Metabolic Disorders and Inflammatory Pathologies Laboratory

Metabolic and immune systems are evolutionary conserved throughout the various species and are fundamental  for survival. Both the systems are well orchestrated and each of them depends on the other for maintaining the central homeostasis in the body. A disturbance in this interface due to energy imbalance leads to the development of a cluster of metabolic disorders which include obesity, diabetes, airway disease, neurodegenerative diseases, atherosclerosis and some cancers. These conditions, increasingly prevalent in global population, pose serious threats to the human health everywhere across the socioeconomic divides.

The increasing number of people are getting obese due to various factors, most importantly due to modern sedentary lifestyle and altered dietary behaviour and choices, and are affected by increased incidence of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases - mostly heart attacks due to atherosclerosis, several forms of cancers and lung dysfunctions.  These conditions together are responsible for severely increased rate of mortality and morbidity leading to increased health cost and burden of care on existing health infrastructure, economic losses due to affected working population and lost man work hours. 

The drugs currently available in the market are not able to decrease the incidence of disease or deaths from it. Thus, understanding the disease processes and identifying new drug targets become highly pertinent and significant. Especially, elucidating the mechanism(s) behind metabolic disorder induced inflammation and hyperactivated signalling pathways that contribute to these diseases inflicting humans is of prime importance. Aimed at this, the research activities at MDIPL are directed towards identifying potential biomarkers of these diseases for early diagnosis and key molecular targets for potential preventive and therapeutic interventions.