Obesity and its associated metabolic diseases are rising at an alarming rate worldwide, to great economic cost. Although obesity per se seems to be regulated mostly in the brain, it is becoming increasingly clear that metabolic disorders stem from dysfunction of the adipose tissue. My research aims to study how the adipose tissue is causing metabolic disease. Particularly I am interested in how obesity impacts the adipocytes and the vasculature within the fat tissue, and causes these cells to change their physiological function and become dysfunctional. Ultimately my goal is to develop tools to prevent and reverse this dysfunction and thereby counteract obesity-associated diseases.

This project studies if the growing adipose tissue is hypoxic (lacks sufficient oxygen) as has previously been suggested, or if metabolic abnormalities are causing so-called pseudohypoxia? The hypothesis is that drugs that target mitochondrial metabolism might be able to ameliorate adipocyte function. The studies will be performed on isolated mouse and human adipose tissue biopsies using cell culture. The student will learn a number of techniques such as immunostaining and imaging and get good insight into preclinical research using human material.