2 May 2016

Signe Torekov has received an Excellence grant of DKK 5 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation

Signe Torekov is one of 4 Nordic researchers, who was celebrated on 21 April as receiver of an ”Excellence Project for Young Researchers within Endocrinology” at an official ceremony at the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

The grant of DKK 5 million, which is awarded to the project "Synergy effects of GLP-1 and training of immuno-metabolic health" or more popularly: “Eat less, exercise more - also for the health of your future children”, will run for a period of 5 years.

"Today, nearly 1 billion people are obese worldwide. Obesity impairs all aspects of health and increase inflammation. Therefore there is an acute need for better treatment strategies. Together with the research group, I have previously shown that obese people have low levels of the appetite inhibiting hormone GLP-1, which has positive effects on both metabolism and the immune system, and that weight loss can increase the levels of GLP-1 in humans," says Signe and continues:

"Both physical exercise and treatment with the appetite hormone GLP-1 appears independently to result in a healthy sustained weight loss with less inflammation in the body. Therefore, our hypothesis is that the combination of treatment with GLP-1 and physical exercise can lead to a significantly healthier sustained weight loss without inflammation. We will examine this by measuring the changes of new immune system markers by combining diet-induced weight loss, GLP-1 and exercise. Our partners and we will use new methods to find proteins that can eventually be targets for new treatment strategies against obesity. We will also examine whether our treatment can improve the healthy bacteria in the gut. Finally, we will investigate whether this treatment can improve not only your own health but also substantially improve the health profile that you pass on to your future children in the sperm cells, " Signe concludes.