Dr Gerald I Shulman, MD, PhD, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, USA

Dr Shulman is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Laboratories, Yale University School of Medicine, in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Dr Shulman's work on the regulation of glycogen metabolism in human liver and muscle has led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the pathogenesis of hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes. He has demonstrated that impaired insulin-stimulated muscle glycogen synthesis in patients with type 2 diabetes is mainly due to a defect in muscle glucose transport/phosphorylation activity, rather than defects in muscle glycogen synthase activity, as previously thought. His extension of these studies into both obese and non-obese prediabetic subjects has indicated that this is an early abnormality in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes.

 

 

Professor Hannele Yki-Järvinen, MD, PhD, University of Helsinki, Finland

Professor Yki-Järvinen is working in the Department of Medicine, University of Helsinki, where she is a Professor of Medicine. Professor Yki-Järvinen has added an extra dimension to metabolic investigation by developing the use of novel techniques that have been applied to answer fundamental questions relating to cardiac and skeletal muscle physiology and pathophysiology in diabetes. She has also played a leading role in the development of new treatments for patients with type 2 diabetes. In particular, Professor Yki-Järvinen has been instrumental in studying the optimization of insulin therapy and her work in this field has had an enormous influence on clinical practice and has established a new standard for excellence in clinical investigation, not only in Europe but also worldwide.