The mission of the Center for Neuroinflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases incorporates that of the Center for Obesity Reversal, which was founded in 2014 to promote interdisciplinary, collaborative research focused on obesity and related diseases. The center was led by Dr. Timothy Bartness, who died in 2015. Today, the Center for Neuroinflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases, founded and led by Dr. Javier Stern, strives to increase scientific understanding of the neuroinflammatory response and how it may contribute to disorders, including hypertension, stress, obesity and neuropsychiatric disorders.
In Memoriam, 1953-2015
Timothy Bartness was a world-renowned obesity researcher, Regents’ Professor and founding director of the Center for Obesity Reversal.
He was passionate about tackling and reversing the nation’s obesity epidemic by using a basic science approach. Bartness directed researchers in the center to study two ways to reduce obesity, decreasing food intake and increasing energy expenditure, with a primary focus on the mechanisms underlying the control of food intake and energy expenditure.
His lab focused on how the brain communicates with adipose tissue (fat) through the sympathetic nervous system and how fat communicates with the brain through the sensory nervous system, a bidirectional communication that seems to be responsible for controlling the breakdown of fat and functioning as the principal way mammals decrease their body fat. He was also interested in the brain chemicals that control food acquisition and storage, behaviors that can lead to obesity. He uncovered a number of neurochemical factors that promote food hoarding in non-human animal models.