Editorial, Annual report 2020

In 2020 we celebrated Oslo Diabetes Research Centre’s 30 year anniversary with a very successful symposium in our University’s marvellous old buildings in the centre of Oslo. Together with several invited national and international guests, we had a wonderful weekend with an outstanding scientific and social program. 

The first part was open to the general public and well-attended. Several of our researchers presented news from their different fields of research. During the second part, our two prominent international guests, professor Rury Holman from Oxford Diabetes Centre and professor Bernhard Zinman from the University of Toronto, gave highly interesting lectures on their views on state-of-the art in diabetes research. Thereafter, many of our own researchers presented their work and discussed with fellows and guests.

It has been an active year with four disputations – warm congratulations to Espen, Astrid Cathrine, Sindre and Ingvild – and a high number of papers published in international, peer-reviewed scientific journals. In addition, many of our researchers have leading roles in national and international diabetes organizations, and participate with invited lectures and as members of boards, steering committees and guideline-committees. Professor Trond Geir Jenssen received the Norwegian Diabetes Association's research award and researcher Line Wisting received the Association’s award for younger scientist. We congratulate with these great achievements, and what you both have accomplished! 

Upon entering 2021, we have decided to prepare an application for a big grant announced by the Research Council of Norway, where we aim to apply for funding for a Research Centre for Clinical Treatment and Self-Management of Diabetes. Preparing such an application is a lot of work that involves many of our researchers. The competition will of course be hard, but we hope to succeed. It would give us a huge possibility to elevate Norwegian research in diabetes.

We are still in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, and several of our research projects have experienced delays and other problems related to this. Hopefully, the situation will improve soon, as vaccines are becoming available and both research and life in general may be normalized.

We want to thank and acknowledge all our collaborators in Norway and internationally, our sponsors, and in particular, we value the close collaboration with and continuous support from the Norwegian Diabetes Association.

Kåre I. Birkeland
Professor
Chair of the steering committee

The photo on the front page is taken by PhD student Chencheng Wang. It shows a 3D microscopic image of a human islet cell of 0.15 mm. Insulin in the beta cells is colored red, glucagon in the alpha cells is colored green, and the cell nuclei are colored blue and purple.