Prof. Cora Weigert

As a pharmacist, Cora first began her career looking after the needs and wants of patients in a public pharmacy, before her fascination with human biochemistry brought her back to the research laboratory, first at the Biochemical Institute in Erlangen (PhD), then at the University Hospital in Tübingen (Habilitation). She now leads the Division "Molecular Diabetology" at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Pathobiochemistry at the UK Tübingen and at the IDM in Tübingen, and was a visiting scientist at the IEG in Munich for many years.  

Cora first contributed to the understanding of the fine regulation of insulin signal transduction by identifying and characterizing serine/threonine phosphorylation sites of the multi-adaptor protein IRS. 

The discovery that human muscle cells produce large amounts of the cytokine interleukin-6 during exercise then sparked her research interest in understanding the communication of active muscle with other organs and investigating molecular adaptations to athletic activity. 

Long-term and still active collaborations with the Centre for Physical Activity Research in Copenhagen and the DICP in Dalian, an institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and research stays in Copenhagen and Dalian followed. Based on this work is the concept of myometabokines, i.e. metabolites induced by exercise that may contribute to diabetes prevention, for example, through long-term effects.

exercise metabolism insulin signaling mitochondrial respiration myometabokine metabolomics 

diabetes prevention