'Molecular and Physiological Characterization of Human Obesity Syndromes'

Dr. Sadaf Farooqi
Wellcome Trust Clinical Scientist
Department of Clinical Biochemistry, University of Cambridge
Fellow of Trinity College

Cambridge in America Day 2007
San Francisco, Grand Hyatt Union Square
March 31, 2007

Considerable attention has been paid to the secular changes in food intake and physical activity that underlie the recent rise in the prevalence of obesity. However, there is compelling evidence that inter-individual differences in susceptibility to obesity have strong genetic determinants.  The molecular and physiological characterization of human obesity syndromes has provided a better mechanistic understanding of the regulation of appetite and body weight in humans, which will have implications for the treatment of obesity and associated metabolic disorders.

Sadaf Farooqi qualified with Honors in Medicine from the University of Birmingham in 1993, and was awarded the Queen's Scholarship (gold medal) for best overall academic performance.  Following hospital posts in Birmingham and Oxford, she came to Cambridge as part of a Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship, leading to the award of a PhD in 2001.  During this time she identified the first single gene defect to cause human obesity in two children with a mutation in the gene encoding the hormone leptin.