Oklahoma City, OK – Ute Hochgeschwender, M.D. has received a $65,000 research grant from the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation. Dr. Hochgeschwender, an Associate Member of OMRF’s Developmental Biology program, will use the grant to continue studying the genetics of obesity.
The Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation, based in St. Louis, Missouri, annually funds worthy projects in various fields of clinical and laboratory research. The Foundation limits funding to initial, start-up projects or highly promising young investigators. The initial grant of $65,000 covers the first year of Dr. Hochgeschwender’s project. However, she has the potential to continue receiving funding from the Mallinckrodt Foundation for an additional two years.
The Mallinckrodt grant will allow Dr. Hochgeschwender to study why conditions commonly associated with obesity – Type 2 diabetes and hypercortisolism – are not present in mice lacking the POMC gene. This mouse model shows that obesity, hypercortisolism, and diabetes are not mutually inclusive; that is, these conditions can be separated. The POMC null mouse offers a unique opportunity to dissect these effects by genetically substituting individual peptides.
In August of 1999, Dr. Hochgeschwender and Dr. Miles Brennan of the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Denver created severely overweight mice with dirty blonde coats and then developed a treatment method designed to help them lose their excess weight.
These genetically engineered mice lack the POMC gene and all the peptides processed from it. POMC deficiency was discovered in 1998 as a cause of extreme obesity. The mutant strain of mice mimics human patients with the POMC deficiency, which causes severe obesity, glucocorticoid deficiency and red hair. The development of an animal model for this inherited type of obesity offers major benefits, says Hochgeschwender. She and her colleagues continue to study both the physiology and mechanisms of the condition and potential treatment regimes. Her research has already yielded important answers about the genetics and potential treatments of human obesity.
Hochgeschwender received both her M.A. and her M.D. from the Free University of Berlin, Germany. She joined OMRF’s scientific staff in 1998.
Chartered in 1946, OMRF is a private, non-profit biomedical research institution which employs over 400 scientists, physicians, technicians, and administrative and support personnel. OMRF focuses on several critical areas of research: Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, lupus and other autoimmune diseases, stroke, AIDS, children’s diseases and genetic disorders..
