10.12.2025
Susanne Mandrup, Morgane A. Philippe, and Marleen B. Dommerholt have received a grant from the EFSD and Lilly European Diabetes Research Programme for their project “Profiling enhancer activity to uncover transcriptional regulation in isolated human adipocytes”. This funding will support Morgane’s postdoctoral project, where she aims to profile enhancer activity and characterize the transcriptional regulation of adipocyte function in mature human adipocytes.
While obesity is a major risk factor for cardiometabolic diseases, emerging evidence highlights that the risk is not solely determined by the degree of adiposity, but also by fat distribution and transcriptional regulation of adipocyte function. The project will explore depot‑specific and sex‑dependent adipocyte transcriptional networks across different cardiometabolic profiles and body shapes, with a particular focus on enhancer activity at loci previously linked to obesity-related traits and protective for cardiometabolic health. It will likely provide valuable new insights into how adipocyte function contributes to cardiometabolic health and disease, knowledge that could ultimately help inform more personalized prevention and therapeutic strategies for obesity-associated comorbidities.
This project is made possible thanks to the strong interdisciplinary network of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Adipocyte Signaling (ADIPOSIGN), established to map adipocyte signaling networks, and from a valuable collaboration with Bispebjerg Hospital in Copenhagen.
