Rutgers Launches Center to Tackle Barriers to Weight Loss and Other Causes of Disease
Researchers will study the brain-body connections of obesity and inflammatory disease
Rutgers Health recently launched the Center for NeuroMetabolism, which aims to address the weight loss and health challenges many Americans face that can lead to Type 2 diabetes, obesity, eating disorders and other gastrointestinal, vascular and inflammatory disorders.
The Center – part of the Child Health Institute of New Jersey and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) – plans to become a global leader in metabolic health research and hasten the development of more targeted drug therapies with fewer side effects. Metabolic health is the way the body processes nutrients efficiently and includes factors such as blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
Over the past decade, scientists have been examining how the brain uses metabolic information to drive and influence behavior. Research indicates that obesity and other eating disorders such as binge eating are the result of biological mechanisms in the brain and digestive system that can lead to overeating, slower burning of calories and other metabolic problems linked to obesity.
“Metabolic disease is not like a cancer or a traumatic brain injury that will kill you quickly, but it is a disease that will cause a lot of health issues that will affect daily life and cause long term health problems,” said Zhiping Pang, director of the Center for NeuroMetabolism and Henry Rutgers Professor in the department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology.
While these drugs are helping a lot of people, they do have side effects. We need more research that provides us information to let us know exactly what area of the brain needs to be targeted so we can prevent many of the side effects associated with the drugs used today.
Zhiping Pang
Director, Center for NeuroMetabolism
The Center, having opened on Nov. 1, 2024, “is a beacon of scientific excellence, attracting world-class talent and fostering an environment that inspires groundbreaking discoveries, strengthens community ties and propels Rutgers to the forefront of global neuro metabolism research,” said Amy P. Murtha, dean of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
For millions of people throughout the United States, dieting alone hasn’t been effective when it comes to long-term weight loss, which has led to adaptation of drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro that regulate blood sugar, appetite and digestion and promote weight loss. These drugs act like naturally occurring hormones that send a signal to the brain that the person is full.
Arnold Rabson, director of the Child Health Institute of New Jersey and professor of pharmacology, pediatrics and pathology and laboratory medicine at RWJMS, said the worldwide epidemic of obesity and metabolic syndrome has created incredible health-related concerns, overwhelming health care costs and is one of the main reasons behind developing this center.
“It is imperative that there be substantial and focused research that takes into account all the different factors that contribute to the obesity epidemic and the chronic health problems it causes,” Rabson said.
Pang said researchers will focus on how the brain controls eating behavior, and conversely the effects that metabolic processes have on brain function. Pang’s laboratory focuses on understanding how the brain functions in both health and disease.
Pang described a study by Mark Rossi, a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School who will join him as a researcher in the new center. Rossi found that the young offspring of mice whose mothers were overweight during pregnancy and nursing may become obese as adults because early overnutrition rewires developing brains to crave unhealthy food.
“In the long run what we have to do is develop better therapeutics than are on the market now,” said Pang, a neuroscientist who studies regions and pathways within the brain that could provide clues to the causes and consequence of childhood obesity. “While these drugs are helping a lot of people, they do have side effects. We need more research that provides us information to let us know exactly what area of the brain needs to be targeted so we can prevent many of the side effects associated with the drugs used today.”
Pang said he and Rossi will be joined by six additional faculty researchers over the next few years. The Center will include senior-level leaders, physician scientists, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and medical and undergraduate trainees. While currently within the Child Health Institute building in New Brunswick, the Center will move to the Rutgers Health building at the New Jersey Health + Life Science Exchange, a public-private development in downtown New Brunswick, the new home of RWJMS, expected to open in 2026. The new Center will include five to eight laboratories and provide an ideal environment for complex studies and translational research, Pang said.
The Center will collaborate with scientists in neuroscience, endocrinology, genetics, behavioral science, nutrition, pharmacology, neuroimaging and clinical research at Rutgers and RWJMS and the Rutgers Brain Health Institute and will support continued exploration of the connections between brain function, metabolic processes and behavior.
“Our mission is to discover basic metabolic and neural mechanisms and integrated regulatory pathways, and to translate these breakthroughs into transformative clinical therapeutics,” Pang said. “We are confident that Rutgers is uniquely positioned to leverage various departments and resources that will help to bridge the gap between research and clinical practice and better understand the brain-body connection.”
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