“Anchored in fat: mechanisms to resolve diseases caused by malnourishment in obesity and starvation” will be presented by Concetta DiRusso, George Holmes University Professor of Biochemistry and Jefferson Science Fellow, University of Nebraska, on Tuesday, September 22, 2015 in N172 Beadle Center.

The World Health Organization estimates that 600 million individuals are obese and 600 million are undernourished worldwide. Each extreme results in disease, loss of productivity, and increased health care burden. The DiRusso laboratory approaches both problems focusing on the role of dietary fat in disease burden and the impact of specific fatty acid species in disease prevention and resolution. In this presentation Dr. DiRusso will summarize her laboratory’s research on the development of pharmaceutical interventions to prevent lipotoxic disease as occurs in obesity, and will introduce her recent work for the US Agency For International Development (USAID) on establishing guidelines for inclusion of essential fatty acids in lipid based ready to use therapeutic foods (LNS RUTF) for the treatment of severe and moderate acute malnutrition.