Dr. Salvatore Modica

Dr.  Salvatore Modica

Dr. Salvatore Modica

Lecturer at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology

ETH Zürich

Inst.f. Lebensm.wiss.,Ern.,Ges.

SLA B 31.1

Schorenstrasse 16

8603 Schwerzenbach

Switzerland

Additional information

Research area

The maintenance of our body weight over decades is determined by a system able to precisely match food intake with energy expenditure. To this end, two tissues have been selected by nature: white adipose tissue (WAT), which stores excess energy in form of fat, and brown adipose tissue (BAT), which burns fat to generate heat as a defense against hypothermia and energy overload. Unlike for other mammalians, the presence of BAT in adult humans was doubted until very recently, when using PET-CT it was clearly demonstrated that also adult humans have important depots of functional BAT. Moreover, besides to dedicated area in our body, brown fat cells are also found interspersed within WAT depots as a result of white-to-brown trans-differentiation. Thus, to increase energy expenditure as heat by promoting recruitment and activation of BAT may be beneficial to counteract the epidemic of obesity, which is driving a public health crisis because of its clinical complications such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. All current available pharmacological interventions against obesity act at the energy-intake side of the energy balance equation and result in only moderate, often temporary improvements. My research, then, is addressed to undercover the molecular mechanisms regulating both brown fat cell development and function as well as white-to-brown trans-differentiation.

2011/01 - present | Postdoctoral Research - Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health (IFNH) ETH Zürich, Switzerland 2010/06 - 2011/01 | Postdoctoral Research - Consorzio Mario Negri Sud, Center for Pharmacological and Biomedical Research, Department of Translational Pharmacology, Laboratory of Lipid Metabolism and Cancer, Santa Maria Imbaro (Chieti), Italy 2005/09 - 2010/06 | Ph.D student at the Consorzio Mario Negri Sud, Center for Pharmacological and Biomedical Research, Department of Translational Pharmacology, Laboratory of Lipid Metabolism and Cancer, Santa Maria Imbaro (Chieti), Italy (joint program with the Open University of London, U.K.). Ph.D. degree in Life Sciences awarded from the Open University of London, U.K. Intestinal nuclear bile acid receptor FXR activity and regulation in colorectal cancer 2002/03 - 2005/07 | Research fellow at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Texas, USA. Role of androgen receptor in prostate cancer 2001/10 | M.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology awarded from the University of Milan, Italy. The cytostatic thiazolidindione derivate CGP52608 potentiates the cytotoxic activity of adriamycin on human prostate cancer

Honours

Year Distinction
2009 EASL-AASLD Young Investigator s Bursary at the joint European Association for the Study of the Liver-American Association for the Study of the Liver Diseases (EASL-AASLD) Monothematic Conference on Nuclear Receptors and Liver Diseases, Vienna, Austria

Course Catalogue

Spring Semester 2024

Number Unit
377-0407-00L Precision Medicine: Theory and Hands-on Exercises

Publications

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