An intriguing research finding, two promising candidate diabetes drugs, several patents, a spinoff campus company, and a deal potentially worth $41 million (US) with Amylin Pharmaceuticals of California: No wonder Peter Flatt sounds pleased.

Yet when the Englishman Flatt moved to the University of Ulster to start a diabetes research group in 1989, many considered it a brave, and some even a mad move. The University of Ulster was not well known then, and the only familiar landmarks Flatt could tell friends about were Bushmills whiskey and the Giants Causeway - a remarkable formation of basalt columns on the coast nearby.

Today his research team, based in the town of Colraine, has grown to more than 20 members. Funded primarily by the charity, Diabetes UK, they are successfully moving from studying the basic science of insulin secretion and control to developing potential therapies. Flatt is pleased that their work might lead to drugs to combat the diabetes epidemic. The possibility of revenue for his university from the campus company, Diabetica, is a plus.

The team has a varied research program but is most excited about glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), a hormone released in the gastrointestinal tract in response to food and involved in stimulating insulin production to control blood sugar levels. GIP is similar to GLP-1, another insulin-secreting hormone that is the subject of considerable international research and commercial interest.

Flatt and his colleagues are concentrating on GIP, however, and in 2005 they discovered a link between this peptide, obesity, and the insulin-resistance seen in type II diabetes (Diabetes, 54:2436-46, 2005). It seems, Flatt explains, that GIP also acts as an adipocyte hormone, important in storing body fat in times of plenty.

The finding could explain the link between obesity and type 2 diabetes, and why, when gastric surgery bypasses the GIP-producing region of the gut in grossly obese patients, their diabetes disappears within 14 days - weeks before any weight loss occurs. Clearly, GIP is a potentially useful target for diabetes therapies. Patents have followed, and the Ulster team has developed a stable agonist to increase insulin levels - this is the subject of the lucrative Amylin deal.

One GIP analogue the group developed turned out to be an antagonist, yet it too is a promising therapy. "This was a big surprise," Flat admits. "You'd expect it to make things worse, yet it enhances insulin activity," possibly by making cells more sensitive to insulin or because of GIP's role in fat metabolism.