A conference about energy control and metabolism

Talk title: 'What bariatric surgery tells us about the role of the gut in metabolism'

Randy Seeley is the Henry K. Ransom Endowed Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan School of Medicine.  He also serves as the director of the NIH-funded Michigan Nutrition Obesity Research Center (MNORC).  His scientific work has focused on the actions of various peripheral hormones in the CNS that serve to regulate food intake, body weight and the levels of circulating fuels.  His work has also focused on new treatment strategies for obesity and diabetes.  He has published over 360 peer-reviewed articles.  Collectively, this work has been cited more than 36,000 times and Dr. Seeley has a scopus h-index of 97. 

Talk title: 'Role of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) in diabetes and heart disease'

Prof. Mirela Delibegovic is the Dean for Industrial Engagement in Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Aberdeen and the Director (Diabetes) of the Aberdeen Cardiovascular and Diabetes Centre.

She obtained her BSc Honours Pharmacology degree from the University of Edinburgh, PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Dundee, and her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.  Prof. Delibegovic sits on the Diabetes UK, DRWF and the British Heart Foundation project grants committees and her research focuses on the role of tyrosine phosphatases in regulation of insulin sensitivity, endothelial dysfunction and atherosclerosis.

Prof. Delibegovic will be presenting recent work from her laboratory on the effects of PTP1B inhibitors in diabetes and atherosclerosis. Work in cell culture models, pre-clinical models of disease and patients with coronary heart disease will be discussed.

Talk title: 'Genetic effects on liver gene regulation and metabolic traits'

Karen Mohlke is a human geneticist from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where she is currently Professor, Oliver Smithies Investigator, and Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Genetics. Karen's research focuses on genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes, obesity, dyslipidemia, and genetic variation in related quantitative traits. She uses genome-wide association studies and fine-mapping to identify susceptibility signals for metabolic diseases and related traits. To identify the genes and variants responsible for these associations, she analyzes transcriptome and epigenome data from hundreds of individuals and identifies disease-related molecular quantitative trait loci. She uses molecular and cellular assays to determine the functional role of genes and consequences of genetic variants on disease processes.

Talk title: 'Pleiotropic effect of time-restricted feeding on multiple organs'

Satchin Panda is a Professor at The Salk Institute, California. His lab studies how circadian rhythm in metabolism is an integral part of metabolic health and longevity. In preclinical animal models he discovered that consuming all calories within a consistent 8-12 hours or Time-restricted feeding can sustain daily rhythms in anabolic and catabolic metabolism. Such temporal regulation of metabolism can prevent or reverse chronic diseases and increase lifespan. To translate his preclinical findings to improve human health, his lab has developed an app – myCircadianClock. This app is being used to study the epidemiology of daily pattern of activity, sleep and food intake and to run parallel interventional studies to test the impact of time restricted feeding on various chronic diseases.

Talk title: Fact and fancy: curating between science and art

Ken Arnold is Professor in the Public Health Department at University of Copenhagen and Director of Medical Museion (part of CBMR), which combines adventurous research in medical humanities with innovative public exhibitions and events. Until March 2022, he was Head of Cultural Partnerships at Wellcome - the London-based charitable foundation focused on health research. Earlier, he helped establish Wellcome Collection and directed its first decade of programming. He regularly writes and speaks on museums - today and in the past - and on the interactions between arts, humanities and sciences.

Talk title: 'Preindustrial metabolisms? Fat bodies in early modern Europe'

Christopher E. Forth is the Dean’s Professor of Humanities and Professor of History at the University of Kansas. His interdisciplinary and thematic research revolves around the cultural history of gender, sexuality, the body, and the senses (with an emphasis on modern France, Britain and America) as well as European intellectual and cultural history. He is especially concerned with how perceptions and experiences of the body are situated in different social and cultural locations, and has become increasingly interested in exploring embodiment, materiality, and the senses in historical context. The author or editor of twelve books, including Zarathustra in Paris: The Nietzsche Vogue in France, 1891-1918 (2001), The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (2004) and Masculinity in the Modern West (2008), he is the co-editor of Fat: Culture and Materiality (2014). His most recent book is Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life (London: Reaktion, 2019).

Talk title: 'Preservation of beta-cell function in diabetic animal models'

Helena Edlund is a Full Professor in Molecular Developmental Biology at Umeå University since 2000. Prof. Helena Edlund has used genetic approaches and classical embryology to study aspects of pancreatic development, beta-cell function, and diabetes. These studies have identified intrinsic and extrinsic factors that control early stages of pancreatic development, pancreatic progenitor cell proliferation, pancreatic endocrine cell differentiation, and beta-cell function as well as a molecular link between obesity and diabetes. Prof. Helena Edlund’s discoveries has also provided the foundation that ultimately led to the identification of a novel AMPK activator, O304. Prof. Helena Edlund has shown that O304 mitigates diabetes in animal models and reduces fasting plasma glucose levels and HOMA-IR in a proof-of-concept phase IIa clinical trial in type 2 diabetes patients. Prof. Helena Edlund is a founder of the unlisted biotech company Betagenon AB and a member of EMBO and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Talk title: 'Novel therapeutics for metabolic disease'

Morris J. Birnbaum is currently a Senior Vice President at Pfizer, where, until recently, he served as Chief Scientific Officer for the Internal Medicine Research Unit, leading research and early clinical development of drugs designed to treat metabolic diseases. Prior to joining Pfizer in 2014, Dr. Birnbaum enjoyed an almost 30-year career as a Physician Scientist, leading an academic laboratory focused on basic research in fundamental mechanisms in metabolic regulation. He has held faculty roles at the Harvard Medical School, Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  He is currently on the Editorial Boards of Cell Metabolism and Science Signaling. Dr. Birnbaum was elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.