Roy Taylor

Roy Taylor is Professor of Medicine and Metabolism at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK and honorary consultant physician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. During his career, he has cared for patients admitted with medical emergencies, for people with diabetes, and for women in pregnancy with medical conditions.

Since 1981 he has pursued the basic cause of type 2 diabetes, studying fat cells, muscle cells, and the liver. The potential to develop new techniques to study what happens to food in the body, with or without diabetes, led to a sabbatical year at Yale where he carried out research with Professor Gerald Shulman. This was continued back in the UK, and it was there that he established the groundbreaking Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre.

In 2006 he put forward the Twin Cycle Hypothesis, which predicted that people with type 2 diabetes should be able to return to normal by losing a substantial amount of weight. This was proven in 2011, and among other studies, led to the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT) in collaboration with Professor Mike Lean of The University of Glasgow. This trial showed that achieving remission of type 2 diabetes for at least 2 years was feasible under a primary care physician.

Dr. Taylor's other research activities included the management of women with diabetes during pregnancy, the management of severe hyperemesis, and the prevention of blindness in diabetes. He developed the system of screening for treatable diabetic eye disease, which is now a country-wide program in the UK, where diabetes is no longer the most common cause of avoidable blindness in working-age people.