Annotation: Lifestyle interventions remain the cornerstone of metabolic disease management, yet their success rates are disappointingly low even under controlled clinical conditions. A key reason lies in the substantial heterogeneity of patients‘ baseline phenotypic profiles and the individual trajectories of disease progression. There is therefore an urgent need for better patient selection and personalized treatment strategies. The concept of metabolic flexibility offers a promising framework in this context. Moving beyond conventional measures of insulin function, it captures the dynamic capacity of the body to shift between substrate oxidation pathways, reflecting not only glucose disposal but the broader adaptability of fuel metabolism. Metabolic flexibility could serve both as a meaningful treatment target and as a potential predictor of individual responsiveness to lifestyle interventions. The talk will outline the physiological foundations of metabolic flexibility, its operationalization, and examine its emerging role in clinical research, including how it may inform patient stratification and intervention design. It will also address the open questions and unresolved methodological challenges that remain before this concept can be fully translated into clinical practice.
Biography: Jan Gojda is a full professor of Medicine; his research focuses on lifestyle interventions in metabolically challenged persons. He examines the mechanisms of how diet and exercise impact health, namely diabetes initiation and progression. He has studied the role of skeletal muscle, adipose tissue, and intestinal microbiome in the process. He serves currently as the chief physician of the clinical research unit at Third Medical Faculty and University Hospital Kralovske Vinohrady, a consultant in diabetes and clinical nutrition. He is a member of the EASD Teaching and Education Committee and a clinical expert in the EASD guidelines development for the prevention of diabetes.
Contact at IPHYS: MUDr. Martin Rossmeisl, Ph.D.; Laboratory of Adipose Tissue Biology; martin.rossmeisl@fgu.cas.cz
