a fellow of The Royal Society and being awarded a CBE.