UB lecturer Laura Herrero, awarded by the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

From left to right, lecturer Laura Herrero and Isabel Varela, president of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM).
From left to right, lecturer Laura Herrero and Isabel Varela, president of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM).
Research
(28/09/2022)

Laura Herrero, lecturer at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences and member of the Institute of Biomedicine of the UB (IBUB), has been awarded the Young Investigator Award of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM), the main scientific association in Spain in this field of knowledge. This year, the SEBBM awards were presented during the 44th SEBBM conference, held from September 4 to 9 in Malaga.

From left to right, lecturer Laura Herrero and Isabel Varela, president of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM).
From left to right, lecturer Laura Herrero and Isabel Varela, president of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM).
Research
28/09/2022

Laura Herrero, lecturer at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences and member of the Institute of Biomedicine of the UB (IBUB), has been awarded the Young Investigator Award of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM), the main scientific association in Spain in this field of knowledge. This year, the SEBBM awards were presented during the 44th SEBBM conference, held from September 4 to 9 in Malaga.

Lecturer Herrero, member of the UB Research Group on Regulation of Lipid Metabolism in Obesity and Diabetes (METALIP) and the Biomedwical Research Networking Center for Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBEROBN), received this award for her project “Transplantation adipose tissue to fight against obesity and diabetes”, which describes a new ex vivo gene therapy to fight obesity and diabetes.

As part of the study, the team led by Herrero implanted subcutaneously in mice adipocytes derived from stem cells that expressed a permanently active form of the protein carnitine-palmitoyltransferase I (CPT1), an enzyme located in the mitochondria that plays a limiting role in the process of fatty acid oxidation.

Using the overexpression of the enzyme, the new experimental approach made it possible to reduce the body weight and other associated metabolic pathologies —such as fatty liver disease or diabetes— in obese mice. This preclinical study could open the door to future therapeutic strategies to address the treatment of obesity, which currently represents a global health problem.