Cellular/Molecular Mechanisms underlying the Metabolic Syndrome & associated Cardiovascular Diseases

Abstract

Critical overview about canonical and most importantly recently discovered pathways controlling cellular metabolism and disscussion of their contribution to metabolic diseases such as Type II Diabetes, obesity and atherosclerosis as well as addressing up-to-date methods and tools to investigate new hypotheses and scientific questions in the field.

Objective

The aim of this course is to understand basic cellular and molecular mechanisms contributing to different interconnected traits (obesity, insulin resistance and dyslipidemia) of the metabolic syndrome and to formulate novel experimental designs addressing one specific actual question in the field.

Content

Excessive caloric intake leads to fat storage if the energy from these nutrients is not expended. However, this evolutionary adaptation to store energy in the form of fat has become a disadvantage in today's affluent society as it results in numerous metabolic imbalances. These are a concurrence of insulin resistance, obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension and associated diseases including type II diabetes and atherosclerosis, collectively known as the metabolic syndrome. The metabolic syndrome is emerging as one of the predominant health problems of the Western society, almost reaching epidemic characteristics. Its clinical consequences account by far for the most frequent causes of morbibity and mortality in humans in western countries. In this lecture, we will focus on classical but also very recently discovered molecular mechanisms controlling basic cellular metabolism (i.e. starvation, glucose and lipid metabolism etc.). Moreover, current research topics of my laboratory will be addressed. In particular, we will investigate how general stress-activated pathways contribute to cellular metabolism and how they provide an unique link between innate immunity and metabolism. A detailed description about mouse models and mouse genetics will be given. Moreover, it will be demonstrated how these tools can be applied to answer basic questions in the pathogenesis of the metabolic syndrome.

Resources