The UCSF-NORC has facilitated clinical and translational studies in humans. During the first award period, members of the UCSF-NORC had greater access to clinical research facilities and services that are housed in different research units and departments, and the NORC administrative infrastructure was able to efficiently coordinate their activities to serve NORC research needs. The NORC Human Metabolism Core will continue to provide that coordinating function to integrate Core activities with NORC research, and will facilitate greater access to a metabolic laboratory assay unit in this new grant period. The current and newly proposed NORC Human Metabolism Core services include: 1) Body composition, exercise, and metabolism testing to measure metabolic output and functional performance, as well as total and regional fat content, lean body mass and bone density. 2) One of the world's most advanced radiologic imaging facilities that will visualize and quantitatively measure anatomical structures and their intra-tissue lipid and water content. 3) Consultation services to provide assistance with nutrition and biobehavioral measurements, research study design, participant recruitment, biostatistical analysis, data management, and grant/manuscript editing. 4) Clinical research services to assist with participant measurements, metabolic procedures, phlebotomy, and biospecimen processing and shipments. 5) In the current application, we propose to expand our Core services to include a new metabolic laboratory assay service which will run hormone, adipokine and inflammatory panel assays for NORC-related studies. Currently, 23 of the total 58 UCSF-NORC investigators use or plan to use the Human Metabolism Core services to conduct obesity-related studies and measure metabolism, physical activity, nutrition, body fat content and distribution, and a range of obesity related laboratory biomarkers With the breadth of research programs at UCSF, continued NORC support for a dedicated NORC Human Metabolism Core will enable exciting research programs to pursue novel, previously unexplored directions in obesity, nutrition and/or metabolism research.
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