Beyond Insulin: The Therapeutic Breakthroughs Reshaping Diabetes Care

Dr. W. Wayne Lautt co-founded Scimar and is its Chief Scientific Officer. He’s also a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the of University of Manitoba.

In 1996, Dr. Lautt discovered hepatalin and announced that the liver plays a central role in metabolic health, nutrient partitioning, and type 2 diabetes.

This ground-breaking discovery led him to co-found Scimar in 2009 to validate and accelerate his pioneering medical research, and to unveil hepatalin as a paradigm change in the detection, prevention, and treatment of type 2 diabetes, obesity, fatty liver disease, cardiac dysfunction, and other metabolic conditions.

Through Scimar, his work resulted in numerous patents and the development of four products. One product, a diagnostic test meal designed to measure hepatalin production, completed a phase 2 clinical trial in 2022.

Dr. Lautt is an acknowledged and awarded leader in diabetes research. He’s authored about 220 peer-reviewed publications, 60 of which are related to hepatalin. He is the recipient of the Michael Smith Award in scientific research. He also received the Ernesto Roma award for his contributions to diabetes research after he established a Postgraduate Student Exchange Program with the New University of Lisbon, where he carried out the first human protocols in Portugal using a Rapid Insulin Sensitivity Test. He has received awards for scientific contribution from the Canadian Physiological and Pharmacological Societies.

While working as an academic, Dr. Lautt’s research attracted $17.3 million in academic grants and private/commercial support. He completed his postdoc in Toxicology at the University of Montreal, his doctorate and master’s degree in Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of Manitoba, and his honours bachelor’s degree in Physiology at the University of Alberta.

He was Professor of Physiology at the University of Saskatchewan where he won the outstanding teaching award from the Faculty of Medicine. He served as Professor and Department head in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics where he was awarded outstanding teacher by the Faculty of Graduate studies.

Dr. Lautt is the Founding President and past President of the Canadian Association for Studies of the Liver (CASL), and the past President of the Western Pharmacological Society. He was also the first Canadian Liver Foundation Research Scholar.

Outside work, you might find Dr. Lautt engaging in several hobbies: caring for his aquariums and breeding fish, doing major renovations at home or the cottage, canoeing and camping, painting with watercolours and oils, writing a fiction series, travelling extensively, or tending to his heavily ornamental one-acre yard on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. His most consistent hobby is staging adventures with his family.