Diabetes Pro Quarterly - Summer 2019 - 16

79TH SCIENTIFIC SESSIONS NEWS
Scientific Sessions Recap continued from page 2
Banting Medalist Stephen P. O'Rahilly, MD: Rare Genetic
Variants in Humans Help to Unravel the Physiology of
Obesity and Diabetes
The Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement
is the highest scientific award bestowed by the
ADA. Named for Frederick Banting, a medical
scientist, doctor and Nobel laureate who was one
of the key investigators responsible for the discovery of insulin, the Banting Medal is awarded
annually to honor highly meritorious career achievement in the
field of diabetes research.
At the 2019 Scientific Sessions, Dr. Stephen O'Rahilly received the
Banting Medal and delivered a lecture entitled, "Treasure Your
Exceptions-Studying Human Extreme Phenotypes to Illuminate
Metabolic Health and Disease."
The key to success in research is spotting the right set of outliers
and following the clues they provide, explained Dr. O'Rahilly,
director of the University of Cambridge Metabolic Research
Laboratories. His lecture provided a historical account of his scientific journey, describing the key "outlier" patients he helped to treat
and who guided his medical research. Through this approach, he
made seminal discoveries regarding the causes of insulin resistance, a key process in the development of type 2 diabetes.

Outstanding Scientific Achievement Awardee Ismaa
Sadaf Farooqi, MB, ChB (Hons), PhD: Changing the
Narrative of the Obesity Epidemic Through Research
Dr. Ismaa Sadaf Farooqi presented this year's Outstanding
Scientific Achievement
Award lecture at the Scientific
Sessions. This award recognizes a scientist who is under
the age of 50 years and has
made significant contributions to an area of diabetes research. Dr. Farooqi, a professor of
metabolism and medicine at the University of Cambridge in the
United Kingdom, has focused her clinical and research career
on tracking down the genetic drivers and molecular signals that
regulate body weight.
The narrative of obesity has long put the blame on the patient.
Often, people with obesity are told their weight gain is due to a lack
of willpower, which results in eating too many calories and not exercising enough. However, Dr. Farooqi's research on the genetics of
obesity in humans has led her to conclude that this is not the entire
story. A key question her research addresses is why people who are
overweight consume more calories than they expend.
"Eating behavior is not free will," Dr. Farooqi said. "There's an
innate component that is hard-wired into the brain, as well as
environmental factors. Between 40 and 70% of obesity can be
attributed to genetic factors. That suggested genetic approaches
might be used to discover the mechanisms of weight regulation."
In the 1990s, Dr. Farooqi's work pioneered leptin replacement
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therapy for children with genetic variants in leptin that rendered
it nonfunctional. The exciting finding that leptin could regulate
appetite in humans motivated her to organize the Genetics of
Obesity Study, which included thousands of individuals from
around the world with different forms of genetic obesity. Through
this study, Dr. Farooqi and her team discovered a number of
genetic variants that are responsible for severe obesity in humans,
most of which regulate appetite centers in the brain.
Dr. Farooqi's lecture also touched on her recent research into
why some people are able to remain thin regardless of the food
they eat or their exercise habits. She discovered that there are
some genetic variants that help people maintain their thinness.
"Thin people are thin because they have less of the genetic variants that make people obese, not because they are morally superior," said Dr. Farooqi, tongue in cheek. "We are very interested
in finding the genes that drive those phenotypes."

ADA President of Medicine & Science Louis H.
Philipson, MD, PhD, FACP: Precision Medicine Can Be
Transformational for Patients and Clinicians
Precision medicine is an approach to patient
care that calls for the personalization of treatments based in part on patients' genetics. In his
presidential address, Dr. Louis H. Phillipson
discussed the future of precision medicine and
what medical professionals and advocates can do
now to actualize its power. He called for expanded genetic testing
and for physicians to explore family history when treating patients.
Using powerful examples from his own experience as a clinician
and scientist, he demonstrated how research has led to a good
understanding of the types of diabetes caused by a single genetic
variant. Because of this understanding, he and other doctors have
been able to personalize treatments for patients with these variants,
allowing them to thrive and lead normal lives.
"That is the ultimate promise of precision medicine-finding an inexpensive drug that exactly fixes a problem to simplify and improve
treatment," Dr. Philipson said. "It's not a cure, it's not without other
problems, but it's spectacularly better than what we had before."
In his address, Dr. Philipson emphasized the need for more
research to push precision medicine forward. Without a precise
understanding of the mechanisms underlying diseases, including
different forms of diabetes, personalizing medicine will be challenging. He ended his address by encouraging people to support
the ADA's flagship research initiative, Pathway to Stop Diabetes.

ADA President of Health Care & Education Gretchen
Youssef, MS, RD, CDE: Access is Key for Better Outcomes
In her presidential address to Scientific Sessions
attendees, Ms. Youssef urged the audience to become active advocates for improving patient access
to both high-quality diabetes care and diabetes
self-management education and support (DSMES).
continued on page 17

Diabetes Pro Quarterly - Summer 2019

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