ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2023
The Young Physician-Scientist Awards (YPSA) recognize physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research.
About the awardee
Despite recent therapeutic advances, over 50% of patients with diabetes still have sub-optimal glucose control. Identifying new therapeutic targets to effectively treat diabetes will improve morbidity and mortality in these patients. Alison H. Affinati, MD, PhD focuses on elucidating the systems that regulate glucose control and understanding how their dysfunction leads to diabetes.
Dr. Affinati completed her MD and PhD training at Northwestern University Medical Scientist Training Program, where she worked with Dr. Joe Bass to establish the molecular pathways linking the circadian clock to mitochondrial glucose and lipid metabolism. This work, which was supported by an NIDDK F30 NRSA, resulted in a first author publication in Science, along with several reviews.
After completing her residency and Endocrinology fellowship as part of the Physician-Scientist Training Program at the University of Michigan, Dr. Affinati decided to transition to studying how the brain controls glucose metabolism with Dr. Martin Myers. There she established the mechanisms linking neurons in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamic (VMN) to glucose homeostasis. She received support for this work via an F32 NRSA and from the Endocrine Fellows Foundation.
During these studies, Dr. Affinati observed that activating a specific group of VMN neurons increases glucose and elicits panic behavior, suggesting that this population is made up of multiple distinct neuronal groups with different functions. To develop VMN-targeted diabetes medications, these different neuronal types must be distiguished.
As she begins her independent career, Dr. Affinati aims to identify the specific VMN circuits that regulate glucose metabolism, and has obtained funding from the Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar program and a NIDDK K08 to help support this research. Ultimately, Dr. Affinati and colleagues will separate the VMN circuits that regulate glucose from those that regulate panic, establish the mechanisms through which VMN neural circuits control glucose metabolism and lay the groundwork for future brain-targeted therapeutics for diabetes.