Niels Grarup Follow Niels
Associate Professor
Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen
Biography
Type 2 diabetes is a disorder caused by a subtle combination of heritable factors and environmental and lifestyle risk factors. Also intermediary diabetes-related physiological traits such as obesity, insulin resistance and disturbed insulin secretion have been shown to be partly modulated by genetic factors. My research interests are focused on identification genetic variation associated with type 2 diabetes (diabetes genomics discovery) and on performing detailed physiological characterization of these variants in relation to diabetes phenotype (genetic-epidemiology and genetic-physiology studies). Genetic variation is explored by both next generation nucleotide sequencing and by large-scale genotyping array-based genotyping. The long term goals are to gain a deeper understanding of the genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes, to expand our insights into diabetes pathogenesis and pathophysiology and possibly thereby derive novel drug targets for diabetes and in the longer term cause advances in clinical diabetes management and prevention.