Research Programme Outline

Introduction
The DIABESITY research programme is composed of four separate workblocks that are subdivided into a total of eleven individual workpackages.  Each workpackage encompasses a particular topic relevant to diabesity research and is led by a premier European researcher.

Worblocks and Workpackages

Workblock A: Mouse and Invertebrate Genetics

Leader: Sven Enerbäck
Objective: to find new genes and processes linked to the pathogenesis of obesity and type 2 diabetes using mutagenesis models in Drosophila and mice.

Workpackage 1
Invertebrate Genetics
Leader: Roland Wehr

Workpackage 2
Mouse Genetics
Leader: Roger Cox

Workblock B: Human Genetics and Human Physiology

Leader: Steve O’Rahilly
Objective: to find new genes and processes linked to the pathogenesis of obesity and type 2 diabetes in clinical models by (A) identification of missense and nonsense mutations (B) a high throughput candidate gene/association study strategy and (C) linkage studies.  These new targets will be validated in human studies.

Workpackage 3
Monogenic diseases: Monogenic Obesity and Insulin Resistance
Leader: Inês Barroso

Workpackage 4
Case/Control studies
Leader: Inês Barroso

Workpackage 5
Positional cloning: Identification of Genes Contributing to Polygenic Human Obesity: Positional Strategy
Leader: Jorg Hager

Workpackage 11
Clinical Physiology
Leader: Arne Astrup

Workblock C: Neuroscience

Leader: Matthias Tschöp
Objective: to characterize and validate CNS-related diabesity drug targets, by their central site and mechanism of action and by the phenotypic changes that occur in response to environmental determinant of body weight using physiological and transgenic models. 

Workpackage 6
Neuroanatomy and neurophysiology
Leader: Bjorn Meister

Workpackage 7
Neuroendocrinology
Leader: Julian Mercer

Workpackage 8
Neuroscience: Gene targeting
Leader: Jens Brüning

Workblock D: Signalling Systems

Leader: John-Olov Jansson
Objective: to validate diabesity drug targets that regulate fat mass, in particular those related to afferent signalling systems to the hypothalamus and also the key factors that regulate white and brown adipose tissues, including transcription factors and efferent signalling systems (endocrine and neuroendocrine). 

Workpackage 9
Afferent signalling to the hypothalamus
Leader: Carlos Dieguez

Workpackage 10
Regulation of adipose tissue mass
Leader: Daniel Ricquier