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PROFESSOR DONGSHENG CAI
The PhysOrg article
Research team discovers brain pathway responsible for obesity
said
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, for the first time, have
found a messaging system in the brain that directly affects food intake
and body weight.
Reported in Cell, the findings — from a study
in mice — point to a completely new approach to treating and
preventing
obesity in humans. The discovery also offers hope for new ways to treat
related disorders, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular
diseases — the most prevalent health problems in the United States
and
the rest of the developed world.
Led by Dongsheng Cai, an assistant professor of physiology at the UW
School of Medicine and Public Health, the researchers looked
specifically at the hypothalamus — the brain structure responsible
for
maintaining a steady state in the body — and for the first time
found
that a cell-signaling pathway primarily associated with inflammation
also influences the regulation of food intake. Stimulating the pathway
led the animals to increase their energy consumption, while suppressing
it helped them maintain normal food intake and body weight.
Dongsheng Cai, M.D., Ph.D. is
Assistant Professor,
Department of Physiology,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dongsheng's research focuses on investigating the roles of intracellular
stress
and inflammation pathways for physiological regulation and pathological
dysfunction of metabolic homeostasis, with the long-term mission of
identifying molecular mechanisms and developing therapeutic avenues for
metabolic diseases particularly obesity and diabetes.
An abundance of evidence has emerged demonstrating a close link between
metabolism and immunity. The metabolic diseases such as obesity and
diabetes are consistently associated with a state of chronic low-level
inflammation, which can be triggered by intracellular metabolic
stresses. He has previously identified nuclear transcription factor
NF-B and its upstream kinase IKK as an important pro-inflammatory
pathway in mediating protein catabolism in skeletal muscle
and insulin resistance in liver. This research prelude has
initiated an intriguing branch of studying gene-environment interactions
in molecular metabolic physiology.
Dongsheng coauthored
Local and systemic insulin resistance resulting from hepatic
activation
of IKK-β and NF-κB,
Two New Substrates in Insulin Signaling, IRS5/DOK4 and
IRS6/DOK5,
IKK-β/NF-κB Activation Causes
Severe Muscle Wasting in Mice,
Effect of thyroid hormone deficiency on developmental spatial
expression
of Goa gene in brain of neonatal rat by differential display PCR and in
situ hybridization, and
Use of Salsalate to Target Inflammation in the Treatment of Insulin
Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes.
Dongsheng earned his M.D. and Ph.D. at Shanghai Jiaotong University,
China and did his Postdoctoral studies at Harvard
University.
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