A University of Ulster academic has been selected for a prestigious UK scientific prize for his ground-breaking research in the field of diabetes.

Dr Neville McClenaghan is the recipient of the Physiological Society’s Sharpey-Schafer Prize Lecture – an award recognising research achievements in physiology.

Commenting on the award, Dr McClenaghan, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biomedical Sciences at UU’s Coleraine Campus, said: “I am thrilled to have been chosen as the recipient of the 2005 Sharpey-Schafer Prize Lecture in recognition of my personal contributions to the understanding of pancreatic beta-cell physiology and diabetes”.

He has built up a strong profile of discoveries in pancreatic-beta cell physiology through his on-going research in cellular bioengineering, the mechanisms underlying desensitization to anti-diabetic drugs and novel metabolic and insulin-secretory pathways which could lead to future innovative therapies of diabetes.

The Sharpey-Schafer Prize is awarded every three years to a research physiologist, by the Society’s international awards committee, as an endorsement of “scientific standing” and on the basis of “sustained and notable contributions to physiology”. The Physiological Society, based in London, is a learned society with members drawn from more than 50 countries. The last recipient of the Sharpey-Schafer Prize in 2002 was German physiologist, Professor Erwin Neher, who was awarded The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991.

Dr McClenaghan added: “Given the diverse range of disciplines in physiology, covering a very broad spectrum of research in life sciences, my receipt of this prestigious award is obviously a great personal honour. Also, for this reason, this prize represents a very significant and visible mark of the quality of diabetes research at the University of Ulster.”

Dr McClenaghan's personal research achievements and discoveries were previously recognised by his award of University of Ulster Distinguished Research Fellowship in 2001. He is to deliver the Sharpey-Schafer Prize Lecture at a special event in London later this year.

For further information, please contact:

David Young
Telephone: 028 90366074
Email: David Young