David James is a world recognised expert in diabetes research. He is the Director of the Diabetes and Obesity research Program at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellow. He was awarded the Glaxo Medal in 1999 and the Australian Diabetes Society Kellion Award in 2006. He has pioneered research on the insulin responsive glucose transporter GLUT4 and insulin action.

Type 2 diabetes: A disease of the future
by Professor David James

Modern times have exposed human weaknesses, one of the most severe of which is Type 2 diabetes. A lifestyle of inactivity and a surfeit of food often manifest as increased body fat or a state of obesity: with a genetic predisposition this leads to the almost inevitable appearance of the disease. The research area generally aims to understand the causative features of the disease and the interplay between genetics and environment.

One of the earliest detectable features of Type 2 diabetes is a condition called insulin resistance. The work of my group focuses on one of the major actions of insulin that becomes disrupted in Type 2 diabetes, namely the transport of sugar from the blood stream into cells such as muscle and fat cells. Our goal is to delineate each of the molecular events within these cells that orchestrate this program. We have developed a series of advanced methodologies to study these processes under carefully controlled physiological conditions including dynamic light microscopy and quantitative mass spectroscopy. With these tools in hand rapid progress in this field is expected over the coming years, laying the groundwork for the acquisition of important new information, which will be used to greatly improve management of this disorder and prevent its complications.

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