TVPlab · Cambridge
Principal Investigator
Investigates how obesity leads to insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiometabolic disease, with a focus on adipose tissue expandability, lipotoxicity and brown fat thermogenesis.
Antonio (Toni) Vidal-Puig is Professor of Molecular Nutrition and Metabolism at the University of Cambridge, a position he has held since October 2009. He is Associate Director of the MRC Metabolic Disease Unit, an MRC Investigator, Lead of Cardiometabolic Medicine at the Cambridge Heart and Lung Research Institute, Honorary Consultant in Metabolic Medicine at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and Scientific Director of the Cambridge Phenomics Centre.
He obtained his medical degree at the University of Valencia in 1986 and his PhD at the University of Granada in 1992. After clinical training in Granada and research appointments at Harvard Medical School, he joined Cambridge as a Senior Research Associate in 1999. He became Lecturer in 2003 and Reader in 2006 before his appointment as Professor.
His research elucidates the molecular mechanisms linking obesity with insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiometabolic complications, and develops related therapeutic strategies. The laboratory combines hypothesis-driven research with unbiased systems approaches, using animal models, stem cell biology, human biological samples (including induced pluripotent stem cells), advanced omics technologies and bioinformatics integration.
His contributions include the adipose tissue expandability hypothesis and the concept of lipotoxicity; energy-dissipating strategies involving mitochondrial biogenesis, mitochondrial uncoupling and brown fat differentiation and activation; hypothalamic lipid metabolism and the roles of thyroid hormone and BMP8b in energy homeostasis and brown fat activation; and systems biology and stem cell approaches to lipid networks in cardiometabolic disease.
His international appointments include Principal Investigator at the Principe Felipe Research Center (CIPF), Valencia; Associate Research Scientist at the Cambridge University Nanjing Centre of Technology and Innovation; Honorary Professor at the University of Nanjing and Soochow University; and Visiting Professor at Chiba University.
He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) and was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2014. He completed an Executive MBA at Cambridge Judge Business School in 2015.
Selected honours include the Hippocrates International Award for Nutrition Research (2015), the British Endocrine Society Medal (2017), and the Sir Philip Randle Lecture of the Biochemical Society (2019).
In 2024, he received an honorary doctorate from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, and the Toh Chin Chye Visiting Professorship at the National University of Singapore. In 2025, he was elected to the Academia Europaea.