We are honored to host some leading experts of our department.
Take a look at the program and the plenary lectures*.
*Subject to change
Adam Cohen
Leiden, The Netherlands
Adam Cohen graduated in Pharmacy and Medicine from Leiden University. He worked at the department of Clinical Pharmacology of the Wellcome Research Laboratories in the UK in early development and larger trials in cardiovascular disease as project leader for one of the first biotech developments in Europe. He obtained a PhD degree from Leiden University (1986). He had a clinical attachment in internal medicine and nephrology in King’s College Hospital London.
Between 1987 and 2018 he was CEO of the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR), a research centre for early drug development and proof of concept studies in healthy subjects and patients. From 2018 he was Director of Innovation Services at CHDR and involved in advice and innovation. He is emeritus professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Leiden University Medical Centre and clinically attached to the department of nephrology and still actively involved in undergraduate and graduate education. He was vice-chairman of the Central Ethics Committee and the Competent Authority (CCMO) of the Netherlands between 1999 and 2011. He was Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology until 2020. Adam has been non-executive board member of Omnicomm Inc(OMCM) in the USA until its acquisition and on the supervisory Board of the Rotterdam Eye Hospital. Since 2021 he advises biotech startups, venture capital investors and is active as an educator and publicist as well as a GP for Ukranian refugiees and an active amateur clarinettist.
Timo Müller
Munich / Germany
Timo Müller is an internationally renowned scientists who made significant strides in obesity and diabetes research, marked by a series of groundbreaking discoveries and development of several innovative pharmacological concepts for the treatment of obesity and diabetes. As part of an international team of scientists who pioneered the development of unimolecular polyagonists at the receptors for GLP-1, GIP and Glucagon for the treatment of obesity and diabetes, Dr. Müllers contributions have significantly advanced our understanding of how gut hormone therapeutics can be used to treat obesity and diabetes.
Dr. Müller further demonstrated that GLP-1-based combination-therapies offer enhanced glucometabolic efficacy in obese rodents (Clemmensen et al., Diabetes 2014, Clemmensen et al., EMBO Mol Med 2015) and co-pioneered the concept of peptide-mediated nuclear hormone delivery as a new pharmacological strategy to treat obesity, diabetes and dyslipidemia (Finan et al., Cell 2016; Sachs et al., Nat Metab 2020; Quarta et al., Nat Metab 2022). This innovative pharmacological concept resides in that the nuclear hormone only enters and acts on cells that express the designated peptide hormone receptor, thereby synergizing with the carrier peptide in the target cell to maximize metabolic efficacy while limiting off-target effects in cells devoid of the peptide receptor.
Beyond this innovative novel concept, Müller identified several novel pathways implicated in body weight and glucose control (Müller et al., Nat Commun 2013; Müller et al., JCI 2013; Fischer et al., Nat Commun 2020). He is further recognized for his work that identified the CNS GIP receptor as a key regulator underlying the decrease of body weight and food intake by GIPR agonism and GIPR:GLP-1R co-agonism (Zhang et al., Cell Metab 2021). In follow-up manuscripts, he discovered the neuronal population by which GIPR agonism regulates body weight and feeding (Liskiweicz et al., Nat Metab 2023) and that GIPR agonism and antagonism decrease body weight and food intake via different mechanisms (Gutgesell et al., Nat Metab 2025). In light of the clinical success of the recently approved GIPR:GLP-1R co-agonist Tirzepatide, Dr. Müller’s studies not only significantly contribute to our understanding of how these novel drugs act in the brain to control energy and glucose metabolism, but also pave the way to selectively target the GIP system using next generation drugs.
Dr. Müller has a h-factor of 66 (based on google scholar) and a track record of 200+ manuscripts, including manuscripts in Cell, Nature Medicine, Cell Metabolism, Nature Metabolism, JCI and Nature Communications. His recognitions include the Galenus-von-Pergamon Award of Springer Medicine, the Werner Creutzfeldt Award from the German Diabetes Association, and the Minkowski Award from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD).