Timo Müller is an internationally renowned scientists who made significant strides in obesityand diabetes research, marked by a series of groundbreaking discoveries and development ofseveral innovative pharmacological concepts for the treatment of obesity and diabetes.
Beingcontinuously at the forefront of diabetes research, Dr. Müllers contributions have significantlyadvanced our understanding of how gut hormone therapeutics can be used to treat obesityand diabetes. Dr. Müller is part of an international team of scientists who pioneered thedevelopment of unimolecular polyagonists at the receptors for GLP-1, GIP and Glucagon forthe treatment of obesity and diabetes.
He further demonstrated that GLP-1-basedcombination-therapies offer enhanced glucometabolic efficacy in obese rodents (Clemmensen et al., Diabetes 2014, Clemmensen et al., EMBO Mol Med 2015) and co-pioneered the conceptof peptide-mediated nuclear hormone delivery as a new pharmacological strategy to treatobesity, diabetes and dyslipidemia (Finan et al., Cell 2016; Sachs et al., Nat Metab 2020;Quarta et al., Nat Metab 2022).
This innovative pharmacological concept resides in that thenuclear hormone only enters and acts on cells that express the designated peptide hormonereceptor, thereby synergizing with the carrier peptide in the target cell to maximize metabolicefficacy while limiting off-target effects in cells devoid of the peptide receptor. Beyond thisinnovative novel concept, Müller identified several novel pathways implicated in body weightand glucose control (Müller et al., Nat Commun 2013; Müller et al., JCI 2013; Fischer et al.,Nat Commun 2020).
He is further recognized worldwide for his work that identified the CNSGIP receptor as a key regulator underlying the decrease of body weight and food intake byGIPR agonism and GIPR:GLP-1R co-agonism (Zhang et al., Cell Metab 2021). In follow-upmanuscripts, he discovered the neuronal population by which GIPR agonism regulates bodyweight and feeding (Liskiweicz et al., Nat Metab 2023) and that GIPR agonism and antagonismdecrease body weight and food intake via different mechanisms (Gutgesell et al., Nat Metab2025).
In light of the clinical success of the recently approved GIPR:GLP-1R co-agonistTirzepatide, Dr. Müller’s studies not only significantly contribute to our understanding of howthese novel drugs act in the brain to control energy and glucose metabolism, but also pave theway to selectively target the GIP system using next generation drugs.Dr. Müller has a H-factor of 62 (based on google scholar) and a track record of 200+manuscripts, including manuscripts in Cell, Nature Medicine, Cell Metabolism, NatureMetabolism, JCI and Nature Communications.
His recognitions include the Galenus-von-Pergamon Award of Springer Medicine, the Werner Creutzfeldt Award from the GermanDiabetes Association, and the Minkowski Award from the European Association for the Studyof Diabetes (EASD).
