Obesity Research Center

General field of research:

Metabolic Tissue Regulation, Fuel Metabolism, Energetics and Signal Transduction

Affiliations other than medicine:

Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research
Biochemistry
Boston Nutrition/Obesity Research Center
Physiology and Biophysics

Contact information:

Office
Barbara E. Corkey
650 Albany Street, rm808
Phone: (617) 638-7091
Fax: (617) 638-7124
bcorkey@bu.edu

Grant Manager
Casaundra Knight
650 Albany Street, rm804
Phone: (617) 638-6713
Fax: (617) 638-7124
cknight4@bu.edu

Keywords:

Obesity; Diabetes; Metabolism; Fat cells; ß-cell; Signal Transduction, Hepatocytes, Mitochondria, Lipids

Summary of research interest:

Dr. Corkey’s laboratory focuses on the metabolic regulation of signal transduction and energy metabolism in fat cells, β-cells, and human fibroblasts. She and her colleagues have been studying fuel-stimulated insulin secretion by the pancreatic β-cell; fuel partitioning in rat adipocytes; cytokine signaling; and Ca2+ transients in human fibroblasts from patients with inborn errors of fatty acid oxidation and Type 1 diabetes.

Members:

Jude Deeney
Stephen Farmer
Susan Fried
James Hamilton
Mi Jeong Lee
Paul Pilch
Vishwajeet Puri
Orian Shirihai
Keith Tornheim

Recent publications:

Pi, J., Bai, Y., Daniel, K., Liu, D., Lyght, O., Edelstein, D., Brownlee, M., Corkey, B. E. and Collins, S. (2009) Persistent Oxidative Stress due to Absence of Uncoupling Protein 2 associated with Impaired Pancreatic ß-Cell Function. Endocrinology 50:3040-3048

Getty-Kaushik, L., Richard, A.-M., Deeney, J. T., Shirihai, O. and Corkey, B. E. (2009) The CB1 Antagonist, Rimonabant, Decreases Insulin Hypersecretion in Rat Pancreatic Islets. Obesity 17:1856-1860

Molina, AJ, Wikstrom, JD, Stiles, L, Las, G, Mohamed, H, Elorza, A, Walzer, G, Twig, G, Katz, S, Corkey, BE and Shirihai, OS (2009) Mitochondrial networking protects ß-cells from nutrient induced apoptosis. Diabetes 58:2303-2315

Wang, T., Si, Y., Shirihai, O., Schultz, V., Hu, L., Deeney, J. T., Guo, W. and Corkey, B. E. (2010) Respiration in Adipocytes is inhibited by Reactive Oxygen Species. Obesity, 18:1493-502 2009 [Epub ahead of print] Dec 24.

Pi, J., Zhang Q., Fu, J., Woods, C. G., Hu, Y., Corkey, B. E., Collins, S. and Andersen, M. E. (2010) ROS signaling, oxidative stress and Nrf2 in pancreatic ß-cell function. Toxicol and Applied Pharmacol. 244:77-83

Zhong, J., Krawczyk, S.A., Chaerkady, R., Huang, H., Goel R., Bader J., Wong, G.W., Corkey, B. and Pandey, A. (2010) Temporal Profiling of the Secretome during Adipogenesis in Humans. (2010) J Proteome Res. 9:5228-38

Haller, J., Krawczyk, S. A., Gostilovitch,L., Corkey, B. E., and Zoeller, R. A. (2011) Glucose-6-phosphate isomerase deficiency results in mTOR activation, failed translocation of lipin 1 alpha to the nucleus and hypersensitivity to glucose: Implications for the inherited glycolytic disease. BBA – Molecular Basis of Disease, in press

Technologies available for sharing upon request:

Intracellular ion measurement in real time in living cells
Metabolic pathway analysis in response to glucose, amino acids and fatty acids
Mitochondrial metabolism