The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 2025 Annual Meeting will feature major clinical trial results in type 2 diabetes (T2D), type 1 diabetes (T1D), obesity, several new clinical practice guidelines, and much more.

The 61st annual EASD meeting will take place on September 15-19, 2025, in Vienna, Austria. “EASD wants to bring a very broad overview of excellent science in diabetes, ranging from basic science to clinical care. It’s all about the big, big, span of diabetes and all its heterogeneity…and we now have tools to improve care for these people,” EASD President Chantal Mathieu, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Endocrinology at the UZ Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, told Medscape Medical News.

This year, the society received the highest number of abstracts for the annual meeting in about a decade, EASD Honorary Secretary Tina Vilsbøll, MD, clinical professor and head of clinic at the Steno Diabetes Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, told Medscape Medical News. “There is huge interest this year. We’re getting a lot of very high-level abstracts, and we had to turn down about a third of them. The level of the science this year is very high,” Vilsbøll said.

Vilsbøll said in previous years, organizers could plan the program out a year in advance. Now, she said, “you just can’t do that because so many things are happening.” Only 60%-70% is planned out far in advance, she noted, while space is left for late-breaking information to come in even at the last minute. “We really are making sure we get all the new stuff in.”

Early Morning Trials and More All Day Long

For the first time, the program features two stand-alone early-morning sessions for presentations of particularly important clinical trial results.

At 7:15 AM on September 18, full data of the Effect of Tirzepatide Vs Dulaglutide on Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Patients With T2D (SURPASS-CVOT) will be presented. Top-line results from that trial were released by Eli Lilly in July, demonstrating noninferiority but not superiority in major adverse cardiovascular outcomes.

Mathieu noted, “by a hair, they missed superiority. But what came out for me in the top-line results was a 16% reduction of all-cause mortality, a secondary endpoint, for tirzepatide vs dulaglutide. So, for sure, I’ll set my alarm for Thursday morning.”

And at 7:15 AM on September 19, breaking results will be presented for two T1D early-intervention trials aimed at slowing the disease progression: the MELD-ATG trial of infused antithymocyte globulin and Ver-A-T1D using the old, oral generic calcium channel blocker verapamil. The two studies were conducted using the INNODIA master protocol.

“Both are cheap drugs, much less costly than teplizumab,” noted Mathieu, who was involved in MELD-ATG.

Another major trial presentation, on September 17, is the highly anticipated ATTAIN-1, the first phase 3 clinical trial investigating the oral GLP-1 orforglipron for obesity management in people without diabetes. Positive results for orforglipron in treating people with recent-onset T2D were presented earlier this year at the American Diabetes Association meeting.

Findings from SURPASS-PEDS, a phase 3 trial of tirzepatide in pediatric patients with T2D, will be presented on September 18th, and new secondary outcomes data from the SOUL trial of oral semaglutide on cardiovascular outcomes in high-risk people with T2D will be presented on September 17.

New Clinical Practice Guidance: Diabetes Distress, T1D, Pregnancy

New EASD clinical practice guidelines, presented throughout the meeting and simultaneously published, will address diabetes distress and population screening to detect early stage T1D.

There will also be a session presenting a draft of an update to the 2021 EASD/American Diabetes Association T1D management guidelines, as well as a summary of the European Society of Endocrinology/Endocrine Society guideline on care of women with preexisting diabetes during pregnancy. That was first presented at the Endocrine Society meeting in July.

‘The Big, Big Span of Diabetes’

As always, the award lectures will feature top researchers in the field. This year’s topics are “Precision diabetes: learning from the rare and applying it to the common,” “Everything you want to know about adipose tissue: from cellular mechanisms to clinical complications,” “Pancreas development: a key to discover unexpected treatments of diabetes,” “Back to the future: re-centering the role of the pancreas in T2D,” “Targeting mitochondria to treat T2D and cardiometabolic disease,” and “Impacting lives of people with diabetes in resource-constrained settings.”

In another new feature, two “Lab Talk” sessions per day will offer attendees the opportunity to hear prominent diabetes researchers discuss their work.

Also noteworthy are several sessions about cognitive dysfunction and dementia. Until now, this has received less attention than cardiovascular, renal, and retina complications, Mathieu noted.

“Is diabetes affecting the brain? Now that people with diabetes are living longer, will they have more dementia or bigger problems when it comes to cognition?” Mathieu said. “To me, this is coming now. Drugs such as tirzepatide and semaglutide are being tested for cognitive impairment. If that succeeds, then it’s important.”

Mathieu reported serving or having served on advisory panels for Abbott, Bayer, Biomea Fusion, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Insulet, Medtronic, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Roche, SAB Bio, Sanofi, and Vertex (financial compensation paid to institution); receiving research support to institution from ActoBio Therapeutics, Medtronic, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi; serving or having served on speakers bureau for Abbott, Dexcom, Eli Lilly, Medtronic, Novo Nordisk, Roche, Sanofi, and Vertex (financial compensation paid to institution).

Vilsbøll reported having served on scientific advisory panels, being part of speakers bureau, and serving as a consultant for and/or receiving research support from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Gilead, GSK, Mundipharma, MSD/Merck, Novo Nordisk, Regor, Roche, Sanofi, Sun Pharmaceuticals, and Zealand Pharma.

Miriam E. Tucker is a freelance journalist based in the Washington, DC, area. She is a regular contributor to Medscape Medical News, with other work appearing in the Washington Post, NPR’s Shots blog, and Diatribe. She is on X @MiriamETucker and BlueSky @miriametucker.bsky.social