Justification for awarding
"Ingrid Wernstedt Asterholm at Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg is awarded the Leif C. Groop Award for Outstanding Diabetes Research 2025. She has discovered important phenomena in adipose tissue that contribute to systemic metabolic regulation. Her research has identified novel mechanisms behind physiological and pathological adipose tissue expansion. The knowledge can lead to treatments that can prevent type 2 diabetes and other diseases that involve impaired tissue remodeling."
Ingrid Wernstedt Asterholm, this year's recipient of the Leif C. Groop Award for Outstanding Diabetes Research, studies adipose tissue functionality to increase the knowledge about why obesity leads to type 2 diabetes and other diseases. The prize is awarded annually by Lund University Diabetes Centre to an outstanding diabetes researcher.
“Leif Groop has shown that diabetes is a more heterogeneous disease than we previously thought. His research challenged the notion that it is sufficient to divide diabetes into two disease types. I am very happy to receive the award as I feel a kinship with his approach. As a researcher, I feel much more inspired when our observations in the lab do not align with the general view as compared to when it turns out exactly as we have expected,” says Ingrid Wernstedt Asterholm, professor of physiology at University of Gothenburg.
She receives the award for important discoveries about mechanisms in adipose tissue that can lead to preventive treatments of people who are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
“People with overweight or obesity have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, but on an individual level, the risk can vary. Our research has shown that it is adipose tissue functionality that determines the disease risk, rather than the amount of body fat,” she says.
The function of macrophages
One of her recent articles, published in the scientific journal PNAS, examined what happens in adipose tissue during weight gain.
During weight gain, the adipose tissue increases in size and collagen fibers need to be degraded to accommodate the growing fat cells. Collagen is a common protein that provides structural support to tissues. The researchers found that macrophages, an important cell type of the immune system, participate in the degradation of collagen during adipose tissue expansion. The study also showed that the function of macrophages was impaired in mice with obesity and insulin resistance, which led to collagen fragments accumulating in the adipose tissue. These fragments could be linked to increased inflammation and fibrosis. The researchers had similar results when they exposed human macrophages to diabetes-like conditions.
“I am currently part of a collaboration in Gothenburg where we are mapping out these mechanisms in adipose tissue samples from people with and without insulin resistance. In the future, it may be possible to develop an immunotherapy where overweight people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes are treated with macrophages that are effective at degrading collagen in the adipose tissue. This could improve adipose tissue functionality and decrease the risk of developing insulin resistance.”
Insulin resistance occurs in prediabetes and type 2 diabetes and means that that the body responds less effectively to the insulin released by the pancreas.
New collaborations
Adipose tissue inflammation is considered a contributing factor to obesity-related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. In 2014, Ingrid Wernstedt Asterholm published an article in the journal Cell Metabolism that challenged the suggested causal relationship. The researchers blocked inflammatory signaling pathways in the adipose tissue and found that mice with reduced inflammatory response in this tissue had impaired adipose tissue function and increased insulin resistance.
“For an immunologist, it is probably not so surprising that an acute inflammation can be beneficial for tissue remodeling. We need a functioning immune system for both wound healing and the expansion of adipose tissue. The article was well received and this work has opened doors and led to new collaborations," says Ingrid Wernstedt Asterholm, who leads a research group at Sahlgrenska Academy.
