Laboratory of Dr. Prashant Rajbhandari uses molecular biology, biochemistry, and genomic science to study lipid metabolism. Dr. Rajbhandari completed his doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he elucidated how structural changes in the unstructured region of Estrogen Receptor-alpha increases its ligand-independent transcriptional function to promote drug-resistance in breast cancer. An intriguing relation between metabolism and cancer led him to his pursuit of postdoctoral studies in the Lab of Dr. Peter Tontonoz, MD PhD in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). At UCLA, his interests were broadly focused in understanding lipid metabolism, particularly in adipose tissues and how it affects adipocytes, hepatic, and cardiovascular function. He discovered immune-adipocyte crosstalk in the adipose microenvironment that function to limit mitochondrial respiration, energy expenditure, lipid mobilization and block thermogenic transcriptional program in the adipose tissue. He pioneered the use of snRNA-seq to study mature adipocyte heterogeneity and mammary duct and adipocyte crosstalk. His works are published in Nature,  Cell, Nature Medicine, Nature Metabolism, Journal of Clinical Investigation, eLIFE, Cell Metabolism, and Nature Chemical Biology. His work has been recognized as meritorious by the NIH: he received an NRSA F32 individual postdoctoral training grant as well as a prestigious K99/R00 Transition to Independence Award recently to support his work from NIDDK. His lab in DOMI at Mt. Sinai will focus on identifying and studying novel factors that control lipid metabolism using combination of genetics, cell biology, biochemistry and Next Gen sequencing.