Anette-Gabriele Ziegler

Professor and Director

IDF Institute of Diabetes Research, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health

Biography

In 1989 Anette-Gabriele Ziegler initiated the world's first birth cohort study of diabetes, BABYDIAB, with groundbreaking discoveries about the early onset of islet autoimmunity in the first year of life. In this process, it was discovered that insulin is the initial target of autoantibodies in children. As director of the Helmholtz Munich Institute of Diabetes Research she leads long-term studies to examine the link between genes, environmental factors and the immune system for the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes. The Fr1da study, Ziegler initiated in Bavaria, Germany, is the first population-based approach for the early diagnosis of type 1 diabetes associated autoimmunity in childhood. She also cofounded the Global Platform for the Prevention of Autoimmune Diabetes (GPPAD) in 2017, designed to carry out newborn screening in the general population , identify infants at high genetic risk of developing type 1 diabetes, and offer them participation in trials to prevent disease initiation

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