Professor Sadaf Farooqi of the Institute of Metabolic Science will receive the prestigious award at the 79th Scientific Sessions of the ADA in San Francisco, California in June.
The ADA's Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award is given annually in recognition of research that demonstrates particular independence of thought and originality. Professor Farooqi is being recognised for important insights resulting from her research in humans with rare, extreme disturbances of energy balance, body weight and metabolism.
Professor Farooqi's research has demonstrated that mutations disrupting the hormone leptin and its downstream neural targets can cause severe childhood obesity. Clinical studies have demonstrated the critical role of this pathway in food intake, food reward and fat preference. Her group uses exome sequencing to identify rare genetic variants that are enriched in severe obesity and computational approaches to comprehensively map these networks of genes and the molecular mechanisms they perturb. It also undertakes physiological studies in patients and volunteers to examine the role of the relevant molecules in eating behaviour, energy expenditure and peripheral metabolism. Professor Farooqi is also interested in understanding how and why some people remain thin in an obesogenic environment.
