#CPHBAT2024
Speakers
We are proud to present a selection of world-leading scientists within brown adipose research. Each speaker has been hand-picked to cover an important part of this fast-growing and exciting field. The meeting is open to all researchers and aim to address current burning issues, including the physiological relevance and therapeutic potential of human brown fat, brown adipokines, the transcriptional regulation and developmental origin of brown and brite/beige fat, brown fat mitochondria, glucose metabolism and bioenergetics.
Yu-Hua Tseng
Joslin Diabetes Center,
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Tseng’s laboratory has been focusing on unraveling the role of developmental signals in brown versus white adipose cell fate, the identification and characterization of adipose progenitor/stem cells, the integration of genetic and humeral factors on thermoregulation, and whole body energy homeostasis, and has made significant contributions to the understanding of brown fat biology in mice and humans.
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Michael Czech
Program in Molecular Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School
What are the mechanisms by which white and brown adipose tissues control whole body metabolism? How do adipose dysfunctions disrupt metabolic health in obesity and diabetes?
Answers to these questions spark our lab’s efforts to devise therapeutic strategies and new approaches for alleviating these diseases. Our recent work has leveraged CRISPR technology in new ways to enhance the thermogenic “brown” phenotype of adipocytes, thereby promoting their therapeutic potential.
Silvia Corvera
University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Work in the Corvera laboratory seeks to understand the role of adipose tissue in Type 2 diabetes pathogenesis. We have recently established a model to study human adipose tissue development, by recapitulating in-vitro the angiogenic expansion process required for adipose tissue growth in-vivo. Using this approach, we have generated human adipocytes that can be engrafted in humanized mice, and find that they potently affect systemic metabolism. Our current efforts are focused on understanding the mechanisms of development of white and beige/brite human adipocytes, the mechanisms by which these cells engraft to form adipose tissue in mice, and the mechanisms by which they affect systemic metabolism.
Denis Blondin
Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology, Université de Sherbrooke
Dr. Blondin is an Assistant Professor at the Université de Sherbrooke in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Centre de recherche du Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CRCHUS), who holds a GSK Research Chair in Diabetes and an FRQS-Junior 1 salary award. His research focuses on the adaptations to tissue, organ and whole-body energy metabolism in response to environmental stimuli (heat, cold, hypoxia), exercise, nutritional changes, and the pathogenesis and treatment of metabolic disorders. The unique integration of medical imaging, stable isotope tracers and indirect calorimetry offers integrated mechanistic views into in vivo energy metabolism directly relevant for human physiology.
Philipp E. Scherer
Touchstone Diabetes Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas
The Scherer laboratory defined the adipocyte as a major endocrine cell and made major contributions to the understanding of the pathophysiology of adipose tissue in the context of obesity and type 2 diabetes. We are working specifically on adiponectin and aim to contribute towards the understanding of the physiological role of the important adipokine. We are looking at tissue crosstalk between adipose tissue, the liver, the pancreas and the kidney and study these interactions in the context of pathological changes, such as cancer, as well.
Prashant Rajbhandari
Department of Endocrinology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Dr. Prashant Rajbhandari is an Assistant Professor in the Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. His research programs aim to understand the basic biology of adipose tissue microenvironment in white and beige adipocyte function and preclinical manipulation to inform therapies for obesity. The broader significance of the work in Rajbhandari Lab is that obesity is linked to various diseases, and studying the perturbation in the cellular and molecular pathways in the adipose tissue niche might provide a better understanding of the disease.
Jan Nedergaard
Department of Molecular Biosciences,
The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University
Jan Nedergaard is particularly interested in the metabolic significance of UCP1 in different physiological adaptive conditions - and how to control the amount and activity of UCP1.
Lawrence Kazak
Department of Biochemistry, McGill University
Our research is focused on the molecular underpinnings controlling energy dissipation by adipocytes. In recent years, we have focused our attention on a UCP1-independent pathway called the futile creatine cycle. Along with identifying the effector proteins of the futile creatine cycle, and their transcriptional regulation in vivo, we have generated genetic mouse models to explore the quantitative contribution of the futile creatine cycle to thermogenesis and used structural and biochemical methods to elucidate its activation mechanism.
Anna Krook
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet
I earned my doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge, UK, where my research concentrated on investigating insulin receptor mutations in individuals with severe syndromes of insulin resistance. Subsequently, my research has been dedicated to understanding insulin action at the molecular level. Currently, the research conducted within my group is centered on three main areas, all focused on skeletal muscle metabolism. These areas include exploring the impact of non-coding RNA on muscle metabolism and insulin sensitivity, examining the transcriptional regulation of skeletal muscle metabolism, and investigating the effects of metabolites, hormones, and other circulatory factors. Our primary interest lies in understanding how type 2 diabetes and exercise influence insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism, both at the cellular level and through the study of individuals with or without type 2 diabetes following various exercise interventions.
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Christian Wolfrum
ETH Zürich, Department of Health Science and Technologies
Our research is focused on elucidating the formation on function of both brown and white adipose tissue. In the last few years we have been mainly interested in the molecular mechanisms that underly adipose tissue heterogeneity and the contribution to metabolic control.
Susanne Mandrup
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark
Susanne Mandrup is Professor at Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of Southern Denmark, Head of the Functional Genomics & Metabolism Research Unit and Director of Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS) and Center for Adipocyte Signaling (ADIPOSIGN).
Her group combines sequencing-based functional-genomics approaches with detailed molecular analyses and has contributed significantly to the genome-wide understanding of the transcriptional regulation of adipocyte differentiation and function. The current research focus includes investigations of the transcriptional mechanisms of adipose tissue plasticity and cooperativity of transcriptional enhancers in adipogenesis.
She is elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Academia Europaea, AcademiaNet, and European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and serves on the Carlsberg Foundation Board of Directors. She is Knight of the Order of Dannebrog.
Lori M. Zeltser
Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, Columbia University
Division of Preventive Medicine and Nutrition, Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
The Zeltser laboratory studies central and peripheral neural circuits regulating energy intake and expenditure. We have developed new tools to investigate how the sympathetic nervous system regulates nutrient uptake in brown adipose tissue, and how this affects metabolism at both the local tissue and systemic levels.
Paul Cohen
Laboratory of Molecular Metabolism,
The Rockefeller University, New York.
My lab focuses on understanding the molecular basis for obesity-associated diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. We employ cellular and animal models and human subjects as well as molecular, imaging, and biochemical approaches to investigate the molecular and cellular determinants of adipose tissue phenotype, the role of adipose tissue in organ crosstalk, and the molecular basis of obesity-linked comorbidities
Mikael Ryden
Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm.
Mikael Rydén is professor in clinical and experimental adipose tissue research and heads the Center for Clinical Metabolic Research in Diabetes and the Endocrinology Unit at the Karolinska Institute. He is also senior consultant in Endocrinology/Diabetology at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on the role of human adipose tissue in several different conditions and spans from advanced cell- and molecular biology techniques in different cell culture models to clinical studies in man. He served as the Honorary Secretary of the EASD 2018-2022 and is also a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute.
Alexander Pfeifer
Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Bonn
Alexander Pfeifer is a medical doctor specializing in pharmacology and toxicology. His research focuses on signaling pathways that regulate energy homeostasis and brown fat. Moreover, he also studies ways to deliver therapeutically relevant substances (small molecules and genetic materials) to metabolic organs (especially adipose tissue) using nanoparticles and/or viral vectors as well as microRNAs. Previous studies by the group of Alexander Pfeifer revealed that brown adipocytes express a broad spectrum of GPCRs and identified adenosine receptors as an important example of GPCRs that can activate thermogenesis independently of β receptors.
Shingo Kajimura
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Dr. Kajimura is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of bioenergetics, with an emphasis on the role of brown fat in energy homeostasis.
Kirsty Spalding
Integrated Cardio Metabolic Centre, Karolinska Institute, Sweden
Dr. Kirsty Spalding is a Principal Investigator in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Dr. Spalding’s research is focused on adipocyte cell biology, focusing on how fat cell function is altered in obesity and metabolic disease. Novel technologies developed in the lab, such as radiocarbon dating and adipocyte flow cytometry, have provided insights into the turnover and maintenance of the fat mass in humans as well as adipocyte heterogeneity. In recent work the Spalding lab has identified that a subset of adipocytes in white adipose tissue activate a cell cycle program and senesce in association with obesity and hyperinsulinemia.
Martin Jastroch
Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University
Our research focuses on the physiology and mechanisms of thermogenic adipose tissue and UCP1, applying bioenergetic analyses from the organism to the molecule. Our research highlights include discoveries on the evolution of adipose thermogenesis using comparative approaches.
David Guertin
Molecular Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School
Our research focuses on nutrient sensing and metabolic signaling in health and disease. We are especially fascinated in the unique biology and metabolism of adipocyte thermogenesis, and in particular how brown adipose tissue senses nutrients and uses them to support its energetic demands. By combining metabolomics, stable isotope tracing, and genomics strategies in mice, we have been exploring metabolic mechanisms by which thermogenic adipocytes respond to temperature and dietary stress and how these adaptative responses can influence other tissues through organ crosstalk.
Ruth Loos
NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen
Ruth Loos is a Vice Executive Director and Group Leader of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR) at the University of Copenhagen. She has almost two decades of experience researching the genetic causes of obesity. As a founding member of the GIANT consortium, she has spearheaded many large-scale gene-discovery efforts. She is particularly interested in studying more refined adiposity phenotypes, to reveal new biology that has not been uncovered by traditional obesity outcomes. She will present on her latest gene-discovery effort for brown adipose tissue activity, assessed using PET/CT scan data from medical records. As more and more GWAS loci are being discovered, she examines whether genotype information can be used to identify subtypes of obesity, predict who is at risk of becoming obese, or prescribe tailored prevention and treatment strategies in the context of precision diagnosis, prevention, and treatment