Sander Kooijman
A distressing 15% of the Dutch work force is engaged in shift work and nearly everyone who works at night experiences symptoms related to sleep deficits. In addition, long-term repeated exposure to night work has been associated with increased risk of developing metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, including obesity (relative risk: 1.23), diabetes (relative risk: 1.40), stroke (relative risk: 1.05), and heart failure (relative risk: 1.23). In recent years, my research team confirmed that modelled shift work and other forms of circadian disturbance can be causally linked to these cardiometabolic diseases, and unraveled underlying mechanisms to come up with novel therapeutic strategies (e.g. PNAS USA 2015, Cell Rep 2018, J Pineal Res 2020, Mol Metab 2021).
In addition to the circadian regulation, I am broadly interested in the regulation of lipid metabolism; for example, I have contributed to the discovery of many pharmaceutical targets that promote thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue, and prevent metabolic and cardiovascular diseases (e.g. Nat Commun 2015, Sci Transl Med 2016, Gut 2017, Diabetes 2019, JCI Insight 2019, Cell Rep 2019, Cell Metab 2020, Cell 2021).
