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  • Year in Review
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Genetics of T2DM in 2016

Biological and translational insights from T2DM genetics

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a major global health challenge. Development of more effective strategies for prevention and therapy depends on an improved understanding of its pathogenetic mechanisms. 2016 ends a period during which large-scale discovery of risk alleles for T2DM became routine and heralds a shift in research focus towards their exploitation to fuel mechanistic insights.

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Figure 1: The identification of DNA sequence variants associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

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Correspondence to Mark I. McCarthy.

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M.I.McC. is a member of Advisory Boards at NovoNordisk and Pfizer. He has received honoraria from EliLilly, NovoNordisk and Pfizer, and research funding (via the Innovative Medicines Initiative and the Accelerating Medicines Partnership) from Abbvie, Astra Zeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Merck, NovoNordisk, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, Servier and Takeda.

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McCarthy, M. Biological and translational insights from T2DM genetics. Nat Rev Endocrinol 13, 71–72 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrendo.2016.212

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