Summary
Job Title: Professor of Cell Biology and Functional Genomics
Research: Signal transduction in the pancreatic β-cell in health and disease - my chief focus is in using functional genomics at the cellular and whole organism level to dissect the role of genes associated with Type 2 diabetes.
Brief Biosketch: After studying for a PhD in Bristol with Dick Denton FRS on mitochondrial Ca2 signalling, I subsequently worked on the pancreatic β-cell as an MRC travelling Fellow with Claes Wollheim in Geneva. There, working collaboratively with Tullio Pozzan and Rosario Rizzuto in Padua, I established new approaches to exploring the control of insulin release at the single cell level through the use of recombinant target probes and other techniques. I then returned to Bristol, becoming a full Professor of Biochemistry in 2002, and moved to Imperial College in 2006.
My current research is supported by Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and Royal Society Wolfson Merit Awards, by UK Research Council and Diabetes UK grants, as well as by the European Commission Innovative Medicines Initiative in Diabetes (IMIDIA).
Prizes and Awards: I was awarded the Minkowski Prize of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in 2004, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Mary Jane Krugel Award (2005), a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2011), a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (2012) and the Dorothy Hodgkin Lecturehip of Diabetes UK (2014).
Research Support. Supported by Programme and other grants from the Wellcome Trust, MRC, DUK, JDRF, BBSRC, NIH, BHF and EU.
Related links to Section of Cell Biology and Functional Genomics
Publications
Journals
Cherkaoui I, Du Q, Elgi D, et al., 2023, Optimized protocol for generating functional pancreatic insulin-secreting cells from human pluripotent stem cells, Journal of Visualized Experiments, ISSN:1940-087X
Xiao J, El Eid L, Buenaventura T, et al., 2023, Control of human pancreatic beta cell kinome by glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor biased agonism, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, Vol:25, ISSN:1462-8902, Pages:2105-2119
Thompson PJ, Pipella J, Rutter G, et al., 2023, Islet autoimmunity in human type 1 diabetes: initiation and progression from the perspective of the beta cell, Diabetologia, ISSN:0012-186X
Hu M, Bonas-Guarch S, Kim I, et al., 2023, Multiple genetic variants at the SLC30A8 locus affect a local super-enhancer cluster to influence pancreatic β-cell survival and function., Biorxiv
Firth G, Georgiadou E, Griffiths A, et al., 2023, Impact of an SLC30A8 loss-of-function variant on the pancreatic distribution of zinc and manganese: laser ablation-ICP-MS and positron emission tomography studies in mice, Frontiers in Endocrinology, Vol:14, ISSN:1664-2392, Pages:1-12