Prof. Dr. Riekelt Houtkooper

Riekelt Houtkooper is professor of Translational Metabolism, and his group works on molecular and translational metabolism, both in the context of inborn errors of metabolism and aging. Prof. Houtkooper is coordinator of the MSCA-Doctoral Network project NADIS, and a board member for the Dutch Society for Research on Aging, the Dutch Metabolomics Center, and the Emma Center for Personalized Medicine. Over the past few years, prof. Houtkooper’s team used cross-species multi-omics integration to identify key mechanisms underlying metabolic flexibility, and open up therapeutic avenues for a wide variety of human diseases in which metabolism is a driving force. A specific example is research on nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD⁺. Together with collaborators across the world. we identified the therapeutic potential of the NAD⁺ precursor NR against metabolic disease in mice, how it extends lifespan in C. elegans, we showed NRH and NMNH as novel, potent NAD⁺ boosters, and tested NR’s therapeutic effects in people with compromised metabolic health.