Boehringer and EFSD announce first recipients of €2.5 million diabetes funding

The recipients of the European-wide funding initiative targeted at diabetes research have been announced today by Boehringer Ingelheim and the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD) partnership.

The first grants total €2.5 million and are to be awarded for outstanding research into cutting-edge approaches to diabetes, focusing on two areas of interest:

• Regulations of secretion and/or function of non-insulin peptides from the endocrine pancreas (basic research)

• Mechanisms relating renal dysfunction to cardiovascular disease in Type 2 Diabetes (clinical research)

The research partnership aims to stimulate and accelerate European research in diabetes.

"These grants reflect our continued commitment to supporting medical innovation in diabetes research, a disease which affects over 370 million people worldwide. It is through continued independent research in this area that we will better understand how we can improve outcomes for patients with diabetes."

Prof. Klaus Dugi, Corporate Senior Vice President Medicine, Boehringer Ingelheim

Three winners were selected from across Europe:

• Stefan Amisten: King's College London - UK

o Identification and functional characterisation of peptide ligands of G-protein coupled receptors in mouse and human islets

• Hiddo Heerspink: University Medical Center Groningen - The Netherlands

o Urinary proteomics to predict and unravel mechanisms of renal and cardiovascular disease in diabetic nephropathy

• Markus van der Giet: Charity University Berlin - Germany

o Biomarker-based formula to predict HDL functionality in patients with chronic kidney disease and diabetes mellitus