Rory McCrimmon, MD
Dean, School of Medicine & Professor of Experimental Diabetes and Metabolism, University of Dundee, Scotland
Biography
Rory McCrimmon trained at the University of Edinburgh and completed his clinical and speciality training in the South-East of Scotland before becoming an NHS Consultant Physician in Diabetes and Endocrinology at University Hospital Aintree, Liverpool, in 2000. In 2002, he joined the faculty at Yale University, Connecticut, to investigate why people with type 1 and 2 diabetes are very prone to developing low glucose (Hypoglycaemia). He returned to Scotland in 2009 to establish his laboratory at the University of Dundee, where he is currently Dean of Medicine, Professor of Experimental Diabetes and Metabolism and Honorary Consultant He was recently awarded the 2015 RD Lawrence Lecture by Diabetes UK for his research in Hypoglycaemia.
Prof McCrimmon is currently also Lead Clinician for the Scottish Diabetes Research Network (SDRN), which provides the necessary infrastructure to co-ordinate and enable academic and commercial research throughout Scotland. The SDRN hosts a National Research Register of over 11,000 subjects with diabetes pre-consented to be contacted about clinical trials. The register is directly linked to SCI-diabetes, which contains secure clinical and biochemical data on over 350,000 people with diabetes in Scotland.
Prof McCrimmon serves on Editorial Boards of Diabetologia and Diabetes. He is a panel member for: Medical Research Council Population and Systems Medicine Board, Diabetes UK, Clinical Studies Group Management Committee; Diabetes UK, Intermediate Clinical Fellowships Panel; Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation PEAK Programme; Panel member, International Hypoglycaemia Study Group.
Research
The focus of my research programme has been to define the fundamental mechanisms by which the brain detects low glucose levels (hypoglycaemia) and how these mechanisms are disrupted in type 1 diabetes in response to repeated episodes of hypoglycaemia. Key findings include a series of papers each cited over 100 times, establishing key roles for AMP-activated protein kinase and the ATP-sensitive potassium channel in the detection of hypoglycaemia by the brain. I have published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, obtained >£16M in grants funds as an independent investigator and have been invited to give key-note lectures in all major national and international diabetes conferences (>40 invited presentations), receiving the named RD Lawrence Lecture in 2015 from Diabetes UK in recognition of my contribution to this field. I also have an interest clinical trials in diabetes and was appointed by interview by the Chief Scientist Office Scotland as Diabetes Champion. In this role I lead the £1.8M funded Scottish Diabetes Research Network (SDRN), comprising clinicians and research nurses in all major centres in Scotland and tasked with enabling high quality clinical research across the country. Unique to the SDRN, we also support the SDRN Epidemiology subgroup that has used the Sci-Diabetes informatics platform to produce a number of high impact publications over the last 5 years (>20 papers). I am also currently Principal Investigator on 9 phase 3 clinical trials. I was UK Chief Investigator for the Lixilan-O trial, VERTIS-CV, PIONEER 6, European Chief Investigator for SUSTAIN-8, on the steering committee for DiRECT and writing groups for Lixilan-O, Lixilan-L and Tandem3.
Teaching
Primary teaching experience is in academic mentoring and supervision of clinicians, post-graduates and undergraduate students. In this capacity, I have served as Programme Lead for the Academic Foundation Doctors in the Eastern Deanery, been a member of the Scottish Translational Medicine Training Initiative, and a member of the Medical Research Council Clinical Fellowship Training and Career Development Awards panel. In addition, I have co-written the Chapter on Diabetes in Davidson’s Principles and Practice of Medicine (Editions 22 and 23), a textbook that has been read by over 2 million medical students since its first edition. As Interim Dean I jointly Chair the new ScotGEM post-graduate Entry Medical Programme with David Crossman, Dean of Medicine, St Andrew’s University and will visit Anglia Ruskin University regularly as it starts its new Medical School adopting the Dundee Curriculum.