Dr Patrick Schrauwen
Role: Principal investigator / Chair of EASD Academy
Institute: German Diabetes Center, Research Group Energy Metabolism, Düsseldorf, Germany
Research & Interests: Dr Schrauwen focuses on human translational research in the field of type 2 diabetes mellitus, with a special emphasis on insulin resistance, lipotoxicity, mitochondrial dysfunction, and human energy metabolism. His research is characterized as highly translational. In his multidisciplinary team, Dr Schrauwen combines molecular techniques and state-of-the-art imaging technology with human clinical intervention trials.
Dr Schrauwen was one of the first to show that mitochondrial function is compromised not only in patients with overt type 2 diabetes but also in subjects with pre-diabetes. Subsequently, Dr Schrauwen investigated whether mitochondrial function could be considered a target for the prevention or treatment of diabetes. Dr Schrauwen was also the first to show that the polyphenolic compound resveratrol is able to increase mitochondrial function and improve metabolic health in obese humans but not in type 2 diabetes patients. Dr Schrauwen further examined if and how interfering with mitochondrial function affects intramyocellular lipid accumulation and insulin sensitivity. In more recent years, Dr Schrauwen has been pioneering in the field of circadian rhythmicity in human energy metabolism and diabetes. He was the first to demonstrate that mitochondrial function and lipid content in skeletal muscle displays clear 24h rhythmicity in humans and that circadian misalignment leads to muscle insulin resistance in humans. He demonstrated that 24h rhythmicity of energy metabolism and mitochondrial function and muscle metabolites are severely blunted in pre-diabetes volunteers. Dr Schrauwen has also led human clinical trials investigating the effect of diabetes drugs on human energy metabolism.
The second research line of Dr Schrauwen focuses on understanding the impact of cold exposure on human energy metabolism. This initially focused on the role of brown adipose tissue (BAT), and he was one of the first to show that BAT can be detected in most humans upon acute cold exposure. Furthermore, he showed that the bile-acid CDCA activates BAT and elevates energy expenditure in humans, whereas creatine is unable to affect BAT in humans. In 2015, Dr Schrauwen demonstrated that 10 days of cold acclimation had very marked effects on skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes patients in a BAT-independent manner, and next demonstrated that this involves cold-exposure activated GLUT4 translocation in skeletal muscle via a yet unknown molecular pathway. Most recent, he demonstrated that the beta-adrenergic pathway may be involved.