Dr Nikolaos Nikolaou (pictured) a post-doctoral researcher from the Tomlinson Group, won the prize at the 7th ESE European Young Endocrinologists and Scientists (EYES) meeting. The EYES meeting is the branch of the European Society of Endocrinology (ESE) devoted to early career researchers.
The meeting was held from 13-15 March at Athens, and was the largest yet, with participants from over 15 European countries, with more than 100 submitted abstracts and 65 oral presentations. So Dr Nikolaou fought off tough competition to win for his talk, which was entitled 'AKR1D1 is a novel regulator of metabolic phenotype in human hepatocytes and is dysregulated in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)'.
The abstract of the talk will be published in Endocrine Abstracts, and the award includes an expense-covered invitation to present at the next European Conference of Endocrinology, which takes place in Prague in May 2020.
Dr Nikolaou is a RDM graduate too - he did his DPhil with Professors Jeremy Tomlinson and Leanne Hodson, and his current work is focused on pre-receptor steroid hormone and bile acid metabolism, and how these pathways contribute to the prevalence of NAFLD. His talk presented data about a novel enzyme, 5β-reductase (AKR1D1), which is predominantly present in the liver and plays a crucial role in both steroid hormone and bile acid metabolism. His research has uncovered abnormalities in its expression across the different stages of the disease in patients with NAFLD, and characterised its activity in human hepatocytes, using in vitro liver cell models, showed the ability of this enzyme to drive lipid accumulation and regulate fatty acid oxidation. This work has been recently published in Metabolism.
Many congratulations to Dr Nikolaou, and we look forward to the Prague 2020!