Type 2 diabetes remission researchers awarded the Rank Prize for Nutrition
Professor Mike Lean and Professor Roy Taylor receive prize for their groundbreaking work on dietary approaches to type 2 diabetes remission.
Research that has furthered understanding of how type 2 diabetes develops and shown that remission from the condition is possible by following a low-energy weight management programme has been recognised with a prestigious award.
Professor Roy Taylor and Professor Mike Lean were announced the winners of the 2024 Rank Prize for Nutrition on World Diabetes Day (14th November), for their research in transforming services for people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Founded in 1972 by the British industrialist and philanthropist Lord J. Arthur Rank, the Rank Prize is awarded biennially in the fields of nutrition and optoelectronics and will be awarded formally at an event in London on 1 July 2024.
Professor Mike Lean (University of Glasgow) and Professor Roy Taylor (Newcastle University) began researching possible reasons for the link between type 2 diabetes and obesity independently after both observed some patients appearing to lose their type 2 diabetes after losing weight.
Professor Lean recognised that body fat was being stored in abnormal sites within organs in people with type 2 diabetes, and developed and validated a new clinical weight management programme to offer more effective weight loss in routine primary care.
The Counterpoint study led by Professor Roy Taylor in 2011 confirmed that people more likely to develop type 2 diabetes held excess fat in their liver and pancreas, leading to insulin resistance and the dysfunction of pancreatic insulin-producing beta cells.
Professor Taylor’s research found that when people with type 2 diabetes lost weight, fat was lost from the liver and pancreas, and these organs regained function. Improvement was particularly significant when weight loss took place early on in the course of type 2 diabetes.
The two researchers worked together to design and conduct the DiRECT trial (Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial), in which people with type 2 diabetes living with overweight or obesity replaced their usual meals with nutritionally complete formula diet products, followed by the gradual re-introduction of normal food, delivered in UK primary care.
On average, participants reported a weight loss of 10% at 12 months, and almost half involved in the study had put their type 2 diabetes into remission within one year.
A quarter of participants lost 15kg or more, and of these, 86% were in remission. More
recently the teams have shown that this intervention is also successful in people with a lower body weight, and that it is effective in people of South Asian origin.
A programme based on the DiRECT findings has been piloted by NHS England and is now being rolled out across England as the NHS Type 2 Diabetes Path to Remission Programme.
More than 5,000 people to date have been offered the intervention, with early results expected in the near future. The work has been recognised internationally, and the approach is already included as a treatment option in the Joint American Diabetes Association and European Association for the Study of Diabetes Standards of Care document.
The research of Professor Lean and Professor Taylor is making a real difference to the lives of people with type 2 diabetes, by giving them the support and services to manage their health and reverse the effects of this serious condition.
Professor Lean said: “My reaction to receiving news of this highly revered prize was initially astonishment, almost shock, to be included among the list of illustrious previous winners. But it is deeply satisfying to realise that people really do understand and appreciate our work. A clinical research career is very long, often lonely or exposed, and doubted or even scorned, as conventional beliefs are challenged. I have been fortunate to have had wonderful loyal colleagues in Glasgow and elsewhere, critical support from Diabetes UK and people living with diabetes, and a 47-year professional friendship with Roy Taylor. Our research work, sometimes desperately tough, has always been infused with a sense of fun. Success in research, making a difference for our patients, is gratifying, and for all this to be recognised by the Rank Prize is immensely rewarding.”
Professor Taylor said: “I am delighted to receive this recognition on behalf of the physicists, doctors, nurses, dietitians and others who have provided fantastic team input over many years of this research thrust. The work would not have been possible without the selfless research volunteers, especially those in the initial Counterpoint study who took a leap in the dark in the interests of science. Without the research funding, type 2 diabetes would still be regarded as a lifelong, inevitably progressive condition. This funding has enabled testing of a seminal hypothesis and expansion to the present NHS England programme for remission of type 2 diabetes.”
Professor John Mathers, Chair of the Rank Prize Nutrition Committee, said: “The ground-breaking research by Professors Taylor and Lean has shown that a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes is not a life sentence. Their demonstration that type 2 diabetes can be put into remission by sustained weight loss will empower millions of people globally to change their eating behaviour and to improve their health. In addition, Taylor and Lean’s discoveries will make a major contribution to reducing the economic and social burden of diseases associated with overweight and obesity.”
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