Daniel Drucker

Photo of Professor Daniel Drucker

Daniel Drucker

Department of Medicine

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Dr. Daniel Drucker obtained his MD degree from the University of Toronto in 1980. From 1980-1981, he was a fellow in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. Afterwards, he returned to Toronto and was a fellow in Internal Medicine at Toronto General Hospital from 1981-1984. He then became a fellow in molecular endocrinology until 1987, wherein he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto. In 1991, he was promoted to Associate Professor of Medicine, Clinical Biochemistry, and Genetics at the University of Toronto, and from 1992-2000, was appointed Director, Division of Endocrinology in the Department of Medicine. He was promoted to Professor in 1996 in the Departments of Medicine, Molecular and Medical Genetics, and Laboratory Medicine. From 2000-2011, he served as Director of the U of T Banting and Best Diabetes Centre. In 2006, he moved to Mount Sinai Hospital as Senior Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute.  

His key achievements include the discovery, characterization, and application of incretin hormones, namely GLP-1 and -2 and the therapeutic value of inhibition of DPP4, an enzyme that degrades GLP peptides. GLP-1, GLP-2 and DPPP4 inhibitors are widely used clinically for type-2 diabetes and short bowel syndrome (GLP-2). Most recently, GLP-1 agonists have been approved for the control of obesity. To date, he has published 313 primary papers, 87 reviews and 18 book chapters and has been issued 33 patents. His work has been cited over 82,000 times and his h-index is 144. 

Dr. Drucker has been recognized by numerous awards that include:, Canadian Society for Clinical Investigation Distinguished Scientist Award (2002), Donald Steiner Award for Diabetes Research, University of Chicago (2007), Prix Galien Canada Award for outstanding scientific research (2008), Endocrine Society Clinical Investigator Laureate Award (2009), CIHR-CMAJ Award for outstanding health research (2012), Claude Bernard Award from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes for Outstanding Diabetes Research (2012), Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement, American Diabetes Association (2014), Officer of the Order of Canada (2015), Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London (2015), Rolf Luft Award in Endocrinology and Diabetes Research, Karolinska Institute (2017), the Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine, ASCI and the Harrington Institute (2017), the Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders Scientific Leadership Award (2018), the Manning Foundation Principal Innovation Award (2018), the Harold Hamm International Prize for Diabetes Research (2019), the Novo Nordisk Foundation EASD Prize for Excellence in Diabetes Research (2019), the Helmholtz Diabetes Centre Lifetime Achievement Award (2019), the Endocrine Society John Baxter Award for Entrepreneurship (2020), the Transatlantic Medal of the British Endocrine Society (2020), the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize for Biomedical Research (2020), the Gairdner International Award (2021), and the Wolf Prize (2023). Dr. Drucker was elected to the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2022.