Research
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Lyse Norian
Immune-based therapies have shown tremendous clinical potential for treating advanced cancers, but their clinical efficacy remains limited. Because obesity is a risk factor for increased cancer prevalence and mortality, it is critical to understand how obesity impacts anti-tumor immunity and immunotherapeutic efficacy. A major research focus in the Norian lab is investigating how immune responses to solid tumors are altered by obesity. Dr. Norian’s group has found that in mice and humans with renal tumors, obesity impairs protective anti-tumor immunity and decreases immunotherapeutic efficacy. As a complementary approach, they are determining whether dietary interventions can improve therapy-induced immune responses in multiple pre-clinical cancer models.
Wendy Demark-Wahnefried
Dr. Demark-Wahnefried’s research interests include diet/hormonal and genetic interactions and their association with neoplasia (specifically breast and prostate cancer); dietary intervention to prevent chronic disease factors affecting compliance and recidivism; and lifestyle modification among cancer survivors. Her research career has spanned basic science studies focused on determining mechanisms of action of food-related components on neoplastic progression to clinical research that involves nutrition-related concerns of cancer patients, as well as determining effective lifestyle interventions that improve the overall health of cancer survivors and their families. Her laboratory has conducted some of the largest studies exploring metabolic and body composition changes in response to cancer treatment. She has led and continues to lead a number of NIH-funded trials aimed at improving the diet and exercise behavior of cancer survivors.
Barbara Gower
Dr. Gower’s research focus is on the interplay between diet, endocrinology, and metabolism and their relation to chronic metabolic disease, with expertise in evaluation of body composition, body fat distribution, insulin sensitivity, and beta-cell function. Her two major research areas are nutrition interventions for obesity and metabolic health and risk for type 2 diabetes in African-Americans. She currently is conducting two NIH-funded research studies to test the hypotheses that 1) in patients with type 2 diabetes, a low glycemic diet will enable return of beta-cell function by depleting pancreas lipid, even in the absence of weight loss, and 2) in obese African-American women, an insulin-lowering diet will improve loss of fat mass during weight loss and result in greater weight-loss maintenance, in part by increasing energy expenditure. A recently completed study examined the effect of ketogenic diet on metabolic outcomes in women with ovarian cancer.
Chandrika Piyathilake
Combination antiretroviral treatment has dramatically prolonged the survival of individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A consequence of this trend has been an increase in the risk of cancers caused by human papillomaviruses (HPVs). Dr. Piyathilake’s current research is focused on an identification those at high risk for developing such cancers based on next generation sequencing of HPVs/biomarkers of HPV carcinogenesis and understanding mechanistically related modifiable factors (examples, dietary factors and microbiome) and the development of tailored HPV vaccines/probiotics. This personalized medicine approach is essential to control and prevent these cancers in this aging population.
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W. Timothy Garvey
Dr. Garvey’s research focus is on the metabolic, molecular, and genetic pathogenesis of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. His studies have involved the cellular and molecular biology of cell and animal models, metabolic investigations of human subjects on metabolic research wards, and the genetic basis of diseases in Gullah-speaking African Americans and other national cohorts of diabetes patients. The Garvey laboratory has made important observations regarding the pathogenesis of human insulin resistance and has been a principle contributor to our understanding of the role of the glucose transport system and glucose transporter proteins in human insulin resistance. He has identified gene families that contribute to insulin resistance in human muscle insulin using cDNA microarray, e.g., NR4A orphan nuclear receptors and the tribbles gene family, and has elucidated the role of adiponectin in cardiometabolic disease and mitochondrial proteomics to better define mitochondrial defects that impair substrate oxidation.
Barbara Gower
Dr. Gower’s research focus is on the interplay between diet, endocrinology, and metabolism and their relation to chronic metabolic disease, with expertise in evaluation of body composition, body fat distribution, insulin sensitivity, and beta-cell function. Her two major research areas are nutrition interventions for obesity and metabolic health and risk for type 2 diabetes in African-Americans. She currently is conducting two NIH-funded research studies to test the hypotheses that 1) in patients with type 2 diabetes, a low glycemic diet will enable return of beta-cell function by depleting pancreas lipid, even in the absence of weight loss, and 2) in obese African-American women, an insulin-lowering diet will improve loss of fat mass during weight loss and result in greater weight-loss maintenance, in part by increasing energy expenditure.
James Hill
Dr. Hill’s research focuses on factors that impact the etiology of obesity and type 2 diabetes and that contribute to strategies to reduce these diseases. He is particularly interested in factors that affect weight-loss maintenance. Recently, he has been working with researchers with interests in modifying health behaviors. Sustaining behavior change is a major challenge in addressing obesity. They recently developed a new model for behavior change (the Maintain IT model) and have successfully used this model to increase success in weight management. He understands the complexity of body weight regulation and has studied how physiological, behavioral, and environmental factors influence obesity and body weight regulation.
Courtney Peterson
Dr. Peterson studies new dietary strategies to treat and reverse diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Her primary focus is on intermittent fasting, the circadian clock, and diet quality. Dr. Peterson conducted the first human studies of a type of intermittent fasting called early time-restricted feeding (TRF), which involves eating in a 10-hour or less period early in the day. She found that early TRF improves blood sugar, blood pressure, appetite, and fat burning. Dr. Peterson’s lab is also testing whether eating certain food groups can help reverse type 2 diabetes and uses mathematical modeling to study metabolism and body composition.
Drew Sayer
Dr. Sayer currently studies the factors that contribute to the variability in behavioral weight-loss interventions and conducts clinical trials that include adaptive interventions (e.g., Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials or SMARTs) to develop, rigorously evaluate, and implement effective interventions to treat obesity. His past research has centered on the effects of the quantity and quality of dietary protein on energy balance, obesity, and cardiometabolic health. His predoctoral research focused primarily on the role of dietary protein on appetite, energy balance, and neural reward responses to visual food stimuli.
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Paula Chandler-Laney
Dr. Chandler-Laney’s research focuses on elucidating the biobehavioral mechanisms that underlie the intergenerational transmission of obesity and comorbid metabolic diseases. Ongoing research studies focus on pregnancy and infancy as critical periods during which risk for obesity may be programmed. Her laboratory examines race disparities and lifestyle influences on weight gain and glucose concentrations during pregnancy and fetal outcomes. Studies in young children investigate the role of executive function in eating behavior and the role of eating behavior as a potential mediator between obesogenic conditions in the intrauterine environment and children’s excess weight gain. They use rigorous, objective methods to assess body composition (e.g., DXA, BodPod, PeaPod) and metabolic health (e.g., glucose tolerance tests) and observational methods to examine behavior and lifestyle variables.
Maria De Luca
Dr. De Luca’s early research work focused largely on the genetics of aging. Over the past 15 years, she has expanded her research program to examine the role of genetics in obesity and its metabolic complications. Many lines of evidence suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction plays a central role in obesity/metabolic complications and aging. To this end, one area of current research in her laboratory focuses on identifying novel genetic mechanisms contributing to mitochondrial dysfunction. A second area of research focuses on the role played by the cell-surface proteoglycan syndecan-4 in fat tissue remodeling, inflammation, and systemic metabolic dysfunction.
Wendy Demark-Wahnefried
Dr. Demark-Wahnefried’s research interests include diet/hormonal and genetic interactions and their association with neoplasia (specifically breast and prostate cancer); dietary intervention to prevent chronic disease factors affecting compliance and recidivism; and lifestyle modification among cancer survivors. Her research career has spanned basic science studies focused on determining mechanisms of action of food-related components on neoplastic progression to clinical research that involves nutrition-related concerns of cancer patients, as well as determining effective lifestyle interventions that improve the overall health of cancer survivors and their families. Her laboratory has conducted some of the largest studies exploring metabolic and body composition changes in response to cancer treatment. She has led and continues to lead a number of NIH-funded trials aimed at improving the diet and exercise behavior of cancer survivors.
Barbara Gower
Dr. Gower’s research focus is on the interplay between diet, endocrinology, and metabolism and their relation to chronic metabolic disease, with expertise in evaluation of body composition, body fat distribution, insulin sensitivity, and beta-cell function. Her two major research areas are nutrition interventions for obesity and metabolic health and risk for type 2 diabetes in African-Americans. She currently is conducting two NIH-funded research studies to test the hypotheses that 1) in patients with type 2 diabetes, a low glycemic diet will enable return of beta-cell function by depleting pancreas lipid, even in the absence of weight loss, and 2) in obese African-American women, an insulin-lowering diet will improve loss of fat mass during weight loss and result in greater weight-loss maintenance, in part by increasing energy expenditure.
James Hill
Dr. Hill’s research focuses on factors that impact the etiology of obesity and type 2 diabetes and that contribute to strategies to reduce these diseases. He is particularly interested in factors that affect weight-loss maintenance. Recently, he has been working with researchers with interests in modifying health behaviors. Sustaining behavior change is a major challenge in addressing obesity. They recently developed a new model for behavior change (the Maintain IT model) and have successfully used this model to increase success in weight management. He understands the complexity of body weight regulation and has studied how physiological, behavioral, and environmental factors influence obesity and body weight regulation.
Catia Martins
Dr. Martins' research explores how diet, exercise and bariatric surgery impact on energy metabolism and appetite control, aiming at understanding relapse in obesity management. Her group has shown that the increased drive to eat and reduced energy expenditure seen in the reduced-obese state are a normalization towards a lower body weight and not drivers of relapse. A second area of research focuses on the role of ketogenic diets on appetite suppression.
Lyse Norian
Immune-based therapies have shown tremendous clinical potential for treating advanced cancers, but their clinical efficacy remains limited. Because obesity is a risk factor for increased cancer prevalence and mortality, it is critical to understand how obesity impacts anti-tumor immunity and immunotherapeutic efficacy. A major research focus in the Norian lab is investigating how immune responses to solid tumors are altered by obesity. Dr. Norian’s group has found that in mice and humans with renal tumors, obesity impairs protective anti-tumor immunity and decreases immunotherapeutic efficacy. As a complementary approach, they are determining whether dietary interventions can improve therapy-induced immune responses in multiple pre-clinical cancer models.
Courtney Peterson
Dr. Peterson studies new dietary strategies to treat and reverse diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Her primary focus is on intermittent fasting, the circadian clock, and diet quality. Dr. Peterson conducted the first human studies of a type of intermittent fasting called early time-restricted feeding (TRF), which involves eating in a 10-hour or less period early in the day. She found that early TRF improves blood sugar, blood pressure, appetite, and fat burning. Dr. Peterson’s lab is also testing whether eating certain food groups can help reverse type 2 diabetes and uses mathematical modeling to study metabolism and body composition.
Drew Sayer
Dr. Sayer currently studies the factors that contribute to the variability in behavioral weight-loss interventions and conducts clinical trials that include adaptive interventions (e.g., Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials or SMARTs) to develop, rigorously evaluate, and implement effective interventions to treat obesity. His past research has centered on the effects of the quantity and quality of dietary protein on energy balance, obesity, and cardiometabolic health. His predoctoral research focused primarily on the role of dietary protein on appetite, energy balance, and neural reward responses to visual food stimuli.
Daniel Smith, Jr.
Dr. Smith’s research interests include the influence of nutrition and metabolism on aging and disease, with an emphasis on the opposing nutrition paradigms of calorie restriction and over-nutrition/obesity. His studies incorporate multiple model organisms including budding yeast, worms, flies, zebrafish, mice, rats, and humans. Of particular interest are calorie restriction mimetics, compounds proposed to mimic the cellular and physiologic benefits of calorie restriction without requiring actual nutritional intake reductions. The cohesive thread through his research is to understand the impact and causation of nutrition and metabolism on aging and disease to identify interventions to optimize human health, well-being, and longevity.
Gary Hunter
My current research interests include factors that influence the decision to be physically active and reduce weight gain. I have become especially interested in factors that influence ease and economy during locomotion, especially the use of muscle/tendon elasticity in producing stretch shortening cycle potentiation. Although, generally thought to be important only for athletic performance, we have shown that it influences free-living physical activity even in older adults and that exercise training can improve stretch shortening cycle potentiation. I am also interested in how to improve quality of life of older adults and cancer survivors.
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Maria De Luca
Dr. De Luca’s early research work focused largely on the genetics of aging. Over the past 15 years, she has expanded her research program to examine the role of genetics in obesity and its metabolic complications. Many lines of evidence suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction plays a central role in obesity/metabolic complications and aging. To this end, one area of current research in her laboratory focuses on identifying novel genetic mechanisms contributing to mitochondrial dysfunction. A second area of research focuses on the role played by the cell-surface proteoglycan syndecan-4 in fat tissue remodeling, inflammation, and systemic metabolic dysfunction.
Barbara Gower
Dr. Gower’s research focus is on the interplay between diet, endocrinology, and metabolism and their relation to chronic metabolic disease, with expertise in evaluation of body composition, body fat distribution, insulin sensitivity, and beta-cell function. Her two major research areas are nutrition interventions for obesity and metabolic health and risk for type 2 diabetes in African-Americans. She currently is conducting two NIH-funded research studies to test the hypotheses that 1) in patients with type 2 diabetes, a low glycemic diet will enable return of beta-cell function by depleting pancreas lipid, even in the absence of weight loss, and 2) in obese African-American women, an insulin-lowering diet will improve loss of fat mass during weight loss and result in greater weight-loss maintenance, in part by increasing energy expenditure.
Catia Martins
Dr. Martins' research explores how diet, exercise and bariatric surgery impact on energy metabolism and appetite control, aiming at understanding relapse in obesity management. Her group has shown that the increased drive to eat and reduced energy expenditure seen in the reduced-obese state are a normalization towards a lower body weight and not drivers of relapse. A second area of research focuses on the role of ketogenic diets on appetite suppression.
Doug Moellering
Dr. Moellering’s research interests involve mitochondrial physiology, bioenergetics, and free radical-mediated tissue injury and disease pathologies. Currently, his research is focused on mitochondrial free-radical production contributing to altered bioenergetics, the development of obesity, insulin resistance and T2DM, increased cardiovascular disease susceptibility, and aging. Evidence has been accumulating that many diseases, including insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, and obesity, involve mitochondrial dysfunction with concomitant increased reactive oxygen and/or nitrogen species formation.
Daniel Smith, Jr.
Dr. Smith’s research interests include the influence of nutrition and metabolism on aging and disease, with an emphasis on the opposing nutrition paradigms of calorie restriction and over-nutrition/obesity. His studies incorporate multiple model organisms including budding yeast, worms, flies, zebrafish, mice, rats, and humans. Of particular interest are calorie restriction mimetics, compounds proposed to mimic the cellular and physiologic benefits of calorie restriction without requiring actual nutritional intake reductions. The cohesive thread through his research is to understand the impact and causation of nutrition and metabolism on aging and disease to identify interventions to optimize human health, well-being, and longevity.
Do you or does someone you know have prostate cancer?
At a glance:
The iLIVE diet and exercise study is a national clinical trial supported by the National Cancer Institute. It is aimed at helping men with prostate cancer lose weight and get stronger. All men will receive a Fitbit and an electronic scale. They will be assigned to one-of-two internet-based, diet and exercise programs. This program and its assessments are done totally over the web (there is no need to come into UAB).
Why are children and adolescents getting diabetes? Are you or your child at risk?
Join the DISCOVERY study, and help discover the factors that explain why some children get diabetes.
At a glance:
DISCOVERY is designed to identify risk factors for pediatric type 2 diabetes. Children will be in the study for up to 4 years, with clinic visits every 6 months.
REIMAGINE 4: A research study to see how much CagriSema lowers blood sugar and body weight compared to tirzepatide in people with type 2 diabetes treated with metformin with or without an SGLT2 inhibitor
Study to evaluate the effectiveness of an investigational drug to treat type 2 diabetes
At a glance:
The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Department of Nutrition Sciences, is conducting a 75-week research study to evaluate the effectiveness of an investigational drug to treat type 2 diabetes.
Do you have Type 2 Diabetes and are you overweight?
Are you 18 years or older? Are you being treated with lifestyle changes or treated with one or more oral diabetes medications?
At a glance:
The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Department of Nutrition Sciences, in collaboration with Novo Nordisk, is conducting a 78 week research study to look into how well semaglutide once weekly medicine works in participants with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Effect of Time-Restricted Feeding on 24-hour Glycemic Control, Blood Pressure, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Adults with Prediabetes
Does When You Eat Affect Your Blood Sugar and Blood Pressure?
At a glance:
We suspect that a majority of people may find meal timing strategies helpful for losing weight or to maintain their weight since these strategies normally curb appetite, which may help people eat less.
Meal Timing and Body Clocks Study
Adults with Type 2 Diabetes Needed
At a glance:
We are looking for adults with type 2 diabetes for an exciting research study to see whether meal timing and/or bright light therapy can improve your blood sugar, reset your body clock, and improve your overall health. The main part of the study lasts 16 weeks and involves two overnight tests in our clinic, which can be done on weekends, if preferred. Participants will receive $2400 for completing the study. If you are interested, please complete the brief electronic form at http://bit.ly/clocksstudy to apply for the study.
Research in the Department of Nutrition Sciences is designed to understand metabolic, behavioral, and environmental factors that impact health in order to prevent chronic metabolic disease (obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc.) and promote optimum lifestyle wellness. Our investigators use state-of-the-art techniques for assessing body composition, energy metabolism, and metabolic health in humans and animal models.
The Department hosts two NIH-funded centers, the Diabetes Research Center – one of only 17 in the U.S. – and the Nutrition Obesity Research Center – one of only 11 in the U.S., both of which provide a wealth of core services to assist investigators in the department and across the UAB campus. We have three NIH-funded T32 training grants, offering opportunities for funding Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows.
Dr. Barbara Gower
Department Chair and Professor; Associate Scientist, Nutrition Obesity Research Center