Anne Loft
Uncovering a driving role of adipose tissue in metabolic-associated liver fibrosis
Anne Loft, Postdoc and Junior group leader, Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS), University of Southern Denmark (SDU), has received a fellowship totaling DKK 10 million from the Lundbeck Foundation.
The research grant is paid out over five years and makes it possible for Anne Loft to establish her own research group at SDU.
While some individuals suffering from obesity develop serious metabolic-associated complications, other obese individuals are protected from the development of such complications. Anne Loft believes that the key to solving this riddle lies in the fatty tissue of the characters. Using advanced sequencing technologies, her research group therefore wants to uncover whether there are molecular 'signatures' in the fatty tissue of obese individuals that play a role in the propensity to develop obesity-related complications, in this case liver inflammation and fibrosis.
With this project, Anne Loft hopes to reveal important new signaling pathways and molecules responsible for communication between adipose tissue and liver, which can be used as new targets in the treatment of liver inflammation and fibrosis
