Seminar 7: October 7th

On October 7th, from 16:00-17:15, our keynote speaker will be Prof. Dr. Shingo Kajimura of the University of California, San Francisco in the USA. He will be joined by Dr. Borja Martínez Téllez of the Leiden University Medical Center.

Prof. Dr. Shingo Kajimura (University of California, San Francisco)

” Bioenergetics Matters to Metabolic Health – From a View of Brown Fat”

Dr. Kajimura received undergraduate degree in biology and biochemistry (2000), master’s degree (2003), and Ph.D.  (2006) from the University of Tokyo, and completed postdoctoral training in molecular metabolism with Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. He became an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Diabetes Center in 2011 and has risen to the rank of full Professor in 2019. In 2020, Dr. Kajimura joined the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

The main focus of the Kajimura Lab is to is multidisciplinary attempts to understand the molecular basis of metabolic adaptation in health and disease, and to generate a blueprint for rewiring the molecular circuitry of metabolic adaptation by defined factors, thereby restoring metabolic health. The Kajimura lab made seminal discoveries in the pioneering studies on brown/beige adipocyte development and function. He has received several distinguished awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House USA, Highly Cited Researcher by the Web of Science, and was named a Pew Scholar and a Mallinckrodt Scholar.

Dr. Borja Martínez Téllez (Leiden University Medical Center)

“A 24-week exercise intervention does not modify BAT volume and 18F-FDG uptake in young sedentary adults: The ACTIBATE-RCT.”

Exercise is an excellent therapeutic intervention for obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer and many other ailments. The mechanisms that may mediate these effects are not fully understood for some of these pathologies. Based on that, my main research is focused on unraveling the effect of exercise on brown adipose tissue activation, gut microbiota alteration, and lipid signaling that could explain the beneficial cardiometabolic effects of exercise in humans.