News & Events

Michael W. Schwartz (MTE) has received one of eight 2010 Pfizer Visiting Professorship in Obesity Awards from Pfizer Inc. These $7500 grants support three days of educational activities with a distinguished visiting expert. Dr. Schwartz has invited Philipp E. Scherer, PhD, professor of medicine at the Touchstone Center for Diabetes Research, UT Southwestern Medical Center, to be the Pfizer

Gregory J. Morton (MTE) has been selected as the 2010 recipient of the Perkins Coie Award for Discovery. He will receive $20,000 for his project “Normalization of Blood Glucose Levels in Uncontrolled Diabetes without Insulin.” The award is the fourth in the law firm’s five-year commitment to support translational research at the South Lake Union campus. Dr. Morton is a

D&O Center investigator David Cummings, MD, appeared in a recent KING TV HealthLink news feature about the controversial use of a pregnancy hormone as a weight-loss aid. Dr. Cummings said that human chorionic gonadotropin, taken off label along with an extremely calorie-restricted diet, is ineffective and that to advocate such a regimen would be unethical.

The UW Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center (DERC) invites applications for Pilot and Feasibility Research Awards to develop new research in the area of diabetes and related metabolic-endocrine disease. New and established investigators may apply for awards of up to $50,000 per year for 1 or 2 years.

David Cummings MD is senior author of an international consensus statement proposing that gastrointestinal surgery may be a viable alternative therapy for type 2 diabetes in some patients and pointing the way toward new directions in research. “The Diabetes Surgery Summit Consensus Conference: Recommendations for the Evaluation and Use of Gastrointestinal Surgery to Treat Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus,” the first such statement on the topic, was published online on November 24 in the Annals of Surgery.

Dr. Michael Schwartz, director of the Diabetes & Obesity Center of Excellence, and Center investigator Dr. Gregory Morton were featured in the Seattle Times article “Body’s natural defenses fight fat, don’t always win” on November 26, 2009.

Alan Chait, MD, Professor and Head of the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition, was awarded a five year NIH grant for his proposal entitled “Effect of Nutritional Factors on Macrophage Accumulation in Adipose Tissue.”   Dr. Chait is an investigator at the Diabetes & Obesity Center of Excellence.

David E. Cummings, MD, an Associate Professor in the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition and investigator at the Diabetes & Obesity Center of Excellence, and David Flum, MD, a Professor in the Department of Surgery,  were awarded a five year, 2.2 million dollar NIH grant for their proposal entitled “Mechanisms of Glycemic Improvement Following GI Surgery.” 

An investigative team comprised of Diabetes & Obesity Center of Excellence researchers Karin Bornfeldt PhD, Francis Kim MD and Ian Sweet PhD, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Researcher David Hockenbery MD, were awarded an NIH Supplemental Grant through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).

Jenny Kanter, a graduate student working in the laboratory of Diabetes & Obesity Center of Excellence Associate Director, Karin Bornfeldt PhD, was awarded The Samuel and Althea Stroum Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Diabetes Research. The purpose of this fellowship is to support the training of a promising graduate student in the area of diabetes-related research.