Philippe Froguel, MD, PhD, works at Imperial College London as Prof and chair of Genomic Medicine, and at Lille University hospital as Prof of Endocrinology, where he is director of the Inserm/CNRS/Pasteur/Lille Univ research group “Functional(epi)genomics and mechanisms of type 2 diabetes and related disorders”, Director of the European Genomic Institute for Diabetes research (EGID) and of the French National Center for Precision Medicine in diabetes PreciDIAB.   

 PF’s scientific carrier is focused on the genetics of diabetes and obesity. He is author of 775 publications and his H-index is 184 (with 156K citations). PF has identified in 1992 the first diabetes gene (glucokinase), in 1998 the most prevalent cause of monogenic obesity (MC4R), and the first recessive mutation causing obesity in the leptin receptor gene. He discovered in 2006 the role of the sulfonylurea receptor gene ABCC8 in monogenic diabetes and in 2010-2011 the first evidence that Copy Number Variation causes extreme obesity or leanness depending of the quantity of DNA.  He discovered in 2007 the first gene for common obesity (FTO) and has published in 2007 the first Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) in T2D. Later, he found first gene frequent variants controlling glycemia (in GCPC2) and discovered the role of the melatonin pathway (through frequent and rare variants in MTNR1B) in T2D risk. Recently, he showed that 3% of patients with common T2D carry pathogenic mutations in actionable genes opening a path to precision medicine. PF current interest is in personalized medicine, with the identification of diabetic patients that should benefit from customized treatments controlling diabetes and preventing complications. To progress toward this direction PF have created the unique in France LIGAN Genome Sequencing Center.