Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of at least three of the following five medical conditions: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, and low serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL).
Insulin resistance (IR) is a pathological condition in which cells either fail to respond normally to the hormone insulin or downregulate insulin receptors in response to hyperinsulinemia.
Liver disease, or hepatic disease, is any of many diseases of the liver. If long-lasting it is termed chronic liver disease. Although the diseases differ in detail, liver diseases often have features in common.
Steatotic liver disease (SLD) a.k.a. fatty liver disease (FLD) or hepatic steatosis, is a condition where excess fat builds up in the liver. Often there are no or few symptoms. Occasionally there may be tiredness or pain in the upper right side of the abdomen. Complications may include cirrhosis, liver cancer, and esophageal varices.
Laboratory rats or lab rats are strains of the subspecies Rattus norvegicus domestica which are bred and kept for scientific research. While less commonly used for research than laboratory mice, rats have served as an important animal model for research in psychology and biomedical science.
Alström syndrome (AS), also called Alström–Hallgren syndrome, is a very rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder characterised by childhood obesity and multiple organ dysfunction. Symptoms include early-onset type 2 diabetes, cone-rod dystrophy resulting in blindness, sensorineural hearing loss and dilated cardiomyopathy. Endocrine disorders typically also occur, such as hypergonadotrophic hypogonadism and hypothyroidism, as well as acanthosis nigricans resulting from hyperinsulinemia. Developmental delay is seen in almost half of people with Alström syndrome.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is excessive fat build-up in the liver without another clear cause such as alcohol use. There are two types; non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), with the latter indicating the presence of further liver inflammation. NAFL is less dangerous than NASH and usually does not progress towards it, but this progression may eventually lead to complications such as cirrhosis, liver cancer, liver failure, or cardiovascular disease.
Rudolph Leibel is the Christopher J. Murphy Professor of Diabetes Research, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, and Director of the Division of Molecular Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics. He is also co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center and executive director of the Russell and Angelica Berrie Program in Cellular Therapy, Co-director of the New York Obesity Research Center and the Columbia University Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center.
Wolfgang Patsch is an Austrian physician, specialized in internal medicine/laboratory medicine and a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Paracelsus Private Medical University of Salzburg. He is known for his work in the fields of atherosclerosis, common metabolic disorders such as obesity, insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes and neurodegenerative disorders.
Gökhan S. Hotamisligil is a Turkish-American physician scientist; James Stevens Simmons Chair of Genetics and Metabolism at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH); Director of the Sabri Ülker Center for Metabolic Research and associate member of Harvard-MIT Broad Institute, Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the Joslin Diabetes Center.
Martin Hrabĕ de Angelis is a German geneticist and director of the Institute of Experimental Genetics at Helmholtz Zentrum München and director of the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA) in Monterotondo, Italy. Since 2003 he has held the Chair of Experimental Genetics at Technische Universität München. He is co-founder, speaker and board member of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). His research focuses on metabolism and diabetes, large-scale functional genomics/genetics and epigenetics.
Penny Gordon-Larsen is an internationally recognized obesity researcher. In July 2022, she was named Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She served as Interim Vice Chancellor for Research from March 2022 - July 2023. She is the Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, where she served as associate dean for research from 2018 to 2022. She is also a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. Dr. Gordon-Larsen’s NIH-funded research portfolio focuses on individual-, household-, and community-level susceptibility to obesity and its cardiometabolic consequences, and her work ranges from molecular and genetic to environmental and societal-level factors. She was the 2015 president of The Obesity Society and a member of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Clinical Obesity Research Panel (CORP).
D. Lansing Taylor is the Director at the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute (UPDDI), Pennsylvania and a faculty member in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology.
Michael Roden is Professor and Chairman of Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolic Disorders at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Director of the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetology at the University Hospital of Düsseldorf and Spokesman for the Executive Board and Scientific Director of the German Diabetes Center, the Leibniz Center for Diabetes Research at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
Antonio Vidal-Puig is a Spanish medical doctor and scientist who works as a Professor of Molecular Nutrition and Metabolism at the University of Cambridge (UK), best known for advancing the concept that pharmacological targeting of brown fat may serve to treat overweight and obesity in affected individuals, as well as for introducing the concept of adipose tissue "expandability" as an important factor in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance in the context of positive energy balance. His published work focuses on areas such as adipose tissue metabolism and lipotoxicity, regulation of insulin secretion, and the pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.
Cristen Jennifer Willer is an American-Canadian bioinformatician and geneticist. She is an associate professor of Internal Medicine, Human Genetics, and Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan.
Cuilin Zhang is a Chinese-American epidemiologist and physician-scientist researching the roles of genetic and environmental factors in the pathogenesis of gestational diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and obesity and health consequences of these complications. Zhang is a senior investigator and acting chief of the epidemiology branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Cecilia Margareta Lindgren is a Swedish geneticist. She is a Professor of Genomic Endocrinology & Metabolism in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, where she is also Group Head at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics and a research fellow at St. Anne's College. She became Director of the Big Data Institute at Oxford on 1 April 2021; she had previously been a Senior Group Leader at the Institute. Lindgren is best known for her research on the genetics of obesity and other complex traits.
Hawaa Al Thahak Al Mansoori is an Emirati physician, inventor and politician. She was appointed to the Federal National Council of the United Arab Emirates in 2019. As a physician Dr. Al Mansoori is an endocrinologist and healthcare executive, serving as executive director of the Intramural Research Division at the Abu Dhabi Stem Cell Center and Deputy Medical Director of Imperial College London Diabetes Centre in Abu Dhabi.
Sun King Rising is a professional moniker/alter ego of an American geneticist and biomedical research scientist, John Blangero for his music albums. The project was founded in 2018 and has released two albums, Delta Tides and Signs & Wonder, under the record label of PeacockSunrise Records.
