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Former TVPlab member
Former PhD researcher; extracellular matrix remodelling and brown adipose tissue activation.
This is an archived member profile. The biography, roles, affiliations and contact details reflect the original lab website and may not be current.
Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is particularly relevant due to its capacity to perform non-shivering thermogenesis through the oxidation of nutrients. For this reason, promoting BAT thermogenesis is one of the potential therapeutic approaches to treat human obesity-related metabolic disturbances. However, obese and diabetic patients have a limited amount of brown adipose tissue.
BAT activation is sustained by the recruitment of progenitor cells, their activation and a permissive/enabling extracellular matrix (ECM). Hyperplastic changes in BAT require adequate ECM remodelling. Recent publications and preliminary data suggest that ECM remodelling is a relevant process for BAT activation. Also, defects in ECM remodelling, as occurs in obesity and ageing, may contribute to BAT atrophy.
For this reason, as a PhD student, my project is focused on finding new candidates from extracellular matrix remodelling involved in the regulation of brown adipose tissue functions and activation.
I studied food chemistry as an undergraduate course at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Mexico city, Mexico), where I later obtained a M. Sc. degree with honors in Biological sciences (Biomedicine). I developed both of my experimental thesis projects, masters and undergraduate studies, at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubiran in Mexico city. Additionally, I was awarded with an NDM scholarship at the University of Oxford to perform a research internship at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. And I was also granted with a Carl Duisberg Bayer Fellowship to perform a research internship at the University Hospital of Marburg and Giessen (UKGM) in Marburg, Germany.
At the University of Cambridge, I am part of the graduate program in Metabolic and Cardiovascular disease for which I have already obtained the degree of Masters in Research and I am currently a PhD student.