Professor David Leslie, MB BS, MRCS, MD, FRCP, FAoP
Professor of Diabetes and Autoimmunity
Centre: Immunobiology
Email: r.d.g.leslie@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: 020 7882 2358
Website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=leslie+rd
Profile
Richard David Leslie was elected President of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland in 2012. He was a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Clinical Science and an MRC Travelling Fellow. As Principle Investigator of three major European Union programmes (BLUEPRINT, Action LADA and EXALT) he is a leader in four areas of diabetes research, including the epigenetics and twin studies of autoimmune diabetes, nature of adult-onset autoimmune diabetes and immunotherapy of type 1 diabetes respectively. He was Founding Chairman of T1DUK, a UK national consortium, principle of Action LADA, a European consortium, Director of British Diabetic Twin Study and Director of Mendel Institute, Rome.
His international reputation is reflected in special lectures e.g. Royal College of Physicians (London), Silver Jubilee Oration (India), O’Meara Lecture (Ireland); organising and chairing international meetings e.g. NIH (USA), Danish Diabetes Academy (2014), International Immunology of Diabetes Society meeting (London 2018), 15 European Association for Study of Diabetes satellite meetings. He is Emeritus Professor to Central South University (China) and University of Rome (Italy).
He first described early environmental events as a cause of type 1 diabetes, persistent immune changes as predictors of diabetes and championed the concept of type 1 diabetes as a broad clinical, genetic and immunological spectrum in which adult-onset autoimmune diabetes is prevalent. He also first reported Genome and Epigenome Wide Association Studies in both adult-onset and childhood-onset type 1 diabetes, heritability determining haemoglobin A1c, early glucose changes in pregnancy associated with congenital malformations and early metabolic changes before the onset of type 2 diabetes.
Summary
Professor David Leslie has been Professor of Diabetes and Autoimmunity at the Blizard Institute, University of London He has published 12 books and more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and received grants from many agencies including the EU, Wellcome Trust and MRC. In 2012 he was elected President of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland. He ran the Diabetes Department at St Bartholomews Hospital, London with extensive experience of all aspects of diabetes, having previously been a consultant at Kings College Hospital.