Grant: CIHR Clinician Scientist - Phase 2

In Canada, 16% of adults and 10% of children are obese. Obesity in children is now five times as common as it was in 1981, and is set to replace smoking as the major cause of preventable death. Obesity makes people more likely to get diabetes and heart disease, and costs Canada $12.5 billion per year. A targeted investment of health research money will pay for itself many times over, if it makes even a small dent in obesity. Many see it as a lifestyle disease, caused by eating too much and not exercising enough. Though it is true that you won¿t get fat unless you eat more calories than you burn, your genes strongly influence appetite and calorie burning. Genes also strongly influence who gets diabetes and heart disease. I am a doctor who specializes in genetic diseases that affect body fat. My group¿s work is guided by the idea that ¿extreme phenotypes¿ (e.g. severe childhood obesity and unusual disorders of fat loss) teach us much about obesity and its diseases. Our strategy is to seek uncommon genes and mutations that force people to gain or lose fat. In this project we will study children with either severe fat gain or inexplicable fat loss, to look for extra or missing copies of whole genes. This will uncover new genes and pathways relevant to human body weight. These pathways will be good candidates for anti-obesity treatments, and will also teach us about key molecular players in obesity, diabetes and heart disease in the general population.