UT Southwestern Medical Center

Organization and Goals

UT Southwestern’s Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (NORC) is one of 12 nationwide designated by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and funded by the National Institutes of Health. The UTSW NORC supports research infrastructure, enrichment programs, and collaborative activities for investigators conducting research in the causal factors of nutrition and obesity-related health problems, including consequences, prevention, and alleviation.

Our Goals:
1. Provide the infrastructure to support, facilitate, and advance studies in nutrition, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.
2. Develop the next generation of nutrition and obesity researchers.
3. Establish Interdisciplinary research teams to create dialogue and support collaborations to support translation of basic scientific findings to humans and effectively communicate these advances to the public.

Core Facilities

To support research efforts, four cores provide state-of-the-art services that augment the capabilities, availability, and budgets of individual NORC investigators:

Animal Phenotyping/Metabolism Core

Provides an array of blood metabolites and hormones, 50-plus metabolic cages, telemetry measurements of blood pressure, heart rate, core body temperature, and activity, multiple imaging modalities to characterize fat distribution, and hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamps and primary cell isolation.

Lipid Mass Spectrometry Core

Provides comprehensive quantification of lipids in cells, tissues, and blood.

Quantitative Metabolism and Imaging Core

Provides sophisticated flux measurements of metabolic pathways in vivo and 1H imaging and spectroscopy to characterize skeletal muscle and liver lipid content in humans.