Speaker

A specialist in internal medicine, endocrinology, and diabetes, Professor Anette-Gabriele Ziegler leads the Institute of Diabetes Research at the Helmholtz Center in Munich, Germany and is Chair of Diabetes, Technical University Munich, School of Medicine. She is also the Chair of the Global Platform for the Prevention of Autoimmune Diabetes GPPAD, and the co-project leader of the European HORIZON-IHI program EDENT1FI.

Dr. Ziegler's primary research goal is understanding the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes and finding a preventive treatment for a world without type 1 diabetes. Her main research focuses on identification of genetic, immune and environmental determinants of the disease, the introduction of polygenic risk scores, and the translation of findings into predictive staging that enables trials to prevent type 1 diabetes. She initiated the landmark and worldwide first birth cohort study in diabetes, BABYDIAB, with seminal discoveries on the precocious start of islet autoimmunity in the first year of life, and insulin as the initial target of autoantibodies. The success of the BABYDIAB study led to the multinational birth-cohort initiative TEDDY (The Environmental Determinant of Diabetes in the Young), of which she is Principal Investigator for the German Clinical Center. She cofounded the Global Platform for the Prevention of Autoimmune Diabetes (GPPAD), which introduced polygenic risk score-based newborn screening and also started the first population-based screening for early-stage type 1 diabetes in childhood, the Fr1da-study, which has paved the way for prevention trials in a public health setting.

Photo credit: Helmholtz Munich - © Matthias Tunger Photodesign.