Research Advisory Board - Dr Ewan Pearson PhD MB BChir MRCP

Clinical Senior Lecturer, Biomedical Research Institute, University of Dundee and Honorary Consultant in Diabetes & Endocrinology, NHS Tayside.

Ewan Pearson qualified from Cambridge University Medical School in 1995. After a number of years of clinical training, he studied for a PhD in Andrew Hattersley’s lab in Exeter, where he carried out physiology and clinical phenotyping in patients with Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY) and Neonatal diabetes. It was during this time that he established that patients with MODY due to HNF1A mutations are sulphonylurea sensitive; and that patients with ‘insulin –dependent’ neonatal diabetes due to potassium channel mutations can be treated with high dose sulphonylureas. Both findings have led to patients successfully transferring off insulin treatment.

Ewan moved to Dundee in 2005, where supported by a clinician scientist fellowship he pursued his research interest in genetic and phenotypic determinants of response to diabetes treatments. He was appointed to a clinical senior lecturer post at the University of Dundee in 2008. Ewan’s current research areas are the pharmacogenetics of metformin, sulphonylureas and thiazolidinediones; clinical predictors of response to these agents; and pharmacovigilance.