Professor 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 in turn fat cells, muscle cells and liver. The potential to develop new techniques to study what happens to food in the whole body, with or without diabetes, led to a sabbatical year at Yale University where he carried out research with Professor Gerald Shulman. This was continued back in the UK, and he established the Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre, a new facility to further the medical and scientific knowledge by in vivo study of human physiology.

In 2006 he put forward the Twin Cycle Hypothesis which predicted that type 2 diabetes should be able to be reversed to normal by substantial loss of weight. This was proven in 2011, and amongst other studies, led to the Diabetes Remission Clinical Trial (DiRECT). This showed that achievement of remission of type 2 diabetes at least for 2 years was feasible in Primary Care, and was a collaboration with Professor Mike Lean of Glasgow. Professor Taylor’s other research activities included optimal management of women with diabetes during pregnancy, effective management of severe hyperemesis, and prevention of blindness in diabetes. He developed the system of screening for treatable diabetic eye disease which is now a UK-wide programme. Today in the UK, diabetes is no longer the commonest cause of avoidable blindness in working age people.

Professor Taylor qualified in Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1976.