Diabetes & Nutritional Sciences (Research Division)

The Division of Diabetes & Nutritional Sciences brings together basic scientists, clinicians and public health practitioners in the two disciplines to develop evidence based strategies for the prevention of diet related and metabolic diseases.

Diabetes Research has as its remit the improvement of outcomes in diabetes care from the bench through the bedside to the community. The science of nutrition is concerned with understanding the effects of food on the body in both health and disease. Both subjects require a multidisciplinary approach, and researchers within the Division interact with each other, and with researchers across the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, to develop a focus on understanding Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, especially of the gastrointestinal tract. The aim is to apply this knowledge to new preventive and therapeutic interventions.

The Division's activity centres on four major groups:

• Diabetes Research
• Diet and Cardiovascular Health
• Diet and Gastrointestinal Health
• Metal Metabolism

The Diabetes Research group is present on both the Guy's and Denmark Hill campuses, with extensive laboratory space in the Hodgkin Building at Guy's housing research in islet physiology and development and in the application of nanotechnology to both cell therapy and to glucose sensing/insulin delivery. Administrative offices, a human cell isolation laboratory and a satellite islet research laboratory specialising in islet growth and culture, together with a laboratory for thyroid autoimmunity are present on the Denmark Hill site.

Nutritional Sciences Research is based in the Franklin-Wilkins Building at Waterloo and has access to first-class research facilities across the College, and at Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College Hospitals. Within the Franklin-Wilkins Building we have well-equipped laboratories with specialised facilities and analytical equipment, including 5-channel FACS, GCMS, GC, confocal microscope imaging, cell culture, HPLC, a ballistic bomb calorimeter, DIGE electrophoresis and spot picker and an ILAB 650 chemistry analyser. Members of the Division use the Mass Spectrometry and the Genomics Centres within the Franklin-Wilkins Building, and also have access to the College's NMR and Electron Microscopy core facilities. A clinical pathology accredited (CPA) laboratory is available at King's College Hospital.

Facilities for conducting research on human subjects are provided on three sites: we have a purpose-built Metabolic Research Unit in the Franklin-Wilkins building and Clinical Research Facilities at both St Thomas' and King's College Hospitals, that provide state-of-the-art facilities for performing studies of in vivo metabolism (including use of insulin clamp and stable isotope infusion technologies) and measuring vascular function, exercise, visual function, body composition and cognitive function.

There is extensive external collaboration both at national (MRC-HNR Cambridge, Cancer Research UK Oxford, University of Reading, University of Surrey, University of Southampton, UCL, ICL) and at international level (NIFES Bergen, EU projects, University of Maastricht Netherlands, University Wageningen Netherlands, Caribbean, Ghana, Malaysia, Japan and USA), with the food and pharmaceutical industries (e.g. Unilever, Nestle, Premier Foods, Vifor, Glaxo Smith Kline, Archer Daniel Mills) and with the public sector (in particular with the Department of Health and the Food Standards Agency).