­Fat Facts and Future Cures: New Frontiers in Health Research

What is health and how can we learn more about what goes wrong during diseases such as cancer? For tonight, we will learn about our how fats make us who we are and may not be as scary as the internet tells us and how cutting edge research is developing mini stomachs to learn more about cancer. Speaker Olya Vvedenskaya from Lipotype, a company that has large experience in studying lipids or fats, will talk about the very busy life of fat molecules, in managing our building blocks and overall health. Fats, or lipids, are often misunderstood as just "bad" things, but they actually play many important roles in our bodies. They help build the walls of our cells, send important signals, and store energy needed to keep us going. Understanding lipids can tell us a lot about our health, including heart and immune system function.

Carla Portulano from the Universitatsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus will take everyone on a journey about how mini organs are built, and how they help in better understanding complex disease like cancer. Meanwhile, on the research front, scientists are finding new ways to study stomach cancer using tiny 3D cell clusters called organoids. These organoids grow like mini stomachs in the lab and help researchers explore how cancer starts and develops. By using these models, researchers hope to find better treatments for this serious disease.

Together, learning about the essential roles of lipids and using advanced models like organoids shows how science is uncovering the secrets of both health and disease to improve our lives.