Anton Wagenmakers

Anton JM Wagenmakers is Professor of Exercise Metabolism and Academic Lead of the Exercise Metabolism and Adaptation Research Group (EMARG) at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Anton is a leading researcher in skeletal muscle and integrative human physiology and metabolism with 185 peer reviewed journal publications and a Web of Science h-index of 50. His research is focussing on mechanisms by which impairments in fat metabolism lead to impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and muscle wasting (sarcopenia) in sedentary, obese, and elderly individuals, and on the design of optimal exercise/nutrition interventions that can be implemented in real life and reverse mechanisms that lead to development of the ageing phenotype and chronic disease. In these intervention studies the underlying molecular and physiological mechanisms are investigaetd as well. Anton is a leading expert in stable isotope methodology measuring glucose, fatty acid and protein kinetics in living human beings. Confocal immunohistochemical microscopy methods have been developed more recently to stain key enzymes playing a role in insulin resistance mechanisms in sections of skeletal muscle and its microvasculature to visualise the spatial distribution and co-localisation with membranes, mitochondria, lipid droplets and the endothelial layer of muscle arterioles and capillaries. This research has generated compelling evidence that insulin resistance occurs both in muscle fibers and their microvasculature. In obesity, metabolic syndrome and ageing insulin mediated dilation of the muscle microvasculature is impaired due to failure of insulin to activate eNOS (ser1177-P) and quenching of NO by superoxide anions (generated by NADPH oxidase). As a result of impaired arteriolar dilation the muscle fibres are starved of nutrients in well-fed bodies and meal derived glucose, lipids and amino acids are deposited in non-muscle tissues such as liver and adipose tissue. Anton was Editor for the Journal of Physiology (2007-14) and Chair of the Scientific Board of the European College of Sport Sciences (2007-15). Anton currently is Editor of the American Journal of Physiology - Endocrinology and Metabolism, and has a Web of Science h-index of 50.