12 février 2026: Pr Patrick Schrauwen
12H30
CMU - Auditoire Müller
suivi d'un apéritif
Hôtes: Dre Eva María BRÚ TARÍ
Centre facultaire du diabète, Faculté de médecine UNIGE
Pr Patrick SCHRAUWEN
Research group Energy Metabolism,
Institute for Clinical Diabetology,
German Diabetes Center (DDZ)
«Using insights from chronobiology to combat type 2 diabetes in humans»
Recently our 24-hour culture has been identified as another lifestyle factor that can cause type 2 diabetes. Technological and societal advances such as electric lighting and digital screens – leading to light exposure that is too dim during the day and too bright during the evening –, shift work, time zone transfers, and round-the-clock food availability disrupt our intrinsic and evolutionarily preserved 24-hour rhythms resulting in a desynchronization between light cues and behavior cues to our circadian system. This mistiming of cues is now thought to be a large contributor to the current metabolic health crisis, a concept known as circadian misalignment. Our internal biological clock sets circadian rhythmicity of a large range in bodily functions, including energy metabolism. We have shown that whole body energy expenditure and skeletal muscle mitochondrial function displays 24h rhythmicity in humans, a rhythm that is disturbed in prediabetic volunteers. Furthermore, under healthy conditions, our 24h energy metabolism is aligned to periods of feeding and fasting, and this fed-fasted cycle is disturbed in type 2 diabetes. We have also shown that a rapid day-night shift can lead to insulin resistance in healthy humans. More recently, using metabolomics analysis performed in human muscle material, we showed that 24h rhythmicity in muscle energy metabolites derived from healthy versus prediabetes volunteers shows temporal changes most prominent during the night period.
Next to light, also food and activity can function as zeitgebers for the molecular clock. Therefore, timing of interventions can be used to improve metabolic health; we and others showed that exercise training in the afternoon may have more beneficial effects compared to exercise training in the morning. Also, time restricted feeding improves rhythmicity of our metabolism and glucose homeostasis, and recent findings suggests that also light exposure can influence our 24h energy metabolism.
Biography
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. Dr. Schrauwen was one of the first to show that mitochondrial function is compromised in patients with overt type 2 diabetes and in subjects with pre-diabetes (Diabetologia 2007). 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 (Cell Metabolism 2011) but not in type 2 diabetes patients (Diabetes Care 2016). In more recent years, Dr. Schrauwen has been pioneering in the field of circadian rhythmicity in human energy metabolism and diabetes and was the first to demonstrate that mitochondrial function (Mol Metab 2016), lipid content (Mol Metab 2020) and muscle metabolites (Cell Reports, 2023) displays 24h rhythmicity in healthy humans with blunted rhythmicity in -diabetes volunteers. Also, he showed that circadian misalignment leads to muscle insulin resistance in humans (PNAS 2018). Dr. Schrauwen has also led human clinical trials investigating the effect of diabetes drugs on human energy metabolism (Op den Kamp, Diabetes Care 2021, Veelen, Metabolism 2023, Parker, Nature Metabolism 2024).
Dr Schrauwen was also one of the first to show that BAT can be detected in most humans upon acute cold exposure (NEJM 2009). Furthermore, he showed that the bile-acid CDCA activates BAT and elevates energy expenditure in humans (Cell Metabolism 2015), whereas creatine is unable to affect BAT in humans (Nature Metab 2021). 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 (Nature Medicine 2015), and next demonstrated that this involves cold-exposure activated GLUT4 translocation in skeletal muscle via a yet unknown molecular pathway (Nature Commun 2021). Most recent, he demonstrated that the beta-adrenergic pathway may be involved (Nature Commun 2023).
Dr. Schrauwen was awarded an NWO postdoctoral fellowship in 1999 and a prestigious KNAW Academy-fellowship (Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences) in 2001 and 2004. In 2008 he received the NWO VICI grant, the most prestigious research grant for young scientists in the Netherlands. For his research, he was awarded with the young investigator award of the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) in 2001, the ‘Silver Medal’ award of the British Nutrition Society in 2006, the ‘Rising Star Award’ of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in 2008 and the Corona Gallina Award for excellence in diabetes research in 2013. In September 2016, Schrauwen was awarded the MINKOWSKI Award of the EASD, the most prestigious European award in diabetes research. From 2010 to 2024, Dr. Schrauwen has been a Professor of Metabolic Aspects of Type 2 Diabetes and since 2021 he is a board member of the European Association for the study of Diabetes. In 2021 he established and became chair of the EASD academy, an initiative to support, train and mentor early career researchers in the field of diabetes. In 2024, Schrauwen joined the German Diabetes Center in Dusseldorf where he is deputy head of the research group Energy Metabolism.