Mikael Rydén - professor of Clinical and Experimental Fat Tissue Research

Mikael Rydén, who has worked at Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital since 1998, was appointed Professor of Clinical and Experimental Fat Tissue Research at Unit of Endocrinology and the Lipid laboratory in 2013

Congratulations to the professorship! What does this mean for you?

-It gives me an excellent platform to continue my studies on human fat cell function.

How long have you been at Karolinska Huddinge?

-I started during my research-residency 1998, my initial plan was to become an orthopaedic surgeon and study osteogenic growth factors but fate wanted otherwise.

What is your research about?

-It deals broadly about the role of human fat cells in a number of different conditions characterized by either too much or too little adipose tissue, e.g. we study obesity, type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease but also cancer where adipose tissue loss, via unclear mechanisms, is quite common and constitutes a poor prognostic factor. We perform both clinical and experimental studies in our two laboratories at C2-84 and NOVUM.

How will you use your professorship - What are your plans?

-We have a number of projects, including large EU-financed collaborative networks that will require a substantial part of my time in the next few years. I also want to continue develop our inter-disciplinary collaborations that we have established at KI in the last years.

What are your other responsibilities in the scientific community?

-Apart from the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment for which I have had extensive commitments, I am also a representative in the Diabetes Program and the MetEndo network for research education here at KI.

When did you realize you wanted to be a scientist?

-Early, I think I knew that I would dwell deeper into an academic subject already at high school. However, at that time I would never have thought that I would become a physician, in those days I was much more into mathematics and physics.