58th Annual Meeting
Conference 2024
58th Annual Meeting
Conference 2024
Chair EDEG Steering Committee
Chair of the local organizing committee
Chair: Dana Dabelea
Riitta Veijola (Finland), Department of Pediatrics, University of Oulu and Oulu University Hospital
Prof. Riitta Veijola
Professor Riitta Veijola is a specialist in pediatrics and pediatric endocrinology, and she has a strong research background into genetic and environmental risk factors of type 1 diabetes (T1D). In her thesis she showed that strong disease susceptibility genes at the HLA class II locus are associated with young age at diagnosis of T1D and at least partly explain the familial aggregation of the disease. In her postdoctoral period at University of Cambridge, UK, they showed that variants in the IL-2 gene impair the function of regulatory T-cells and cause autoimmunity. Upon her return to Finland her research expanded to national and international prospective birth cohort studies following children at increased genetic risk.
Riitta Veijola chairs the Finnish Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention (DIPP) study (www.dipp.fi) and leads the Diabetes Research Laboratory in University of Oulu where islet autoantibodies are measured. The DIPP study was launched in the 1990’s in three university hospitals in Finland and has ongoing recruitment of newborns for genetic prescreening of type 1 diabetes risk. Children carrying increased HLA-conferred disease risk are regularly screened for islet autoimmunity until age 15 years and even beyond if found to be positive for islet autoantibodies. The DIPP study has grown to the world’s largest prospectively followed childhood cohort focusing on the pathogenesis of T1D and has contributed to several seminal findings on the development of the disease. JDRF and several Finnish sources have funded the DIPP study.
Riitta Veijola has also participated in several international studies: The Environmental Determinant of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY study) funded by NIH, The Trial to Reduce IDDM in the Genetically at risk (TRIGR study) funded by NIH, and the European Commission funded Innovative Medicines Initiave 2 (IMI-2) projects Translational Approaches to Disease Modifying Therapy of Type 1 Diabetes: An Innovative Approach Towards Understanding and Arresting Type 1 Diabetes (INNODIA and INNODIA HARVEST).
She leads and participates in several RCTs testing therapies to prevent or delay T1D. She is the PI for three investigator-initiated RCTs testing the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of incretin-based therapy to prevent or delay the loss of endogenous insulin secretion in preclinical or early clinical type 1 diabetes.
Riitta Veijola has published >450 articles, has >16000 citations and her H index is 65. She received The Swedish Child Diabetes Foundations’s Johnny Ludvigsson Prize for excellent research in childhood and adolescent diabetes in 2016 and The Knud Lundbæk Award from Scandinavian Society for the Study of Diabetes in 2023. She became a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2021.
Chair: Olov Rolandson and Valentina Tiberi
10 min. presentations + 5 min. discussion
Stine Scheuer, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Herlev, Denmark
Bendix Carstensen, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Herlev, Denmark
Peter Harms, Amsterdam UMC, General Practice Medicine, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Vera Bjarkø, HUNT Center for Molecular and Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Nursing, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); Department of Endocrinology, Clinic of Medicine, St Olavs Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway
Chair: Stavros Liatis and Marica Iommi
10 min. presentations + 5 min. discussion
Dianna Magliano, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute; School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Jedidiah Morton, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute; Centre for Medicine Use and Safety, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Christina Hanna, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Henrik Støvring, Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus University Hospital; Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Welcome new board members
Thank leaving board members
Chair: Juan Pablo Pérez Bedoya
Max. 2 min. poster pitches in the main hall, followed by ~40 minutes of questions/discussion next to poster boards in reception hall
Lynne Chepulis, Medical Research Centre, School of Health, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zeland
Romain Meer, Department of Epidemiology & Data Science, Amsterdam UMC – location Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Motahareh Parsa, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Copenhagen University Hospital, Herlev, Denmark
Jose Omar Silverman-Retana, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University; Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark; Danish Diabetes Academy, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark
Jonas Schaarup, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University; Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
Rasmus Wibaek, Clinical Research, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Herlev, Denmark
Livie Yumeng Li, Department of Public Health, Aarhus University; Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark
Fabrice Bonnet, Department of Diabetology, CHU de Rennes, Université de Rennes, Rennes, France; Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health (CESP), Paris-Saclay University, Inserm, Versailles Saint-Quentin University, Clinical Epidemiology Team, Villejuif, France
Pernille Thomsen, Steno Diabetes Center Greenland, Nuuk, Greenland