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Grants from the European Research Council (ERC) are awarded to outstanding researchers and are worth millions of euros in funding. Assistant Professor Yongguo Li from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Bonn has now obtained a much-sought-after ERC Starting Grant. The researcher is investigating how the lipid metabolism can be influenced so as to “burn” as many calories as possible, thus opening up potential new ways to treat obesity and diabetes.
People who are severely overweight have a preponderance of white fat cells but a lack of brown ones. Whereas the white cells are responsible for annoying beer bellies, their brown cousins “burn” excess pounds by releasing as heat the energy trapped inside them. “As far as the human body is concerned, though, this means that it’s squandering energy,” says Assistant Professor Yongguo Li from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Bonn.
The brown fat cells therefore dial down their activity when they are not needed in order to maintain body temperature, for instance. “Not enough research has been done yet on how the brown fat manages to achieve this degree of regulation,” Li reports. The researcher is hoping that he will be able to supply the missing knowledge through additional research and exploit the energy-consuming potential of brown fat cells to the full.
This is the very question being tackled by the project entitled “Turning off the Furnace: the Intracellular Brake Systems for Brown Fat Thermogenesis” (BATOFF), which is being funded by an ERC Starting Grant with around €1.5 million over the next five years. “The findings from BATOFF will deepen our fundamental molecular understanding of what brown adipose tissue does and offer up some potential applications for preventing and treating obesity and diabetes,” says the researcher, who is also a member of the Life & Health and Sustainable Futures Transdisciplinary Research Areas.
Making his way to the University of Bonn
Yongguo Li studied biological sciences and biotechnology in Beijing, China. Following his doctorate and a postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Munich, he has headed up an Emmy Noether research unit since 2020 with funding from the German Research Foundation. He was appointed Assistant Professor at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Bonn in 2022. The German Nutrition Society presented him with the Max Rubner Award in 2019.
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Yongguo Li
Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology
University Hospital Bonn
Phone: +49 228 28751381
Email: yongguo.li@uni-bonn.de
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Yongguo Li from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospit ...
Photo: Rolf Müller/University Hospital Bonn
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Jun.-Prof. Dr. Yongguo Li from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospit ...
Photo: Rolf Müller/University Hospital Bonn
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