Orchestrating Immunological Symphony in Type 2 Diabetes

Jason K. Kim, Ph.D.

Obesity is a leading cause of type 2 diabetes, and inflammation plays a critical role as a molecular link. This lecture presents how inflammation causes insulin resistance, an early characteristic of type 2 diabetes, as cytokines regulate glucose metabolism in skeletal muscle and liver. Pro-inflammatory macrophages are involved in this obesity-mediated event, including liver disease. In all, obesity and aging are physiological states of low-grade, systemic inflammation, and metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, may be treated by targeting our body’s immunological system.

Dr. Kim received his B.S. from UC Irvine in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from USC in 1996. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor in the Section of Endocrinology and metabolism at Yale Medical School in 2002, moved to Penn State College of Medicine as an Associate Professor of Cellular and molecular Physiology in 2005, and joined UMass as a Full Professor with tenure in 2008. As an NIH-funded investigator since 2001, his research studies the molecular link between obesity, inflammation, and type 2 diabetes, publishing over 180 peer-reviewed articles. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Seoul National University in Korea, an Adjunct Investigator at Harvard Medical School, and serves as a Chair of NIH and AHA grant review committees, Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of Hong Kong, External Advisory Committee at JHU, Columbia, and Hawaii, and scientific advisory boards of pharma. He has further mentored more than 100 MD/PhD students, undergraduate interns, research/clinical fellows, and junior faculty, many are now established investigators.