Over 1/3 of adult Americans and 17% of children are obese, and NIH has identified research into preventing and treating obesity and toward breaking the link between obesity and its associated health conditions as major priorities. The mission of the Mid-Atlantic Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (NORC), now in its ninth year, is to foster multidisciplinary research approaches to understand the impact of nutrition and obesity on risk for chronic disease and translate this knowledge into effective clinical treatments and prevention efforts. Carrying out this mission, the Mid-Atlantic NORC includes a vibrant community of nutrition and obesity researchers across three different institutions. The NORC consists of four Cores and two Programs that interact closely with each other to seamlessly provide a wide range of interdisciplinary cost-effective services and resources to Mid-Atlantic NORC investigators. The Mid-Atlantic NORC promotes three inter-related strands of research: Discovery research to make novel scientific observations that advance our understanding of normal physiology as well pathophysiology of disease; Mechanistic research to elucidate the molecular, cellular, and physiological mechanisms that contribute to normal physiology observed in healthy individuals as well as the pathophysiology of disease states such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; and Clinical and translational research to translate scientific insights into improved patient care. These research themes are supported by three highly interactive research cores: Molecular Genetics and Nutrigenomics (MGN), Basic Mechanisms and Functional Genomics (BMFG), and Clinical and Translational Research (CTR). Collectively, these cores build multi-disciplinary research across genomics, molecular and cell biology, animal models, biostatistics and computation biology, physiology, clinical and translational research, and epidemiology and population science to advance a program of personalized genetic and lifestyle interventions.
Over 1 in 3 adult Americans and 1 in 6 children are obese, substantially increasing the risk of a number of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis and some cancers. The Mid-Atlantic Nutrition Obesity Research Center brings together researchers in obesity and nutrition whose highly complementary research programs address both the causes of obesity and approaches to translate new research into strategies that will improve the health of the population.
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