Grant: Team Grant: Netherlands-Canada Type 2 Diabetes Research Consortium

Recently, our 24-hour culture has been identified as a factor that can cause type 2 diabetes. Technological and societal advances such as electric lighting and digital screens, 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. Preclinical data indicate that differentially timed interventions throughout the 24-hour cycle may have an impact on outcomes of these interventions. The proposed Dutch-Canadian research consortium objectives are to elucidate the mechanisms and the impact of differentially timed life style throughout the 24-hour period on the development of type 2 diabetes to develop more effective interventions to prevent this disease. Building on our internationally acclaimed expertise in research on type 2 diabetes, on very original state-of-the-art methodological capacities, on large longitudinal cohorts in Europe and Canada, on our expertise in patient engagement, on our expertise in lifestyle interventions, and on our large network of partners, we propose 3 complementary and integrated work packages (WP) that will optimize lifestyle interventions for the prevention of type 2 diabetes, build training & mentoring capacity of next generation of scientists, and develop a successful collaborative network engaging patients in research across Canada and the Netherlands. The proposed consortium will regroup some of the world best experts in integrative physiology, epidemiology, lifestyle interventions, patient engagement, and scientific networking to optimize interventions based on circadian metabolic rhythmicity to prevent type 2 diabetes, train the future generation of health researchers in the field, and develop patient partners' engagement at the international level.