Vanderbilt Diabetes Day, an annual event hosted by the now-named Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC). The event spotlights the work of researchers, and this year also celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the DRTC.

Phillip Gorden, MD, a Vanderbilt University undergraduate and School of Medicine alumnus, was recently honored with the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center Lifetime Achievement Award, during the recent Diabetes Day sponsored by the Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center and the Irwin B. Eskind Endowed Symposium.

Vanderbilt research finds that GLP1 receptor agonists — a class of diabetes medications — are associated with fewer major adverse cardiovascular events than another type of diabetes drug (DPP4 inhibitors) in older veterans with no prior heart disease.

Coming up: going fishing with his grandchildren

A Vanderbilt study of a treatment to delay the development of Type 1 diabetes in individuals at high risk did not meet the study goals of delaying progression from normal glucose tolerance to abnormal glucose tolerance or clinical diagnosis, although the study drug, abatacept, impacted immune response and preserved insulin production during the one-year treatment period.

Vanderbilt's Diane Saunders, PhD, has been selected as a 2023 recipient of an Innovation Award by the Network of Pancreatic Donors with Diabetes.

Professor Dame Frances Ashcroft, a British physiologist known internationally for her work on insulin secretion, Type 2 diabetes and neonatal diabetes, is the recipient of the 2023 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science.