Patrick MacDonald is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and Director of the Alberta Diabetes Institute IsletCore human research islet program. He obtained his PhD in Physiology from the University of Toronto in 2003, then carried out his post-doctoral fellowship training in Lund, Sweden, and Oxford, UK, before establishing his independent research laboratory at the Alberta Diabetes Institute in Edmonton in 2006.
His group’s main interests lie in understanding the mechanisms that control hormone release from the endocrine pancreatic islets of Langerhans and how this is disrupted in diabetes. They study the control of both insulin and glucagon secretion, with a particular interest in elucidating the signalling mechanisms that control key ion channels and exocytotic processes responsible for secretion. They have a major interest in asking these questions, not only in standard experimental models such as cell lines and rodent islets, but also in pancreatic islets isolated from human donors. They run a human research islet program, aimed at understanding the mechanisms that control human islet function in health and disease.
Professor MacDonald has received new investigator awards from the American Physiological Society, the Canadian Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Diabetes Canada. He recently held a Killam Annual Professorship at the University of Alberta and was elected as a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada.
He has served on numerous panels and boards, including Diabetes Canada and Canadian Institutes of Health Research granting and personnel awards committees, the editorial boards of Endocrinology and Diabetes and as associate editor of Islets and AJP – Endocrinology and Metabolism, and Diabetologia.
Duality of Interest: None declared
Date: Spring 2023