How childhood-onset versus adult-onset obesity shapes adipose tissue biology before and after weight loss
May 20, 2026 | 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Time: 12:00 - 13:00 ET (12:00pm - 1:00pm ET)
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2026 PhD Dissertation Award Lecture
Speaker: Jessica Murphy, PhD (Concordia University)
Webinar description:
Obesity is often treated as a single disease—but not all obesity is the same. One factor that may influence cardiometabolic risk and treatment outcomes is when obesity begins. Childhood-onset and adult-onset obesity may look similar on the surface, but emerging evidence suggests they leave distinct biological imprints on subcutaneous adipose tissue that can persist even after weight loss. This webinar will explore how adipose tissue biology differs between childhood-onset and adult-onset obesity and what this means for how we think about treating obesity.
Learning Objectives:
- Discuss how our understanding of adipose tissue expansion in childhood-onset versus adult-onset obesity has evolved.
- Describe how markers of adipose tissue dysfunction differ between childhood-onset and adult-onset obesity before and after weight loss.
Moderator: Sylvia Santosa, PhD (Concordia University)
About the Speaker:
Jessica Murphy completed her PhD at Concordia University in the Metabolism, Obesity, and Nutrition Lab directed by Sylvia Santosa. Her research investigated why people with childhood-onset obesity face a higher risk of type 2 diabetes than those with adult-onset obesity, and whether the underlying mechanisms can be reversed.
She focused on dysfunction in subcutaneous adipose tissue—an early feature of metabolic disease—and how it changes after lifestyle-induced weight loss. She found that in people with childhood-onset obesity, subcutaneous adipose tissue shows signs of accelerated aging and remodels less after moderate weight loss. These findings suggest that lifestyle changes alone may not fully address metabolic risk in people who have lived with obesity since childhood.
Jessica continues to advance this work as a research associate, studying why metabolic diseases unfold differently across people and how treatments can better account for this heterogeneity.
Thank you to Centrum for supporting the PhD Dissertation Award for Outstanding Research
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