Talk on diabetes and current treatments by Canadian and Korean researchers

As part of a one-day symposium bringing Korean and Canadian diabetes researchers together, two experts will talk about the latest news and treatments for the disease.

Sung-WooParkThe lecture, “Understanding Diabetes and Treatments”, will take place Friday, Aug. 2, from 5:30 to 6:30pm, 105 Life Science Building, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend this free public lecture. RSVP by July 30 to ckd@yorku.ca.

Sung-Woo Park

University of Sungkyunkwan Professor Sung-Woo Park of the Korean Diabetes Association and Kangbuk Samsung Hospital will join University of British Columbia Professor Brian Rodrigues of the Canadian Diabetes Brian RodriguesAssociation to go over the causes, symptoms and current available treatments for diabetes.

Brian Rodrigues

Park is the president of the Korean Association for the Patient with Diabetes and former board director of the Korean Diabetes Association. Rodrigues is the former board director and chair of the National Research Council of the Canadian Diabetes Association.

During the day, the Canada-Korea Diabetes Research Initiative Symposium will feature Park chairing the first session GarySweeneyof the afternoon, followed by York biology Professor Gary Sweeney of the Faculty of Science chairing the second session.

Gary Sweeney

“The main focus of the symposium is to disseminate knowledge, engage new partners and learn more about current research activities in diabetes at both Korean and Canadian Institutions,” says Sweeney. “It represents an outstanding opportunity to share information resulting from research activities and findings in the area of mechanistic and translational studies in diabetes.”

Six speakers in all will discuss various aspects of diabetes.

Minna Woo of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, University Health Network/Mount Sinai Hospital, will talk about dissecting the signaling pathways that control inflammation and metabolism in diabetes.

Myungshik Lee of the Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea, will look at how autophagy deficiency in insulin target tissues leads to protection from obesity and insulin resistance.

Tony Lam of the Banting & Best Diabete Centre, University of Toronto, will examine glucagon and insulin signaling in the brain.

Gary Lopaschuk of the University of Alberta will discuss the contribution of diabetes and obesity to heart failure.

Minho Shong of the Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea, will talk about mitochondrial dysfunction in metabolic diseases.

Zayna Khayat of the International Centre for Health Innovation at the Ivey School of Business, London, Ont., will look at the end of the road in value capture from diabetes innovations: uptake by patients, practitioners and health systems.

For more information, contact ckd@yorku.ca.