Anna Gloyn

Anna is currently a visiting Professor at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine having previously been based at the Oxford Centre for Diabetes Endocrinology and Metabolism & the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics (WTCHG) for 16 years.   

Anna completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford under the supervision of the late Professor Robert Turner. Her post-doctoral training was carried out at the University of Exeter under the mentorship of Professors Andrew Hattersley & Sian Ellard and at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia under the mentorship of Professor Franz Matschinsky.

Anna’s research is focused on using naturally occurring mutations in humans as tools to identity critical regulatory pathways and insights into normal physiology. Anna’s early post-doctoral research led to the identification a new genetic aetiology for permanent and transient neonatal diabetes due to KCNJ11 mutations and resulted in one of the first examples of the determination of the molecular genetic aetiology leading to improved treatment options for patients.  Whilst in Oxford, Anna's team discovered a novel genetic cause of constitutive insulin sensitivity in humans due to mutations in the PTEN gene highlighting the complex interplay between pathways involved in cell-growth and metabolism.

Anna's current research projects are focused on the translation of genetic association signals for type 2 diabetes and glycaemic traits mechanisms for beta-cell dysfunction and diabetes. Her group uses a variety of complementary approaches, including human genetics, genomics, physiology and islet-biology to dissect out the molecular mechanisms driving disease pathogenesis.

Anna is an active member of multiple internal genetic discovery efforts including: NIH/Pharma funded Accelerated Medicines Partnership, DIAGRAM (Diabetes Genetics Replication and Meta-analysis), MAGIC (Meta-analysis of Glucose and Insulin traits Consortium), Type 2 Diabetes Genetic Exploration by Next-generation sequencing in multi-Ethnic Samples (T2D-GENES) and the Genetics of Type 2 Diabetes (GoT2D). She was also involved in the IMI funded STEMBANCC project which focused on delivering human IPS cell derived beta-cell models for drug discovery efforts. 

Anna is also involved in several initiatives under the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN): the NIDDK funded Human Pancreas Atlas Programme (HPAP) for Type 2 Diabetes, and the International Islet Phenotyping Programme (IIPP).

Anna’s work has been recognized both nationally and internationally as she is a recipient of  a European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Rising Star Award (2005), the Diabetes UK RD Lawrence Named Lecture (2009), the GB Morgagni Silver Medal (2014), the EASD Minkowski Prize (2014) and the Diabetes UK Dorothy Hodgkin Lecture (2019)