Henry Ruiz

Understanding the Cellular Underpinnings of Obesity

Henry Ruiz, Ph.D., clearly remembers peering through the microscope at the strange phenomenon that has become a big focus of his research at New York Tech. Trying to understand what makes adipocytes (or fat cells) grow, Ruiz dialed down the levels of an intriguing new protein—and watched the cells balloon up, full of fat, almost immediately.

“The difference was so striking that, at first, I figured something was wrong. We repeated the experiment several times, and it was always the same,” says Ruiz, who joined New York Tech in the fall of 2024 as an assistant professor of biological and chemical sciences. By tracking this effect—and what reverses it, Ruiz and his lab can interrogate the exact molecular changes that make adipocytes get larger, which could lead to new and improved obesity treatments.

The discovery was the culmination of years of work by Ruiz and his colleagues at New York University, where he was previously a postdoc and research assistant professor, teasing apart the roles of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which are present in highly processed foods, and the receptor for AGEs (RAGE), which is present on the surface of adipocytes and many cell types in the body, in obesity and diabetes.

Through studies with lab mice and tissue samples from people with obesity, the team found that high levels of AGEs wreak havoc on glucose metabolism and that RAGE is linked to lipid (fat) accumulation in adipocytes and higher levels of obesity.


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