On November 4th, from 16:00-17:15, our keynote speaker will be Prof. Dr. Antonio Zorzano of the IRB Barcelona in Spain. He will be joined by Dr. Anne Gemmink of the Maastricht Univeristy Medical Center.
Prof. Dr. Antonio Zorzano (IRB Barcelona)
“Role of mitochondrial dynamics in metabolic disorders.”
Antonio Zorzano is Full Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona, Director of Complex metabolic diseases and mitochondria laboratory at the IRB Barcelona, and Programme Head at CIBERDEM. Professor Zorzano received his PhD in Biology at the University of Barcelona, and did postdoctoral studies with Emilio Herrera (Hospital Ramon y Cajal, Madrid), Neil Ruderman (Boston University Medical Center), and Paul Pilch (Boston University Medical School). He was Visiting Professor at Boston University Medical School. He has supervised 39 Ph.D. theses, and has coordinated international consortia funded by different European agencies. He is co-inventor of 22 patents, and has published over 330 scientific articles (more than 34,000 citations), with key discoveries published in leading journals, and an h-index of 88 (Google Scholar). He has been founder of biotechnological companies in Spain and in the UK.
Professor Zorzano’s research focuses on the regulation of metabolism and its interplay with insulin resistance, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and their complications. His current interest links metabolism with mitochondrial dynamics, mitochondrial function, autophagy, and mitochondrial stress. A global goal of his group is to identify and validate molecular targets that permit the prevention or treatment of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes or obesity by using cell-based systems, genetically modified mice, and translational approaches.
Dr. Anne Gemmink (Maastricht UMC)
“Differential decoration of myocellular lipid droplets with PLIN2 and PLIN5 as a determinant of lipid droplet dynamics; a super-resolution microscopy based study in athletes and patients with type 2 diabetes.”
Anne Gemmink received her PhD in 2017 at the department of Nutrition and Movement Sciences in the research group of Prof. Matthijs Hesselink and Prof. Patrick Schrauwen. After a one-year stay in the lab of Prof. Rudolf Zechner at the Institute of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Graz, Austria she rejoined the group as a post-doctoral researcher. Her research focuses on lipid droplet metabolism in skeletal muscle in relation to the (patho)physiology of insulin sensitivity by applying high-end microscopy techniques.