How brain circuits control body weight
| Dates: | 2 April 2014 |
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| Times: | 13:00 - 14:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Faculty of Life Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Professor Lora Heisler, |
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The UK is the most obese nation in Europe, with approximately 1 in 4 of us meeting the criteria for clinical obesity and more than half of us being overweight. The rapid escalation in the UK prevalence of obesity and the paucity of obesity medications underscores the necessity of an understanding of the basic neurobiology underlying body weight.
Professor Lora Heisler’s laboratory investigates brain circuits that are the master controller of energy balance in an effort to identify new targets amenable to obesity pharmacotherapy. Professor Heisler was awarded her PhD from Tufts University where she investigated repurposing Prozac for obesity treatment. Postdoctoral positions were held at the University of California, San Francisco with Professor Larry Tecott and then Harvard Medical School with Professor Joel Elmquist. Professor Heisler moved her laboratory to the University of Cambridge to join the Department of Professor Steve O’Rahilly and then the Department of Pharmacology. Career highlights range from the identification of a mechanistically novel treatment for type 2 diabetes to a characterisation of the specific therapeutic mechanism of the former global obesity treatment d-fenfluramine. Professor Heisler will discuss why is it so difficult to lose weight yet all too easy to gain back those extra pounds and whether new weight loss drugs can help.
All Welcome to attend
This seminar is sponsored by New England Biolabs.
Speakers
Professor Lora Heisler
Organisation: University of Aberdenn
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
1.006
AV Hill Building
Manchester
