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Mark McCarthy elected as Robert Turner Professor of Diabetes
May 09, 2002- Research centre paves way for 'personalised medicine' in diabetes
- Servier endowment will help accelerate gene research in diabetes
One of the most prestigious new appointments in the field of diabetes research, the Robert Turner Professorship of Diabetic Medicine, has been announced by the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford. The new incumbent will be Professor Mark McCarthy, currently Professor of Genomic Medicine at Imperial College, London and Honorary Consultant Physician at St Mary's Hospital.
The newly created post, endowed by Servier Laboratories, will be attached to the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM), an international centre of excellence due to move into new £11m premises this year. According to OCDEM chairman Dr David Matthews: 'The new centre will be the first of its kind truly to integrate research, clinical care and patient education. It will also have a role in influencing healthcare policy, both in clinical diabetes and in prevention of disease.'
Professor McCarthy, who takes up his post later this year, will be following in the footsteps of one of the leading academic researchers in type 2 diabetes - something he describes as 'an honour and a challenge'. Professor Robert Turner, who died suddenly in August 1999, was one of the true pioneers in diabetes and the driving force behind the ground-breaking UK Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS), which showed conclusively, for the first time, that treatments which lower glucose and blood pressure yield major benefits in reducing the risk of diabetic complications.
Commenting on his new role and the opportunities it presents, Professor McCarthy said:
'In this era of "big science", one of the major opportunities will be to develop new collaborations between groups - within Oxford and beyond - to meet the scientific challenges of the future, and, thereby, to extend Oxford's claim to be a leading centre of excellence in diabetes research within Europe and worldwide.'
Professor McCarthy acknowledged that research in diabetes should respond to a need for new treatments, but he added:
'Unless we want to have a large proportion of the population on long-term medication, we need to develop more effective public health and preventive measures. We also need to develop better ways to identify those who are at the greatest future risk of diabetes, so that they can be targeted for either pharmaceutical or focused lifestyle intervention.'
Professor McCarthy said his main research focus at OCDEM would be to continue his current work in furthering understanding of the early genetic events in the development of type 2 diabetes and related conditions.
'If we can understand the basic pathways that are deranged early in the development of diabetes, then we should be able to define new targets for pharmaceutical intervention,' he commented.
'In the future, the expectation is that this kind of information will usher in an era of personalised medicine whereby management decisions are made in the knowledge of each patient's individual genetic portfolio and individual history of environmental exposures.'
Commenting on Servier's endowment of the Professorship, Dr Matthews said:
'All of the Oxford team are extremely grateful to Servier for their generous endowment of this chair, which will make a significant difference to our faculty'
Professor McCarthy added:
'It's excellent to see continuing recognition by pharmaceutical companies of the importance of basic research and the long-term view embodied by this endowment.'
Phase IV Communications
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