dr. D.P.Y. (Debby) Koonen

Debby Koonen studied Exercise Physiology at the Faculty of Health Sciences in Maastricht. She received her PhD training at the Department of Physiology at Maastricht University under supervision of Drs. Joost Luiken and Jan Glatz, leading experts in the area of fatty acid transport proteins.  In 2001, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded her with the Van Walree Fund to work with Dr. Arend Bonen at Waterloo University, Ontario, Canada.  In 2004, she obtained her PhD degree on the role of CD36, a fatty acid transport protein, in the regulation of fatty acid uptake in heart and skeletal muscle. Shortly thereafter she returned to Canada to work with Dr. Jason Dyck as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada. Here, she received Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. As a Postdoctoral Fellow she has identified CD36 as a mediator of the multiple metabolic, functional and structural alterations observed in the aged heart, highlighting a key role for CD36 in the progression of age-induced cardiomyopathy. In addition to studies in the heart, she also established a direct link between CD36 expression, fatty acid uptake and lipid accumulation in the liver during diet-induced obesity, suggesting that CD36 expression likely plays a causative role in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. In 2008, she was awarded with the Age+ Award for excellence in research on aging by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR)/Institute of Aging (IA). In August 2009, she joined the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the University Medical Center Groningen where her main field of interest is mechanisms of metabolic disease and aging. Dr. Koonen’s research is focused on the pathogenesis of obesity at the crossroads of inflammation and energy metabolism. She aims to understand how inflammation can impact energy metabolism (glucose and lipid metabolism) in obesity, obesity-associated pathologies (insulin resistance, T2D, NAFLD, and cardiovascular disease) and aging.