Anette-Gabriele Ziegler receives the Paul Langerhans Medal

“Ms. Ziegler is being honored with the Paul Langerhans Medal of the DDG because she has significantly advanced diabetology in terms of knowledge on prevention and also on the causal understanding of the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes. Her work has not only revealed basic scientific details on the development of the disease and improved diagnostics, but her work has also led to decisive practical care-relevant programs for the early detection and prevention of type 1 diabetes,” said this year's congress president and DDG spokesman Prof. Baptist Gallwitz, MD, in his tribute to the award winner in the run-up to the conference. "Her transnational research approach with the vision of ‘a world without type 1 diabetes’ has been extraordinarily successful over decades and has achieved a great deal through global scientific and health policy cooperation to bring this vision closer."

Anette-Gabriele Ziegler is Director of the Institute of Diabetes Research (IDF) at Helmholtz Munich. In 2010, she was appointed Professor of Diabetes and Gestational Diabetes at the Technical University of Munich and took over the management of the newly founded research institute. The IDF focuses on type 1 diabetes, and Prof. Ziegler is particularly committed to the prevention of this autoimmune disease. Based on research into the disease mechanisms, the scientists are looking for predictive markers for type 1 diabetes. In addition, innovative treatment approaches are being developed to prevent or at least delay the manifestation of type 1 diabetes. A breakthrough – which was also based on research work by Prof. Ziegler and her team – was achieved with the development of the anti-CD3 antibody teplizumab, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at the end of 2022. She established the research focus on type 1 diabetes at the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD).

Research for a world without type 1 diabetes

Anette-Gabriele Ziegler's life is closely related to the Bavarian metropolis where she studied and worked as a young doctor at the Schwabing Clinic. This was followed by a research stay in the U.S.A. at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School. In 1989, Ms. Ziegler returned to Munich to the Schwabing Clinic and founded an independent laboratory as part of the Diabetes Research Group. Today, she is Chairwoman of the group. The renowned scientist is committed to her vision of “a world without type 1 diabetes” in a multifaceted way. She is one of seven international principal investigators of the NIH-funded TEDDY consortium and the German representative of the NIH-funded TrialNet consortium. Prof. Dr. Anette-Gabriele Ziegler is the head of the Global Platform for the Prevention of Autoimmune Diabetes (GPPAD), which was founded in 2015. The GPPAD is an association of several academic research institutions and clinics in Europe that specialize in the prevention of type 1 diabetes.

The GPPAD has set itself the target of establishing an international infrastructure for studies on the prevention of the development of type 1 diabetes.

Prof. Anette-Gabriele Ziegler will give a lecture on this topic at the DDG Congress 2024: “Development and prevention of type 1 diabetes and the crucial importance of the first years of life.”

Source: German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD)

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