A Harvard Medical School professor whose research has focused on the underpinnings of adipogenesis, the formation of fat cells, and the molecular pathways of fat cell differentiation has won the fourth annual Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Metabolic Research.
Bruce Spiegelman, a professor of cell biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as well as at Harvard, discovered the major transcription cascade and master gene regulator of fat cell formation, called PPARγ transcription factor, which has provided a novel target in diabetes therapeutics and has led to decoding the mechanisms of obesity-induced insulin resistance. Spiegelman also discovered the coactivator protein PGC-1, a key regulator of energy expenditure in muscle and other tissues, of the pathways that control glucose production in the liver, and of the conversion of muscle fiber types from fast twitch to slow twitch.
Pere Puigserver, assistant professor of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins School of ...
