Basic research requires a great deal of perseverance before it bears fruit, if it ever does. This is a simple fact. So it is all the more gratifying when the fruits of researchers’ labour ripen – and when even more are on the way. Professor Antje Körner found her calling early on in her medical training: obesity and metabolism in children. “We knew in the early 2000s at the paediatric clinic led by Professor Wieland Kiess that metabolism and disease were linked to the development of obesity. It was then that I embarked on the first studies in this area, sifting through mountains of patient records for clinical data, in search of patterns and anomalies. That was my starting point for the Leipzig obesity cohorts and further clinical trials. Today, we can say we have come a long way.”
The cohorts of children and adolescents with and without obesity have been established and continuously developed over the years. Subjects are part of the large-scale LIFE Child study and recruited through the University’s paediatric obesity clinic and the Faculty of Medicine’s Integrated Research and Treatment Center (IFB) AdiposityDiseases. The cohorts are now yielding comparative data, where a child’s upbringing is recorded very broadly in order to identify environmental risk factors. “In LIFE Child, we have a unique resource that is second to none.”
A highly complex puzzle
Antje Körner’s approach has broadened considerably over the years. A professor of paediatric research, she combines experimental, clinical, genetic and epidemiological studies. Her ultimate goal is to gain a better understanding of the interplay between risk factors, predisposition and clinical progression to enable more targeted and effective interventions for children and adolescents with obesity and diabetes. She sums it up as follows: “My philosophy is that a complex disease requires a complex approach.”
And the fruits of her research? Most recently, Antje Körner received the Elliot Joslin Prize from the German Diabetes Society and the Research Award from the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology. She was also behind the remarkable discovery of a new gene mutation which affects hunger control. A missing piece of the puzzle in monogenic obesity research. She is pleased with her discovery: “It’s not often as a researcher that you discover something completely new. It was all possible thanks to the strong interdisciplinary cooperation on the Leipzig campus for our main topic and also the openness to other approaches. And of course my creative team.”
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