About the Metabolism Institute

The Mount Sinai School of Medicine established its Metabolism Institute in response to the urgent and chronic health care needs of individuals with diabetes and obesity. Type 2 diabetes, often a complication of obesity, accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all diabetes cases, according to the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Type 2 diabetes no longer affects just those in mid- and late-life. Increasingly, this condition, along with obesity, appears in young adults, adolescents, and even children.

We recognized the urgent need to put effective prevention strategies into place to benefit the community, perhaps an entire generation, and reduce the health care costs associated with these chronic conditions. The development and promotion of obesity- and diabetes-related prevention programs are key areas of translational research within the Metabolism Institute.

Collaborations essential for wide spectrum of research

The Metabolism Institute, based in New York City, emerged from the Department of Medicine’s Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Bone Disease. It is currently collaborating with clinical investigators in many other departments, including:

• Diabetes Center of Excellence, a New York State-funded program within the Department of Health Policy
  
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• Metabolic Monitoring Program, Department of Psychiatry, which tracks patients taking antipsychotic drugs
  
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• Division of Experimental Diabetes and Aging, Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development
  
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• Neurobiology of Aging Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience
  
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• Division of Adolescent Health, Department of Pediatrics
  
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• Division of Transplantation, Department of Surgery
  
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• Program for Inherited Metabolic Diseases, Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences
  
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• Mount Sinai Heart, which includes the Department of Medicine’s Division of Cardiology as well as the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery
  

Target research areas

The development and promotion of obesity- and diabetes-related prevention programs are key areas of translational research in the Metabolism Institute. Target areas for the Institute include:

• Epidemiology of obesity and type 2 diabetes. The epidemiology program focuses on identifying risk factors and protective factors for obesity and type 2 diabetes, including dietary, environmental, and behavioral variables, and studying the interactions within the diverse populations that Mount Sinai serves. Mount Sinai’s catchment area offers opportunities for epidemiologic and genetic studies among ethnically diverse populations that few other academic medical centers can claim.
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• Genetics of metabolic disorders. The genetics of metabolic disorders program works to identify the critical genetic factors that increase or decrease the risks for various aspects of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Studies in this program are investigating genetic contributions to comorbid conditions such as kidney failure, given that only a subset of diabetics succumb to kidney failure. In the long term, this program will also look for hereditary factors that influence individual responses to new therapies for diabetes or obesity.
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• Pathophysiology of metabolic disorders. The program in pathophysiology is researching and identifying the mechanisms that underlie these metabolic diseases. The program's studies require core facilities such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy as well as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scanning, and therefore will be done in collaboration with members of the Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute.
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• Translational research on metabolic disorders and treatments. Discoveries made at the bench will be introduced into the clinical arena, first by investigating their utility in a clinical research setting and then in clinical trials for specific disorders. Conditions may include childhood/adolescent obesity and type 2 diabetes, obesity and liver problems, and type 2 diabetes and complications, such as cardiovascular disease and kidney failure.

Some metabolism research is enhanced by joining forces with groups outside Mount Sinai. Our joint effort with investigators at the State University of New York at Stony Brook is an example. Basic research on rodent metabolism is leveraging a well-established facility for rodent metabolic studies at Stony Brook and the exceptional computational strength found at Mount Sinai.

In addition, the Metabolism Institute has collaborated with pharmaceutical companies to create a training program for endocrinology clinicians in key aspects of clinical drug testing. This enables a large number of endocrinologists to more rapidly acquire critical expertise in the design and execution of clinical trials.