2025 RCLR symposium attendees.
On November 7, the Rutgers Center for Lipid Research (RCLR) held its 10th annual symposium under the theme, “Lipid regulation of cell stress and death.” The symposium, which was held at the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health (IFNH) on the Rutgers–New Brunswick campus, was attended by more than 90 participants.
The annual event drew researchers from all three Rutgers campuses, along with scientists from neighboring universities as well as local pharma and biotech companies. The symposium brought together an outstanding group of established and early-career investigators who shared their knowledge, results and insights into the regulation of cellular stress tolerance mechanisms and pathways of cell death by lipids.
Distinguished Professor George Carman presents Matthew L. Selby with the “George M. and Maureen D. Carman Prize in Lipids.” Shelby’s mentor Harini Sampath. associate professor, looks on.
The organizing committee for this year’s event was led by Harini Sampath, associate professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences. The speaker sessions covered a range of lipid-related topics. The morning session, chaired by Harini Sampath, commenced with a talk by Scott Dixon from Stanford University who spoke about the palmitate-dependent non-apoptotic cell death followed by Yumi Imai from the University of Iowa who spoke on the traffic control of lipids to protect pancreatic islets from nutrient stress. That session ended with a lively flash talk session chaired by Christy Gliniak, assistant professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences.
The poster session followed a delightful lunch at Harvest IFNH. The afternoon session, chaired by Igor Shmarakov, assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences, began with a talk by Valerian Kagan of the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University who spoke of redox lipidomics of ferroptotic regulated death program. The session ended with a talk on the alteration of hepatic Pparα and lipid metabolism in cancer cachexia presented by Wenwei Hu from the Rutgers Cancer Center.
Best flash talk awards were presented to Matthew L. Selby and Siddhi Pawar, while the best poster awards went to Natalie Burchat, Camille Duchamp and Ishaan Patil. Selby was also awarded the George M. and Maureen D. Carman Prize in Lipids, an endowed prize awarded for outstanding research achievement in the area of lipid biochemistry.
RCLR promotes multidisciplinary research on the biochemical, biophysical, cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in lipid metabolism, and extends this information to the underpinnings of lipid-based diseases such as obesity, lipodystrophy, diabetes, and heart disease. RCLR fosters interaction among faculty, postdoctoral associates, and students across the university. For more information visit rclr.rutgers.edu.
