Seminar 9: December 7th

On December 7th, from 16:00-17:15, our keynote speaker will be Prof. Dr. Mark A Febbraio of the Monash University Australia . He will be joined by Dr. Esther Zaal of the Utrecht University.

Prof. Dr. Mark A Febbraio (Monash University)

“Activation of the gp130 receptor: a panacea for the treatment of metabolic diseases?”

Professor Mark Febbraio is a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the NHMRC, and the Head of the Cellular and Molecular Metabolism Laboratory within the Drug Discovery Program at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University Australia. He is also the CSO of N-Gene Research Laboratories Inc., a USA based Biotechnology Company and the Founder and CSO of the recently incorporated company Kinomedica. His research is focussed on understanding mechanisms associated with exercise, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cancer and his aim is to develop novel drugs to treat lifestyle related diseases. He has authored over 260 peer reviewed papers in leading journals, has over 35,000 career citations and an H factor of 105. He has won prizes at international, national and institutional levels including the A K McIntyre Prize for significant contributions to Australian Physiological Science (1999), the ESA/ADS Joint Plenary Lecture (2009), the Sandford Skinner Oration from the University of Melbourne (2011), Eureka Scientific Prize Finalist (2013) and the Kellion Award for the Australian Diabetes Society (2017).

Dr. Esther Zaal (Utrecht University)

“Rewiring of energy metabolism drives resistance to the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib.”

Dr. Esther Zaal is a post-doc in the Metabolomics group of prof. dr. Celia Berkers in the Division Cell Biology, Metabolism & Cancer within the faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University. Her research is focused on elucidating  the role of metabolism in cancer drug resistance.

She is currently also running the Utrecht Metabolism Expertise Centre, where her extensive experience in mass spectrometry based metabolomics and fluxomics is applied in various projects.