This renewal application requests support for a successful Postdoctoral and Predoctoral Nutrition Training Program initiated in 1993 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over its 14 year history, this training program has matured and refined its mission such that with input from faculty trainers and under the guidance of a new director it is being renamed the """"""""Molecular and Applied Nutrition Training Program"""""""" (MANTP). Given UW-Madison's broad strengths in graduate training and the historical and continuing prominence of nutrition research and training on this campus, the MANTP is uniquely poised to train nutrition researchers of the 21st century. Specifically, the MANTP will educate a cadre of cross-disciplinary scientists who integrate and apply concepts from a wide-array of fields to nutrition-related biomedical research. A broad-spectrum of approaches from clinical studies focusing on treatment to genome-wide approaches to define fundamental mechanisms of disease is needed to further understand the etiology of human nutritional diseases and engender new modes of treatment and prevention. The cross-disciplinary didactic and research approaches of the MANTP will produce scientists with the research breadth needed to develop new paradigms for chronic disease treatment. Our faculty trainers, comprised of 18 NIH-funded investigators from the cross-college Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Nutritional Sciences, are committed to providing outstanding training experiences to each predoctoral and postdoctoral trainee. Predoctoral trainees will be selected from Nutritional Sciences or Biochemistry graduate students in the laboratories of MANTP trainers. These trainees will complete a comprehensive cross disciplinary didactic curriculum emphasizing both molecular and applied aspects of nutrition. Through the use of specific seminar and a directed journal club all MANTP trainees will become conversant with cutting edge applied and molecular nutrition research. The program emphasizes a research career in nutrition-related biomedical research, however, the training experience also promotes the development of leadership and teaching abilities. With additional NIH support, the Molecular and Applied Nutrition Training Program will continue to enhance its traditions of providing the US Scientific Community with expertly trained nutritional scientists. Relevance: The incidence of nutrition-linked chronic disease, especially those related to obesity, is increasing in the U.S. While the role of nutrition in such diseases has been demonstrated by epidemiological research and clinical trails, many of the underlying fundamental mechanisms are not known. This training program will produce scientists with the breadth of knowledge and experience needed to generate far reaching advances in treatments of these complex multifaceted diseases.
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