Rate My Professor Daniel Drucker

Daniel Drucker is a University Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a Senior Investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health. He obtained his MD degree from the University of Toronto in 1980. He completed a fellowship in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1980 to 1981, followed by fellowships in internal medicine and molecular endocrinology at the University of Toronto and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School until 1987, when he was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1991 and to Professor in 1996. From 1992 to 2000 he served as Director of the Division of Endocrinology in the Department of Medicine, and from 2000 to 2011 he directed the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre. In 2006 he joined the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute as Senior Scientist.

Dr. Drucker’s research has focused on the biology and therapeutic applications of glucagon-like peptides, including GLP-1 and GLP-2. His work contributed to the development of GLP-1 receptor agonists and DPP-4 inhibitors for type 2 diabetes and obesity, as well as GLP-2-based therapies for short bowel syndrome. He holds the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre–Novo Nordisk Chair in Incretin Biology and a Canada Research Chair in Regulatory Peptides. He has authored or co-authored hundreds of primary research papers, reviews, and book chapters, with his publications cited more than 82,000 times. Dr. Drucker has received numerous honors, including election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2023, the Gairdner International Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, induction into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, and recognition on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. He continues to lead research on the mechanisms of gut hormone action and their clinical applications.