The Nutrition Society Cuthbertson Award has been awarded annually since 1990 as a tribute to Sir David Cuthbertson. It is awarded to scientists or clinicians at an early stage of their career for excellence in clinical nutrition and/or metabolism research providing an evidence base for clinical practice. The 2021 awardee is Dr Nerys Astbury, University of Oxford.
Dr Nerys Astbury has been awarded the Cuthbertson Award 2021 for her research on Low-energy total diet replacement weight loss programmes- from bench to bedside.
Dr Nerys Astbury is a Senior Research Fellow in Diet & Obesity at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. She was awarded a BBSRC CASE doctoral studentship in 2005 to explore how energy intake was regulated in humans under the supervision of Professor Ian Macdonald and Dr Moira Taylor at the University of Nottingham After obtaining her PhD she worked as a postdoctoral research associate at The University of Manchester under Professor John Mclaughlin, exploring how metabolic and endocrine pathways are encoded in the brain. In 2011 she moved to the USA to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Centre formerly at St Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center, and later Columbia University in New York. It was during her time in the US she developed an interest in translating the findings of the metabolic and mechanistic work of her PhD and early postdoctoral work into effective clinical treatments for obesity and its associated diseases. In 2015 she returned to the UK to take up a position with Professor Susan Jebb, who at the University of Oxford and began work on the Doctor Referral of Overweight People to low-energy total diet replacement Treatment (DROPLET) trial, which has been instrumental in informing an NHS pilot scheme for the treatment of people with type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Dr Nerys Astbury will present her research at The Royal Society at the Nutrition Society Winter Conference 2021 on the topic of Obesity and the brain.
Find out how to apply for the Cuthbertson Award: Click here