Tim Assimes

Themistocles L. Assimes, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, and by courtesy, Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine

Research Description: Dr. Assimes’ research program over the past 15 years has made important contributions to our understanding of the genetic and non-genetic determinants of insulin resistance as well as on the relationship between diabetes, insulin resistance and the risk of atherosclerosis related outcomes. These contributions have been made through his involvement in large scale genome wide association studies (GWAS) of direct and surrogate measures of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, as well coronary heart disease in multi-ancestry populations. He is also conducting large scale plasma proteomic studies of direct measures of insulin sensitivity and leveraging large scale genomic studies to conduct instrumental variable analyses that shed light on the causal vs. non-causal nature of relationships between cardiometabolic and non-cardiometabolic traits. 

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1. Vujkovic M, Keaton JM, Lynch JA, Miller DR, Zhou J, Tcheandjieu C, Huffman JE, Assimes TL, Lorenz K, Zhu X, Hilliard AT, Judy RL, Huang J, Lee KM, Klarin D, Pyarajan S, Danesh J, Melander O, Rasheed A, Mallick NH, Hameed S, Qureshi IH, Afzal MN, Malik U, Jalal A, Abbas S, Sheng X, Gao L, Kaestner KH, Susztak K, Sun YV, DuVall SL, Cho K, Lee JS, Gaziano JM, Phillips LS, Meigs JB, Reaven PD, Wilson PW, Edwards TL, Rader DJ, Damrauer SM, O'Donnell CJ, Tsao PS; HPAP Consortium; Regeneron Genetics Center; VA Million Veteran Program, Chang KM, Voight BF, Saleheen D. Discovery of 318 new risk loci for type 2 diabetes and related vascular outcomes among 1.4 million participants in a multi-ancestry meta-analysis. Nat Genet. 2020 Jul;52(7):680-691. doi: 10.1038/s41588-020-0637-y. PMCID: PMC7343592. 

  2. Chang YC, Hee SW, Lee WJ, Li HY, Chang TJ, Lin MW, Hung YJ, Lee IT, Hung KY, Assimes T, Knowles JW, Nong JY, Lee PC, Chiu YF, Chuang LM. Genome-wide scan for circulating vascular adhesion protein-1 levels: MACROD2 as a potential transcriptional regulator of adipogenesis. J Diabetes Investig. 2018 Sep;9(5):1067-1074. doi: 10.1111/jdi.12805. PMCID: PMC6123039. 

  3. Zanetti D, Rao A, Gustafsson S, Assimes TL, Montgomery SB, Ingelsson E. Identification of 22 novel loci associated with urinary biomarkers of albumin, sodium, and potassium excretion. Kidney Int. 2019 May;95(5):1197-1208. doi: 10.1016/j.kint.2018.12.017. PMCID: PMC6535090.