Professor Mike Lean announced as co-winner of 2024 Rank Prize for Nutrition
Published: 14 November 2023
The University of Glasgow’s Professor Mike Lean, along with his long-time collaborator Professor Roy Taylor from Newcastle University, have been awarded the 2024 Rank Prize for Nutrition for transforming the lives of thousands with their groundbreaking work on dietary approaches to type 2 diabetes remission
The University of Glasgow’s Professor Mike Lean, along with his long-time collaborator Professor Roy Taylor from Newcastle University, have been awarded the 2024 Rank Prize for Nutrition for transforming the lives of thousands with their groundbreaking work on dietary approaches to type 2 diabetes remission.
Founded in 1972 by the British industrialist and philanthropist Lord J. Arthur Rank, the prestigious Rank Prize is awarded biennially in the fields of nutrition and optoelectronics. The Prize will be awarded formally at an event in London on 1 July 2024.
Professor Mike Lean and Roy Taylor’s research has furthered understanding of how type 2 diabetes develops, and has shown for the first time that remission from type 2 diabetes is possible for some by following a low-energy weight management programme. Their research is transforming services for people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes has long been associated with overnutrition and obesity. Professor Mike Lean and Professor Roy Taylor began researching possible reasons for this independently after both observed some patients appearing to lose their type 2 diabetes after losing weight.
Professor Mike Lean recognised that body fat was being stored in abnormal sites within organs in people with type 2 diabetes, and developed and validated a new clinical weight management programme to offer more effective weight loss in routine primary care.
The Counterpoint study, led by Professor Roy Taylor in 2011, confirmed that individuals susceptible to type 2 diabetes held excess fat in their liver and pancreas, leading to insulin resistance and the dysfunction of pancreatic insulin-producing beta cells. This research found that when people with type 2 diabetes lost weight, fat was lost from the liver and pancreas, and these organs regained function. Improvement was particularly significant when weight loss took place early on in the course of type 2 diabetes.
The charity Diabetes UK brought the two researchers together to design and conduct the DiRECT trial (Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial), in which people with type 2 diabetes living with overweight or obesity replaced their usual meals with nutritionally complete formula diet products, followed by the gradual re-introduction of normal food, delivered in UK primary care. On average, participants sustained a weight loss of 10% at 12 months, and almost half of participants had put their type 2 diabetes into remission at one year. A quarter of participants lost 15kg or more, and of these, 86% were in remission.
More recently the teams have shown that this intervention is also successful in people with a lower body weight, and that it is effective in people of South Asian origin.
A programme based on the approach of DiRECT has been piloted by NHS England and is now being rolled out across England: the NHS Type 2 Diabetes Path to Remission Programme. Over 5,000 individuals have been offered the intervention, with early results expected in the near future. The work has been recognised internationally, and the approach is already included as a treatment option in the Joint American Diabetes Association and European Association for the Study of Diabetes Standards of Care document.
Professor Mike Lean, Clinical Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow’s School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing, said: ”My reaction to receiving news of this highly revered prize was initially astonishment, almost shock, to be included among the list of illustrious previous winners. But it is deeply satisfying to realise that people really do understand and appreciate our work. A clinical research career is very long, often lonely or exposed, and doubted or even scorned, as conventional beliefs are challenged.
"I have been fortunate to have had wonderful loyal colleagues in Glasgow and elsewhere, critical support from Diabetes UK and people living with diabetes, and a 47-year professional friendship with Roy Taylor. Our research work, sometimes desperately tough, has always been infused with a sense of fun. Success in research, making a difference for our patients, is gratifying, and for all this to be recognised by the Rank Prize is immensely rewarding.”
Professor John Mathers, Chair of the Rank Prize Nutrition Committee, said: “The ground-breaking research by Professors Taylor and Lean has shown that a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes is not a life sentence. Their demonstration that type 2 diabetes can be put into remission by sustained weight loss will empower millions of people globally to change their eating behaviour and to improve their health. In addition, Taylor and Lean’s discoveries will make a major contribution to reducing the economic and social burden of diseases associated with overweight and obesity.”
Professor Lean established the first Department of Human Nutrition in a Scottish Medical School in 1990, initially funded for 10 years by Rank Prize, with a ‘broad-focus’ strategy for translational, integrative, research and teaching, across all scientific disciplines within Human Nutrition. His main focusses are on obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and health promotion.
Enquiries: ali.howard@glasgow.ac.uk or elizabeth.mcmeekin@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 6557 or 0141 330 4831
First published: 14 November 2023
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