New Year grant success!

Congratulations to our Postdoc researcher Taha Elajnaf! who has been awarded an early career grant of £9760 from the Society for Endocrinology (SfE). 

These funds will enable Taha to deliver a new study -  ‘Characterisation of adiponectin-mediated mammary metabolism using whole cell and mitochondrial matrix metabolomic profiling’ - that aims to understand how adiponectin affects the mammary gland.

Adiponectin is a hormone produced by fat cells that circulates in blood to affect various organs including the mammary gland. It’s a hormone that is also shown to increase the number of mitochondria, the cell component responsible for generating cell energy.

Adiponectin levels are reduced in obesity, which may be responsible for the negative impact of obesity on breastfeeding. This new research will allow to us to better understand how adiponectin affects cells in the mammary gland which may in turn lead to the development of possible treatments for impaired breastfeeding.

Fluorescence microscopy image of human mammary epithelial cells labelled with nuclear (blue) and mitochondrial (green) markers.