KEYNOTE ADDRESS:

Personalized Pharmacotherapy for Obesity:  The Future

John Wilding, DM, FRCP
Professor of Medicine & Honorary Consultant Physician
Department of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine
Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences
Clinical Sciences Centre
Aintree University Hospital 
Liverpool
United Kingdom

Professor John Wilding leads clinical research into Obesity, Diabetes and Endocrinology at the University of Liverpool, where he has worked since 1996, after training in Southampton and London.  His clinical interests focus on caring for people with diabetes and obesity and he leads specialist services for obesity at Aintree University Hospital – designated a Centre for Obesity Management by the European Association for the Study of Obesity.  

John’s research team focusses on developing and evaluating treatments for obesity and diabetes. He has published over 350 papers, chapters and review articles, including clinical trials in diabetes and obesity, studies of adipocyte biology and metabolism.

He chairs the National Clinical Research Network Metabolic and Endocrine Speciality Group.  He is a past Chair of the UK Association for the Study of Obesity, a member of the Royal College of Physicians Advisory Group on Nutrition, Weight and Health and President of the World Obesity Federation. 

Presentation Overview:

Obesity is a complex and heterogenous disease, and a ‘one size fits all’ approach to treatment may contribute to the large variability in responses to different interventions, including behaviour change, diet and exercise, pharmacotherapy and bariatric surgery.  Recent research has started to help our understanding of this complexity, and identification of genetic variants leading to severe early onset obesity, such as leptin deficiency and pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) deficiency, has shown that for some people at least, targeted personalised intervention with pharmacotherapy is possible and can be highly effective.  The challenge now is to extend this concept to treatment of more people living with obesity, and use genetic, metabolomic and other characteristics, as well as early responses to trials of treatment, to ensure that truly personalised approaches are more widely adopted in practice, so that the latest developments in pharmacotherapy can be given to those people who are most likely to benefit.