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Article History

Accepted: 6 October 2021

First Online: 23 November 2021

Competing interests

: M.H.T. is a member of the scientific advisory board of ERX Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA, USA; was a member of the Research Cluster Advisory Panel (ReCAP) of the Novo Nordisk Foundation between 2017 and 2019; attended a scientific advisory board meeting of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen, in 2016; received funding for his research projects from Novo Nordisk (2016–2020) and Sanofi-Aventis (2012–2019); was a consultant for Bionorica SE (2013–2017), Menarini Ricerche S.p.A. (2016) and Bayer Pharma AG Berlin (2016); and, as former Director of the Helmholtz Diabetes Center and the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity at Helmholtz Zentrum München (2011–2018), and, since 2018, as CEO of Helmholtz Zentrum München, has been responsible for collaborations with a multitude of companies and institutions worldwide — in this capacity, he discussed potential projects with and has signed/signs contracts for his institute(s) and for the staff for research funding and/or collaborations with industry and academia worldwide, including but not limited to pharmaceutical corporations such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Medigene, Arbormed, BioSyngen and others; in this role, was/is further responsible for commercial technology transfer activities of his institute(s), including diabetes-related patent portfolios of Helmholtz Zentrum München as, for example, WO/2016/188932 A2 or WO/2017/194499 A1; and confirms that, to the best of his knowledge, none of the above funding sources were involved in the preparation of this paper. M.B. received honoraria as a consultant and speaker from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Novartis, Pfizer and Sanofi. T.D.M. receives research funding from Novo Nordisk, but these funds are unrelated to the work here described, and further received speaking fees from Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Mercodia, AstraZeneca, Berlin Chemie and Sanofi-Aventis. R.D.D. is a co-inventor on intellectual property owned by Indiana University and licensed to Novo Nordisk, and was recently employed by Novo Nordisk and, previously, Lilly Research Laboratories.