ADIBET · The role of adipose tissue in obesity: beta cell crosstalk

Obesity is an emerging threat to European health and more effective and sustainable therapies are urgently needed to tackle it. Adipose tissue is acknowledged to be a key player in lipid metabolism and plays multiple roles in regulating whole-body physiology, through the secretion of hormones called adipokines. However adipokine secretion and its mediated crosstalk with other tissues are not well defined. This knowledge gap must be addressed to identify and exploit new therapeutic targets for reducing or reversing obesity and its complications. This is ADIBET's aim; to develop new knowledge and identify druggable targets by unraveling the molecular basis of adipose tissue regulation and crosstalk in vivo. ADIBET will take on 2 complementary tasks: explore adipokine-mediated crosstalk with beta cells and describe the effects of obesity on differential adipocyte function and secretion pattern. New knowledge in this area is a pre-requisite to developing new treatments for diabetes and can most effectively be delivered by industry-academic partnership. ADIBET combines 2 prestigious Academic partners and 2 promising European SMEs who will be working hand in hand, to forge a lasting partnership which will focus European academic research into the European market. ADIBET is a multidisciplinary scientific and training programme. The young or experienced researchers will acquire a broad range of skills from communication to functional omics, and from mathematical and computational modeling to intellectual property rights. The ADIBET partnership brings together state of the art tools, resources and know-how with a clearly structured human resource exchange programme to ensure efficient intersectorial transfer of knowledge. Thus, ADIBET is an unprecedented opportunity to yield new knowledge of obesity pathophysiology, to identify new drug targets and to leave a lasting technical and knowledge platform on which to build European research in the coming decade.