Trutz Fischer and Prof. Heike Kielstein, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg Medical Faculty, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
Research Interest
Our workgroup at Prof Kielstein’s lab investigates the link between obesity, the adipokine leptin and the influence of leptin on natural killer (NK) cells. Obese individuals have a higher likelihood to get various types of cancer (e.g. postmenopausal breast cancer, hepatic- and colon cancer1 and do have a higher recurrence- and death probability compared to lean patients2. One of the possible reasons has been demonstrated by our workgroup – we could show that the cytotoxicity of NK cells is impaired under the influence of elevated leptin concentrations in obese individuals3. It has also been shown that leptin affects the remodeling of the structural protein actin4. As actin is one of the main proteins involved in active cell migration, we hypothesized that higher concentrations of leptin might affect the migration speed of NK cells as well.