Highlights from EASD 2011

Every year in September, thousands of scientists, endocrinologists and diabetes educators from all over the world gather for the annual meeting of the European Association of the Study of Diabetes (EASD). The venue chosen for this year’s meeting was Lisbon, Portugal—and what a magnificent city it is with its proud history, mixture of old and modern buildings, narrow winding streets and amazing food. Cultural and culinary treats aside, the scientific program at EASD was excellent. Historically, some of the scientific disclosures at EASD are encore presentations from the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions, which takes place three months earlier. So if you missed something at ADA (and with all the parallel sessions and 5:00 am presentations, who can say that they saw it all?), you have a second chance to see the data presented at EASD. Nonetheless, there was also a lot of new and exciting science presented, ranging from genetics, islet biology, renal and liver disease to obesity.

The scientific program at EASD often highlights a specific theme or landmark study—in past years, it was the unveiling of the United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS) 30-year data, the PROactive (PROspective PioglitAzone Clinical Trial In MacroVascular Events) study and the DREAM (Diabetes Reduction Assessment with Ramipril and Rosiglitazone Medication) study. This year, the buzz was around the potential associations between diabetes, diabetes treatments and cancer risk. In fact, in February 2011 the EASD announced that it had established a “Diabetes and Cancer Research Task Force” chaired by Professor Edwin Gale from the University of Bristol, UK. EASD’s focus on this area was featured in two major plenary sessions during the Scientific Program.

The first plenary session, which featured three distinct presentations, was entitled, “Diabetes and cancer related mechanisms.” One of the take-home messages from this session is that there is a potential increased risk of cancer in patients with diabetes, especially those with type 2 diabetes. One key topic discussed was whether metformin might potentially exert cancer-protective effects. The second plenary session was structured as one of EASD’s well-known debates, where two opposing views are presented. The primary question posed was, “Do GLP-1 based therapies increase cancer risk?” Dr. Peter Butler, Professor of Medicine, Endocrinology at UCLA, represented the “yes” position and presented data from an animal model (rodents) and an analysis of data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) database. However, at the end of his presentation, Dr. Butler concluded that he saw himself more in the “maybe” camp than the “yes” camp and advocated the use of GLP-1-based therapies with metformin. Dr. Michael Nauck, Head of Diabeteszentrum Bad Lauterberg in Bad Lauterberg, Germany, took the “no” position and highlighted the lack of conclusive evidence from clinical data, the pitfalls of the AERS database and the long time-course in which pancreatic cancer develops. In conclusion, both presenters agreed that more research is needed and that GLP-1-based therapies should be used in conjunction with metformin in the meantime.

Abstracts and webcasts of many of the lectures from EASD are available for viewing (and reviewing) at EASD’s website (www.easd.org).

Kathrin Herrmann, Ph.D., is Principal Investigator, Medical Research at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

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