BUSM and BUSPH Researchers Collaborate to Receive Ellison Foundation Award
The collaborative Boston University Medical Campus research team of Louis Gerstenfeld, PhD, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Jennifer Schlezinger, PhD, Associate Professor of Environmental Health, and Gerald Denis, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology successfully competed for one of several Ellison Foundation Awards that are made to investigators at Tufts, Harvard, and Boston University each year. Their proposal, entitled Mechanism(s) of Obesity-Related Osteoporosis in the Absence of Insulin Resistance, addresses two of the largest and fastest growing health care problems facing the nation: osteoporosis and Type 2 diabetes.
The investigators are very excited about this project because it brings together the expertise of three diverse research teams to tackle this very important public health issue. While much of the current understanding of obesity-induced osteoporosis has been focused on the role of the diabetic condition in bone loss, the proposed research uses a unique animal model that becomes obese and loses bone mass in the absence of the development of Type 2 diabetes. These studies have a very high potential to identify and separate the mechanisms, genes and pathways that drive each condition and will lead to a better understanding of how to treat both conditions.