2018 Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement
Gerald I. Shulman, MD, PhD
Banting Medal Lecture
Mechanisms of Insulin Resistance: Implications for Obesity, Lipodystrophy and Type 2 Diabetes
Gerald I. Shulman, MD, PhD, is the recipient of the 2018 Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement. This award recognizes significant, long-term contributions to the understanding, treatment or prevention of diabetes. Dr. Shulman will present the Banting Medal Lecture on Sunday, June 24.
Currently the George R. Cowgill Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine and Co-Director of the Yale Diabetes Research Center, Dr. Shulman is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator renowned for transformative studies examining the molecular mechanisms of insulin resistance in humans that have been paradigm shifting in our understanding of the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes.
A clinical investigator with acute focus, he developed and implemented novel tools to elucidate the underpinnings of human metabolic physiology, leading to cutting-edge discoveries that have challenged dogma and stimulated new directions in the field. His groundbreaking application of magnetic resonance spectroscopy made it possible to directly examine intracellular glucose and lipid metabolism in humans thus providing a dynamic view of intracellular metabolism not before possible. Using this approach he found that defects in insulin-stimulated muscle glycogen synthesis, due to defects in glucose transport activity, was the major factor responsible for muscle insulin resistance in individuals with type 2 diabetes and prediabetes. In another pivotal series of studies, he developed novel methods to measure hepatic glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis in humans for the first time and demonstrated that increased hepatic gluconeogenesis is the major factor responsible for fasting hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetes.
With a body of work reflected in more than 450 publications and election to the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Shulman is a leader in translating basic science into clinical physiology. Please join us in celebrating Dr. Shulman’s outstanding contributions to diabetes research.