20 January 2005

£9 million to discover how exercise prevents diabetes

Nearly £9 million has been awarded by the European Commission to establish scientific evidence on how exercise prevents weight gain, obesity and Type 2 Diabetes. The money will also start the long process of developing a drug which will mimic the beneficial effects of exercise for people who are unable to exercise themselves.

Led by the University of Dundee, this project responds to the urgent problem of obesity, which has increased 3 fold in the UK over the last twenty years. It is predicted to be followed by a large increase in Type 2 Diabetes which causes many chronic and debilitating health problems.

Regular exercise and a balanced diet have long been thought of as the best path to avoid these problems, but researchers are now beginning to understand how exercise achieves this.

Professor Grahame Hardie of the University of Dundee's School of Life Sciences, who is co-ordinating the project explains: "The link between exercise and prevention of Type 2 Diabetes is very convincing but is currently only a correlation, rather like the original evidence that smoking causes lung cancer. Once it is known exactly how exercise prevents the disease, we will be able to give people more rational advice about exercise and health, and also put more pressure on European governments to adopt policies that make it easier for people to increase their level of exercise."

"It may also be feasible to develop a drug that mimics the effects of exercise for those people who are unable to undertake it themselves. This could have great health benefits but it is some way in the future. It will take several years to develop a drug and test its safety."

The project will range all the way from basic studies of the structure of key proteins to studies of supervised exercise programmes in large groups of volunteers at risk of developing disease, who will be monitored over the course of the project to assess the outcomes. Ideas generated in the basic science laboratories will be quickly applied to studies in humans.

Professor Grahame Hardie is leading the five year research project with colleagues from 26 laboratories across 13 European countries and corporate partners including AstraZeneca and Unilever. The group has been awarded £8.9 million by the European Commission for the project called EXGENESIS: Health benefits of exercise: identification of genes and signalling pathways involved in effects of exercise on insulin resistance, obesity and the metabolic syndrome.

The project brings £1 million directly to the University of Dundee.

Professor Hardie is Head of the Division of Molecular Physiology in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee.

PARTNERS IN THE EXGENESIS CONSORTIUM

Co-ordinator: Prof. Grahame Hardie, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK 01382 344253

Deputy Co-ordinator: Prof. Bente Klarlund Pedersen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Academic Partners:
Dr. David Carling, Imperial College School of Medicine, UK
Prof. Flemming Dela, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Dr. Pascal Ferré, U465 INSERM, Paris, France
Prof. Jan Glatz, Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Prof. Jan Gorski, University of Bialystok, Poland
Prof. Leif Groop, Malmö University Hospital, Sweden
Dr. Juan Hidalgo, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Prof. Jan Kopecky, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic
Dr. Vidya Mohamed-Ali, University College London
Dr. Ulrich Pohl, Institute of Physiology, Munich, Germany
Dr. Rainer Rauramaa, Kuopio Research Institute of Exercise Medicine, Finland
Prof. Michael Rennie, University of Nottingham, UK
Prof. Erik Richter, Institute of Exercise and Sports Sciences, Denmark
Dr. Mark Rider, Institute of Cellular Pathology, Brussels, Belgium
Dr. Pascual Sanz, Instituto de Biomedicina de Valencia CSIC, Valencia, Spain
Prof. Stefano Schiaffino, Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine, Padova, Italy
Prof. Alan Vaag, Steno Diabetes Center, Denmark
Dr. Sophie Vaulont, U567 INSERM, Paris, France
Prof. Theo Wallimann, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland
Prof. Juleen Zierath, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Corporate Partners:
Dr. Leonard Storlien, AstraZeneca R&D, Sweden
Dr. Jonathan Powell, Unilever R&D, UK
Dr. Andrew Oakley, Cambridge Neurotechnology, UK
Prof. Stephen Yeaman, Xcellsyz, UK

By Jenny Marra, Head of Press 01382 344910, out of hours: 07968298585, j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk