Kei Sakamoto | The Novo Nordisk Foundation Prize
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2026

Kei Sakamoto

His discoveries have helped establish the LKB1–AMPK pathway as an important signalling route through which working muscle senses energy demand and increases glucose uptake without relying on insulin.

Professor Kei Sakamoto of the University of Copenhagen has been awarded the 2026 EASD–Novo Nordisk Foundation Diabetes Prize for Excellence. His research has helped uncover how working muscle can still take up glucose when insulin signalling is impaired, and revealed an important part of how metformin – one of the world’s most widely used medicines for type 2 diabetes – lowers blood glucose.

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