Talat Saatov

Talat Saatov (spelled Soatov in some sources) was born on 15 February 1940 in Tashkent. He graduated from the Tashkent Medical Institute in 1962 and did postgraduate study at the Uzbek Institute of Regional Medicine from 1962 to 1965.

He began his research with the proteins of the thyroid gland: he defended his candidate dissertation in 1966 and his doctoral dissertation, “Thyroglobulin and other iodinated proteins of the thyroid gland”, in 1974, with Academician Yalkin Turakulov as scientific consultant. From 1967 he worked at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan — as a senior researcher, from 1975 as head of a laboratory and from 1979 as director of the institute.

Saatov isolated the iodine-containing thyroid proteins thyroglobulin and thyroalbumin in pure form and studied their composition and physicochemical properties. He put forward the hypothesis that goitre is linked to genetic defects and developed a method for determining the body’s sensitivity to insulin. Other studies of his deal with membrane lipids, liposomes and their interaction with cells.

He was made a professor in 1984. In 1985 he became a laureate of the Beruni State Prize of the Uzbek SSR for a series of works on cyclic nucleotides and the regulation of cell metabolism. In 1996 he received the title of Honoured Science Worker of Uzbekistan, and in 2000 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences (academician).

In recent years he has headed the metabolomics laboratory at the Institute of Biophysics and Biochemistry attached to the National University of Uzbekistan, where he and colleagues study the biochemistry of brain tissue in animal models of neurodegenerative disease, including the effect of a liposomal form of quercetin. In 2025, on the 34th anniversary of independence, he was awarded the Order of Labor Glory (“Mehnat shuhrati”).