Raquel Saborano

Raquel Saborano is a Postdoctoral Researcher (Research Fellow) at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark, working in the Functional Genomics & Metabolism Research Unit under Professor Susanne Mandrup. She joined the group in April 2023 as part of the ATLAS - Center for Functional Genomic Studies of Tissue Plasticity, funded by Sygesikringen "danmark".

Her educational background includes a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. Her doctoral research focused on the metabolic characterization of non-alcoholic fatty liver diseases using NMR metabolomics, supervised by Prof. Ulrich Gunther and Prof. Patricia Lalor. Prior to her postdoc, she worked for three years as an analytical scientist at Hovione, managing drug substance and drug product projects from R&D to GMP stages.

Dr. Saborano's research interests center on understanding the metabolic and molecular mechanisms that regulate energy storage in different adipose tissue depots. Specifically, she investigates the cellular and molecular differences between abdominal and gluteal adipose tissue in individuals with apple- and pear-shaped obesity, aiming to elucidate the factors contributing to healthy versus unhealthy obesity.

Her current project involves examining human fat biopsies to explore variations in cellular composition and signaling states across different fat depots. This work integrates metabolomics approaches to identify metabolic signatures associated with metabolically healthy versus unhealthy obesity phenotypes.