Helmholtz Diabetes Center Institute for Diabetes and Cancer

The Diabetic Complications division at the IDC explores transcriptional, epigenetic and signalling components controlling systemic and tissue-specific insulin sensitivity, and tests their potential to serve as novel therapeutic platforms in diabetes prevention approaches.

By using in-vivo models of metabolic dysfunction and cancer, as well as complementary in vitro approaches, our aim is to uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying these diseases and their complex interactions to better understand and ultimately treat them.

The major goal of our lab is to understand how endosomal trafficking and metabolism influence and regulate each other. We want to unravel the cellular mechanism how external cues induce changes in cellular metabolism by altering endosomal functions and to provide new cellular tools for treatment of metabolic diseases.

Our lab is interested in deciphering the complex and multifaceted mechanisms that contribute to altered disease susceptibilities across generations. Here, we focus on delineating how changes in metabolism and diet in one generation impact developmental programs, molecular profiles and subsequent health outcomes in the offspring and subsequent generations

In the Neuroendocrinology Division at IDC we investigate the interplay between tumors and both local and organismal metabolism by employing various relevant experimental models and imaging methods.

Our aim for the future is to strengthen the idea that obesity/diabetes and cachexia are two sides of the same coin. Studying these metabolic diseases in the context of each other will lead to conceptual advances in both fields.

We aim to comprehensively identify the range of underlying metabolic causes and consequences that distinguish healthy from unhealthy ageing - ultimately seeking to harness this information to develop novel personalized therapeutics to mitigate unhealthy ageing trajectories, and to recover and maintain health status.

We study novel ligand-receptor pairs, which control key adipocyte functions involved in adipocyte size, energy storage, energy expenditure, ageing dependent malfunction as well as the communication of the adipose tissue with other metabolic organs, such as liver and muscle.

We contribute to shaping the research profile and strategy of the IDC