Deciphering Metabolic Messages From the Gut Drives Therapeutic Innovation: The 2014 Banting Lecture

The Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement is the highest scientific award of the American Diabetes Association (ADA). Given in memory of Sir Frederick Banting, one of the key investigators in the discovery of insulin, the Banting Medal is awarded annually for scientific excellence, recognizing significant long-term contributions to the understanding, treatment, or prevention of diabetes. Daniel J. Drucker, MD, of the Department of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital and the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, received the prestigious award at the ADA's 74th Scientific Sessions, 13-17 June 2014, in San Francisco, California. He presented the Banting Lecture, "Deciphering Metabolic Messages From the Gut Drives Therapeutic Innovation," on Sunday, 15 June 2014. obese subjects, providing the opportunity to reduce glycemia in human subjects with diabetes with a low risk of hypoglycemia. GLP-2 plays a key role in the control of energy absorption and in the integrity of the intestinal mucosa, and a GLP-2R agonist, teduglutide, is now used for augmentation of energy absorption in parenteral nutrition-dependent subjects with short bowel syndrome. GLP-1 and GLP-2 are both cleaved by dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4); hence, inhibition of DPP-4 activity enables yet another pathway for potentiation of incretin action and the therapy for type 2 diabetes. Here I review our 30-year experience with the elucidation of gut hormone action and, wherever possible, highlight therapeutic implications of our preclinical studies and future opportunities for incretin research.