okt
2019
Lecture Hall Arvid Carlsson, Academicum, Medicinaregatan 3
No registration needed.
Speaker: Professor Bente Klarlund Pedersen, MD MDSc, Director of Centre of Inflammation and Metabolism (CIM) and 2) Centre for Physical Activity Research (CFAS), Rigshospitalet and University of Copenhagen.
Local host: John-Olov Jansson
Sahlgrenska Academy Seminars is a seminar series initiated by The Council for Research (FOR). The seminar series aim to promote scientific exchange between scientists at Sahlgrenska Academy and prominent international scientists and universities, and to increase the opportunities for informal scientific discussions and interactions between faculty members and students at our faculty.
Bente Klarlund Pedersen’s group has contributed to identify skeletal muscle as an endocrine organ that produces and releases signal peptides, so-called “myokines”. Given that skeletal muscle is the largest organ in the human body, their discovery of contracting muscle as a cytokine producing organ opens for a whole new paradigm: Skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ, which by contraction stimulates the production and release of cytokines, which can influence metabolism and modify cytokine production in tissues and organs. The identification of myokines provides a conceptual basis for understanding how muscles communicate with other organs such as fat, liver, pancreas and brain. A main research focus today is to develop exercise as medicine for patients with chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, chronic obstructive lung disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Training regimes that demonstrate promising results in a laboratory setting are further tested and developed in large patient groups in a model municipality before the optimal training mode is translated into relevant national health institutions. Through translational research and dissemination of knowledge, we aim at developing targeted exercise training regimes for specific disease groups by applying a translational strategy: “from bedside to bench and back”.
About the speaker
Bente Klarlund Pedersen, MD MDSc, is Professor of Integrative Medicine and a specialist in infectious diseases and internal medicine. She is the Director of 1) Centre of Inflammation and Metabolism (CIM) and 2) Centre for Physical Activity Research (CFAS) funded by TrygFonden. CIM and CFAS count 18 senior researchers/postdocs, 15 PhD students, 19 other academic and technical personnel, 4 pre-graduate students and an administration of 5 persons (http://aktivsundhed.dk). She has supervised 47 PhD projects and been a mentor of 6 doctoral theses.
The research group has identified skeletal muscle as an endocrine organ that produces and releases so-called “myokines”. The identification of myokines provides a conceptual basis for understanding how muscles communicate with other organs. Through translational research, the aim is to develop targeted exercise training regimes for specific disease groups by applying a translational strategy: “from bedside to bench and back”.
BKP has had many positions of trust and is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. BKP has more than 650 scientific publications, > 41.000 citation and her “H”-index is 108 (Web of Science).