Grant: Netherlands-Canada Type 2 Diabetes Consortium - Travel Award - General

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) stems from dysfunctions of multiple organs in the body caused by complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Among the environmental factors linked to the development of T2D, lack of sleep, light exposure during usual sleep time, and mistimed food intake have been shown to play a role in pre-clinical models and epidemiological studies. Experimental studies in animal and humans have suggested that better timing of lifestyle interventions during the day-night cycle or normalization of neurohormonal cycles and light exposure patterns improve cellular regulation of energy metabolism and inflammation in several tissues, most notably brown and white fat tissues. However, there is limited knowledge of the clinical relevance of these findings as no comprehensive in vivo studies have been made to integrate energy metabolism changes in all relevant organs/systems during carefully performed timed-interventions in animals and humans. We propose to establish a Netherlands-Canada Consortium on Type 2 Diabetes Research leveraging 7 outstanding research groups from the Netherlands that received prior funding as part of the Diabetes II Breakthrough Projects competition and 3 renowned research groups from Quebec City, Toronto and Sherbrooke in the field of Type 2 Diabetes research. Together our Netherlands-Canada Consortium will regroup expertise in animal and human day-night regulation of metabolism, brain, muscle, adipose tissue, liver and gut physiology, lipids and carbohydrate metabolism, hormonal regulation, nutritional and exercise interventions, type 2 diabetes clinical management, patient engagement experts and patient partners. We will bring together our expertise in training and mentoring of young scientists, clinicians, and patient-partners to create a first-class multi-institutional and international environment that will accelerate knowledge transfer from the proposed investigations into clinical practices in both countries.