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Guy A. Rutter

Guy A. Rutter FMedSci is a British biochemist and diabetes researcher known for his work on pancreatic beta-cell biology, insulin secretion, and diabetes pathophysiology. He is Full Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal and Researcher at the Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CRCHUM).

Education

Rutter earned a Bachelor of Science (Class I Honours) in Biochemistry and Chemistry from the University of Nottingham in 1985 and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol in 1988.

Career

After completing his PhD, Rutter carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Bristol and the University of Geneva, where he held a Medical Research Council Travelling Fellowship and a Ciba-Geigy Jubilee Fellowship. He returned to the University of Bristol as a faculty member, becoming Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. In 2006 he joined Imperial College London as Head of the Section of Cell Biology and Functional Genomics and later served as Director of the Imperial Network of Excellence in Diabetes from 2018 to 2021. Rutter was appointed Full Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal and Principal Investigator at the CRCHUM in 2021, and in 2025 became Head of the Cardiometabolic Axis at the same institution.

He also holds visiting professorships at Imperial College London and at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Research

Rutter’s research focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying diabetes mellitus, particularly how glucose, incretins, and other hormones regulate insulin secretion from pancreatic beta cells. His work has contributed to understanding beta-cell heterogeneity, mitochondrial function, and the genetic regulation of insulin release.

He has been a co-principal investigator on several major research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. His laboratory employs genetic and imaging approaches, including optogenetics, super-resolution and intravital microscopy, and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models, to study beta-cell function and dysfunction in diabetes.

Key scientific contributions

Rutter’s contributions include:

  • Discovery of “disallowed” genes in pancreatic beta cells, identifying a set of genes selectively repressed to maintain normal insulin secretion.
  • Development of fluorescent and bioluminescent probes to study intracellular calcium and ATP dynamics, pioneering live-cell imaging of insulin granule exocytosis.
  • Studies on AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and its role in beta-cell metabolism, identity, and viability.
  • Identification of type 2 diabetes-associated genes, including SLC30A8 (ZnT8), ZIP12, and ADCY5, as regulators of insulin secretion and zinc homeostasis.
  • Discovery of leader and hub beta cells that coordinate calcium signaling and insulin release across the pancreatic islet, establishing functional beta-cell heterogeneity.

Honors and awards

References