DeStefano Awarded $2.5M Grant to Study Genetic Links to Obesity.
Anita L. DeStefano, a professor of biostatistics, has been awarded a $2.5 million grant over four years to study the relationship between obesity and gene expression in the brain.
Previous genetic studies have identified about 100 gene regions that have an association with obesity, with others possibly still undiscovered, DeStefano said.
“If we look at gene expression within a very relevant area of the brain, we might be able to identify new genes,” Destefano said. Obesity is a complex process and we’re trying to understand specifically how genes and their products are working within the brain to influence someone’s risk for obesity.”
DeStefano, who also holds an appointment as an associate professor of neurology at the Medical School, and a team of collaborators from BUMC will analyze post-mortem brain samples from the Framingham Heart Study, the Rush University Religious Orders Study, and the Rush Memory and Aging Project. Participants in all three of those long-term studies agreed to donate their brain upon death.
The study will examine gene expression of both RNA and microRNA using next-generation sequencing technology from individuals who were consistently obese or consistently normal weight prior to death. Comparing the two groups may identify genes and microRNA that are expressed differently, and could identify new potential targets for medications or other interventions.
“One of the very unique things about these cohorts is that they participated in these studies for decades and we have measurers of their body mass for many, many years,” DeStefano said. “We have that information across a large portion of their lives. There are many other brain bank resources that have brain tissue but they don’t typically have this wealth of measurement across lifetimes.”
The study is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). DeStefano will be collaborating with Sudha Seshadri and Richard Myers of BUMC and David Bennett of the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Bennett is the principal investigator of the Rush University Religious Orders Study, and the Rush Memory and Aging Project.
DeStefano is also the associate director of the BUMC Genome Science Institute. She served for 10 years as co-director of the SPH biostatistics program, and is current director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Statistical Genetics.
She is an investigator in the multi-national GenePD study working to identify the genes contributing Parkinson’s disease, and is also a senior statistical geneticist for the Framingham Heart Study focusing on stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and related endophenotypes, including brain MRI measures.