Rongrong Fan

The Fan Laboratory of Molecular Endocrinology (www.fanlab-ki.com) stands at the intersection of clinical phenotyping and functional genomics. Our mission is to decode the epigenetic programming of metabolic health and disease. We seek to understand how environmental and nutritional signals physically remodel the chromatin landscape to drive the development of metabolic disorders such as Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) and cardiovascular disorders (CVD).

Our research utilizes a bench-to-bedside approach, integrating multi-omic data from patient cohorts with precise molecular biology to solve two major challenges in metabolic medicine:

1) Deciphering the transcription factor and coreglator circuitry: We focus on how transcriptional factors and coregulators coregulators act as molecular switches in metabolic tissues. Our research has demonstrated that dysregulation of key coregulators (GPS2, etc) triggers a double-hit of systemic inflammation and impaired lipid and cholesterol metabolism, accelerating the progression of T2D, MASLD and CVD.

2) Decoding the functional epigenetic codes: My research delves into the 'dark matter' of the genome, the distal enhancers and silencers that orchestrate tissue-specific responses. We aim to decode the specific epigenetic grammar that allows over-nutritional signals to flip distant enhancers from a latent to an active state, or conversely, how metabolic stress recruits silencers to shut down protective metabolic pathways. By mapping and understanding these distal regulatory elements, we are uncovering a hidden layer of the genome that dictates how an individual's liver responds to metabolic insult.

Methodologies

We utilize a sophisticated "Multi-OMICs" toolkit to bridge the gap between genotypes and phenotypes:

• Transcriptomics & Cistromics: Mapping the regulatory networks of the liver and adipose tissue.
• Advanced Epigenetics: Utilizing ultra-sensitive ChIP-seq and padlock probe technologies for low-abundance cfDNA detection.
• Clinical Integration: Active collaboration with clinical biobanks (e.g., KaLiB) at Campus Flemingsberg/Karolinska University Hospital to ensure our molecular findings have direct relevance to the Stockholm patient population.

We gratefully acknowledge the generous funding support for our ongoing projects from Swedish Research Council, Swedish Cancerfonden, Novo Nordisk Foundation, European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes, SRP diabetes and many other funding agencies. 

• Main supervisor of 4 ongoing PhD student and 1 postdoc
• Cosupervisor of 1 ongoing PhD student and 2 completed PhD students
• Half time committee, Thesis defend opponent or committee member for more than 20 PhD students 
• Project supervisor of 5 bachelor students and 2 Master student
• More than 200 teaching hours in Bachelor, Master and PhD courses
• Master level course director
• Professional university pedagogy training