Metabolism Day 2026

Talk title: 'TBA'

Biosketch: TBA

Talk title: 'TBA'

Biosketch: TBA

Talk title: 'Cross-species genetic mapping of targets in aging and metabolism'

Johan Auwerx is Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. He is using systems biology and genetics approaches to understand the role of mitochondria in health, disease, and aging. His work is relevant for the areas of genetics, systems biology, metabolism, muscle biology, and aging.

His research spurred the development of new drugs, such as PPAR agonists, urolithin A, PARP inhibitors and other NAD boosters for the treatment of metabolic, cardio-vascular, renal, and neuromuscular
diseases.

Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and has received many international scientific prizes, including the prestigious Marcel Benoist prize. He is the founder of several biotech companies.

Talk title: 'The gut in literature: what can fiction offer metabolism researchers?'

Manon Mathias is Reader in French at the University of Glasgow where she is Co-Director of the Medical Humanities Research Centre. Her research focuses on the medical humanities in relation to literature and health; cultural history; and the nineteenth-century novel. She has recently worked on gut health and preventative medicine in the nineteenth century.

Her current project investigates caesarean birth in French and English fiction from the 1790s to the present. She is the author of two monographs, Gut, Brain, and Environment in Nineteenth Century French Literature and Medicine (Routledge, 2024) and Vision in the Novels of George Sand (OUP, 2016), and co-editor of Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture (Palgrave: 2018).

Talk title: 'TBA'

Biosketch: TBA

Talk title: 'Identification of two types of MASLD with different clinical trajectories'

Stefano Romeo is a clinician–scientist at Karolinska Institutet whose work bridges human genetics, metabolism, and liver disease. His research focuses on the genetic architecture of steatotic liver disease and its cardiometabolic consequences, integrating population genetics, molecular biology, and translational approaches.

He has contributed to the identification and characterization of key liver-fat– associated variants, including PNPLA3, MBOAT7, and other loci linked to disease progression, fibrosis, and metabolic dysfunction. His group combines large-scale genomic analyses with mechanistic studies to clarify how inherited factors shape liver fat accumulation, inflammation, and downstream complications. His work aims to translate genetic discoveries into improved risk stratification and targeted interventions for metabolic and liver-related conditions.

Talk title: 'How do the properties of human adipose tissue influence the adverse metabolic consequences of over-nutrition?'

Professor Sir Stephen O'Rahilly MD FRS FMedSci is Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine at the University of Cambridge, Director of the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit, an Honorary Consultant Physician at Addenbrookes Hospital and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He played a leading role in the establishment of the Institute of Metabolic Science (IMS) at the University of Cambridge and was its founding co-Director.

He was born and educated in Dublin, Ireland (MB1981, MD 1987) and undertook post graduate training in endocrinology in London, Oxford and Boston MA before starting his independent laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1991. He researches the aetiology and pathophysiology of human metabolic and endocrine disorders and how such information might be used to improve the diagnosis, therapy and prevention of these diseases.