Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium: The EASD Diabetes and Cancer Study Group

Members of the DCRC at 2016's annual meeting hosted in Reykjavik, Iceland

2017 Aarhus, Denmark Meeting, joint with the Danish Diabetes Association.

Diabetes and Cancer

Diabetes and cancer are common chronic disorders. In Europe alone, there are 55.4 million individuals living with diabetes, mainly type 2 diabetes (T2D); while there are an estimated 3.5 million new cancer cases per year.

Estimates of the co-occurrence of prevalent diabetes and cancer are age-, sex-, population, and cancer-type specific but, for example, in a study from the Eindhoven Cancer Registry, the Netherlands, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among patients with cancer of the pancreas was 19%; uterus, 14%; and among young men with kidney cancer, 8%.

The DCRC are a specialist international collective that comprises leading researchers in the field of diabetes and cancer.

Scroll down to see a list of recent publications based on DCRC collaborations.

The DCRC Background

The Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium (DCRC) was formed in 2010 in response to a controversial publication in Diabetologia in 2009 claiming an association (safety signal) linking the use of anti-diabetes therapies (insulin Glargine) with a higher cancer incidence; a finding not supported by other studies published in the same issue.

In order to resolve these issues, EASD appointed Edwin Gale, Andrew Renehan and Bendix Carstensen to form a task force to advise EASD on the topic (Resulting in a consensus as: (1) and (2) in Diabetologia in 2012). The former EASD Diabetes and Cancer Task Force was established in February 2011, by the then President of EASD, Professor Ulf Smith, with a 3-year window of activity in the first instance. At the 2013 EASD Annual Conference (Barcelona), this group became an EASD Study Group – The Diabetes and Cancer Study Group (DCSG). Its core business is the Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium (DCRC).

Project led by: Andrew Renehan

Find out more about the 2017 activities of the DSCG

Here you will find a full summary of the DSCG activities in 2017.

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The former EASD Diabetes and Cancer Task Force was established in February 2011, by the then President of EASD, Professor Ulf Smith, with a 3-year window of activity in the first instance. At the 2013 EASD Annual Conference (Barcelona), this group became an EASD Study Group – The Diabetes and Cancer Study Group (DCSG). Its core business is the Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium (DCRC).

The central objectives of the Consortium are:

to establish minimum desirable criteria for performance of descriptive studies in cancer epidemiology, survival, and pharmaco-epidemiology in relation to the field of diabetes;
to create and implement a mechanism for pooling data and for conducting combined analyses in relation to cancer and diabetes; and
to undertake specific analyses in this area.

Our founding members – Ulf Smith (former EASD President); Edwin Gale (former editor-in-chief of Diabetologia); and Andrew G Renehan (DCSG Chair) – are keen to retain visible affiliations with other related organisations such as European Cancer Organisation (ECCO) and the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO).

Find out more about the DCSG

Here you will find further information about the organisation of the DCSG, our membership and information about committee members and officers and our affiliated organisations.

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Previous workshops

The DCRC meet annually with each workshop supported by and feeding into the EASD. The meetings are to discuss progress in the research area, present ongoing work, and to plan joint publications.

Date Location

2010 Copenhagen, Denmark

2011 Banff, Canada

2012 Brussels, Belguim

2013 Gothenburg, Sweden

2014 Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2015 Manchester, UK

2016 Reykjavik, Iceland

2017 Aarhus, Denmark

Publications based on DCRC / DCSG collaboration

Carstensen B, Read SH, Friis S, Sund R, Keskimäki I, Svensson AM, Ljung R, Wild SH, Kerssens JJ, Harding JL, Magliano DJ, Gudbjörnsdottir S; Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium. Cancer incidence in persons with type 1 diabetes: a five-country study of 9,000 cancers in type 1 diabetic individuals. Diabetologia. 2016 May;59(5):980-8.
Levin D, Bell S, Sund R, Hartikainen SA, Tuomilehto J, Pukkala E, Keskimäki I, Badrick E, Renehan AG, Buchan IE, Bowker SL, Minhas-Sandhu JK, Zafari Z, Marra C, Johnson JA, Stricker BH, Uitterlinden AG, Hofman A, Ruiter R, de Keyser CE, MacDonald TM, Wild SH, McKeigue PM, Colhoun HM; Scottish Diabetes Research Network Epidemiology Group; Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium. Pioglitazone and bladder cancer risk: a multipopulation pooled, cumulative exposure analysis. Diabetologia. 2015 Mar;58(3):493-504.
Zanders MM, Renehan AG, Bowker SL, Carstensen B, van de Poll-Franse LV, Johnson JA. Comment on Bordeleau et al. The association of basal insulin glargine and/or n-3 fatty acids with incident cancers in patients with dysglycemia. Diabetes Care 2014;37:1360-1366.
Carstensen B, Jørgensen ME, Friis S. The epidemiology of diabetes and cancer. Curr Diab Rep. 2014 Oct;14(10):535.
Ranc K, Jørgensen ME, Friis S, Carstensen B. Mortality after cancer among patients with diabetes mellitus: effect of diabetes duration and treatment: (questionable) classification of diabetic patients based on combination of specific glucose-lowering drugs. Reply to Holden SE, Bannister CA, Currie CJ [letter]. Diabetologia. 2014 Sep;57(9):2003-4.
Ranc K, Jørgensen ME, Friis S, Carstensen B. Mortality after cancer among patients with diabetes mellitus: effect of diabetes duration and treatment. Diabetologia. 2014 May;57(5):927-34.
Carstensen B, Witte DR, Friis S. Cancer occurrence in Danish diabetic patients: duration and insulin effects. Diabetologia. 2012 Apr;55(4):948-58.
Renehan AG, Yeh HC, Johnson JA, Wild SH, Gale EA, Møller H; Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium. Diabetes and cancer (2): evaluating the impact of diabetes on mortality in patients with cancer. Diabetologia. 2012 Jun;55(6):1619-32.
Johnson JA, Carstensen B, Witte D, Bowker SL, Lipscombe L, Renehan AG; Diabetes and Cancer Research Consortium. Diabetes and cancer (1): evaluating the temporal relationship between type 2 diabetes and cancer incidence. Diabetologia. 2012 Jun;55(6):1607-18.

"We have created a unique setting in the DCRC for world-leading researchers to come together as peers and discuss and debate their work openly. It is fantastic to see such a wide range of nations united in advancing our understanding of the relationship between T2D and certain cancer types."

Prof Andrew Renehan