Raquel Saborano is a third year PhD student at the University of Birmingham, who is involved in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network EUROPOL. 16 early stage researchers collaborate across the EUROPOL framework, enjoying a special customized training program provided by the EUROPOL partners. All spend time on research secondments at one or more partner organizations, in order to experience different research environments, cultures and fields of expertise.
Raquel’s research project focuses on understanding the metabolic processes underlying non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which ranges from simple non-alcoholic fatty liver and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis to non-alcoholic cirrhosis. Her overall aim is to identify potential biomarkers for early diagnosis and to reveal significant metabolic mechanisms and their dynamic changes in different stages of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
During her stay at HYPERMAG, Raquel has learned how to use dissolution Dynamic Nuclear Polarization to monitor cellular reactions, performing real-time NMR in in vitro fatty liver models. In order to obtain the best results possible, she procured an optimal cellular model for fatty liver disease, optimizing reproducibility between samples as well as polarization conditions with a new substrate.
The study of kinetic profiles in real-time NMR with hyperpolarized substrates will help understand metabolic modifications in fatty liver disease that would not be possible to address without polarization of these agents.
Raquel’s main Supervisor is Professor Ulrich Günther from University of Birmingham, Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, UK.