UT Southwestern NORC

Ut Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas TX

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

The goal of the UTSW NORC is to enhance research efforts in nutrition and obesity by facilitating interdisciplinary interactions to speed the translation of basic scientific discoveries into clinically relevant interventions in humans that improve public health. We have assembled a highly interactive and collaborative interdisciplinary team of investigators at UT Southwestern that harnesses expertise from multiple disciplines, with a goal of defining the behavioral, metabolic, genetic, and molecular mechanisms contributing to obesity and obesity-induced diseases. The strength of our faculty and the support of our administration provide the UTSW NORC with the expertise, infrastructure, and ability to develop new methods to study the effects of macronutrients on metabolism, new insights into the pathophysiology of obesity, and to develop new approaches for the treatment of obesity and obesity-associated metabolic co-morbidities. The UTSW NORC now brings together 204 investigators at UT Southwestern from 28 different departments at UT Southwestern to address critical questions in nutrition, obesity, and obesity-induced diseases. To facilitate interdisciplinary research, our NORC has created the following thematically related Teams: Team 1: Central Regulation of Energy Metabolism; Team 2: Adipocyte Biology and Energy Metabolism; Team 3: Obesity-induced Peripheral Organ Disease; and Team 4: Nutrition, Obesity, and Cancer. Within each team, we have integrated scientists from a wide spectrum of disciplines to address the biochemical, metabolic, and clinical consequences of obesity and related diseases. In addition, each Team has a mixture of senior, mid-level, and junior scientists. The Pilot & Feasibility program supports four new investigators/year who will also be assigned to one of the four research Teams. To support NORC investigators, we have established four cores and a Clinical Element to provide state-of-the art services that exceed the capabilities, availability and/or budgets of individual investigators. The Animal Phenotyping/Metabolism Core provides an extensive array of blood metabolites and hormones, 50+ metabolic cages, multiple imaging modalities to characterize fat distribution, and hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamps. The Lipid Mass Spectrometry Core provides comprehensive quantification of lipids. The Quantitative Metabolism and Imaging Core provides flux measurements of metabolic pathways in vivo and 1H imaging and spectroscopy to characterize skeletal muscle and liver lipid content in humans. The Genetics, Single Cell Sequencing, and RNA seq core provides exome sequencing and quantitative gene expression determinations and analysis. All cores provide services for both animal and human research studies. Thus, the UTSW NORC provides an important mechanism for a large group of productive investigators to coalesce and focus their research efforts related to nutrition and obesity to accelerate the translation of basic scientific discoveries into clinically relevant interventions in humans that improve public health.