Anil Nilkanth Gaikwad, Ph. D.
Principal Scientist, Pharmacology
Mechanisms of adipocyte insulin resistance
Basic Biology Work:
My group works mainly on two important aspects of metabolic disorders (1) Insulin resistance (2) Dyslipidemia and obesity.
We have focused on adipocyte insulin resistance. Adipocyte constitutes is one sixth of body weight, it is an important
endocrine organ and contributes both insulin resistance development, dyslipidemia and obesity pathologies. our group
established five in vitro and eight in vivo model systems for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes earlier reported in
literature. The key differentiator is that my group has established close to human situation mimicking “Physiological
Insulin resistance model using hMSC derived adipocytes”. This was first to report insulin resistance model system using
hMSC derived adipocyte with chronic exposure of 500 picomolar insulin for 72 hours while in earlier model system used mouse
adipocyte cells/cell lines with highly supra-physiological 10-20 nM insulin. We mimicked similar system in vivo using Alzet
osmotic pump® containing slow release long acting insulin and generated insulin resistance model system. Exploiting these
physiological model systems, we conducted several studies including differential gene expression and protein expression
studies which provided novel insights and pathways involved in insulin resistance biology.
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