Pilot and Feasibility (P&F) Program

PILOT AND FEASIBILITY COLLABORATIVE PROGRAM 

The UW NORC collaborates with the Diabetes Research Center (DRC) and the UW Medicine Diabetes Institute (UWMDI) in a joint Pilot and Feasibility Research Program. The program collectively offers multiple awards of $50,000/year for up to 2 years to promising investigators from any disciplinary background performing research in the fields of nutrition, metabolism, diabetes, and obesity. Proposals may include basic, clinical, translational, or population-based studies that align with one or more of the institutions’ respective research themes. Awards are funded by the NIH (P30 grants DK017047 and DK035816) and the UW.

2023 Pilot and Feasibility Award Call: LOIs and reviewer nomination forms are now closed. This is a Joint Pilot and Feasibility Program comprised of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC), Diabetes Research Center (DRC) and the UW Medicine Diabetes Institute (UWMDI). 

2023 UW NORC P&F RECIPIENTS:

Dr. Carlos Campos, PhD, has been awarded a two-year Pilot and Feasibility Award through the UW Nutrition Obesity Research Center for his project entitled: “Uncovering behavioral representations of energy state.”

Dr. Campos received his PhD in Neuroscience from Washington State University in 2014. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Richard Palmiter and Michael Schwartz at the University of Washington, using mouse transgenic and viral approaches to investigate genetically defined brain pathways involved in feeding behavior, learning, and memory. Dr. Campos was recruited by the Department of Medicine and appointed to Assistant Professor in Fall of 2019. His research examines how physiological signals related to internal state interact with other sensory systems to affect learning and memory, the neurological underpinnings of prediction.

Project description: Our research examines how physiological signals related to internal state interact with other sensory systems to affect learning and memory. We study both sensory systems that convey the status of the body to the brain, that innervate internal organs to sense things such as hunger, illness, arousal, as well as those that sense the external world and the quality of the objects within it – for example the feeling of pain or the tastiness of food that motivates approach or avoidance. The internal state (e.g. body energy levels) can reflect the amount and types of behaviors an animal exhibits, as well as the responsiveness to environmental cues that are salient based on that state. The goal of this project is to leverage exhaustive descriptions of behavior to better understand mechanisms by which experimental manipulations influence appetite and weight loss. To accomplish this, we are developing cutting-edge imaging technology, named MeshPose to better measure and classify behavior patterns. We hypothesize that energy status is associated with expression of different behavior patterns, and that this information could be helpful in predicting the effects of experimental interventions on weight loss.

Dr. Kimberly Alonge, PhD, has been awarded a two-year Pilot and Feasibility Award through the UW Nutrition Obesity Research Center for her project entitled: “Role of hypothalamic PNNs in nutrient and hormone sensing dysfunction in obesity.”

Dr. Alonge received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at West Virginia University. She then conducted her postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington within the Department of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Michael W. Schwartz. Dr. Alonge was recently promoted to an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry with a joint appointment in the School of Medicine’s Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on understanding the functional significance of extracellular matrix changes in metabolic and neurological diseases.

Project description: That obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) are among the most pressing and impactful biomedical challenges confronting modern society highlights the need for an improved understanding of the underlying disease mechanisms. Growing evidence suggests that the central nervous system transduces input from circulating hormones and nutrients into neuronal responses that maintain energy- and glucose- homeostasis and that dysfunction in this system contributes to the pathogenesis of obesity and T2D. Recent work from the Alonge laboratory has found that perineuronal nets (PNNs), which are specialized matrices that regulate the connectivity and activity of neurocircuits, enmesh key neurons involved in the regulation of energy- and glucose metabolism in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus. Her work further shows loss of PNNs in both mouse models of diet-induced obesity and in obese and diabetic humans. Dr. Alonge hypothesizes that the obesity and diabetes-associated loss of hypothalamic PNNs results in altered diffusion of charged factors, including hormones, nutrients, and other metabolites, within this critical brain region resulting in hormone- and nutrient-sensing dysfunction characteristic to metabolic impairments. The concept that hypothalamic PNNs may play a key functional role in hypothalamic sensing of hormones and nutrients through changes in extracellular space diffusion dynamics, and that defects in metabolite diffusion may contribute to the obesity and T2D pathogeneses, constitutes an innovative area of research at the interface of metabolism and neuroscience with relevance to future therapy development.

Dr. Zaslavsky obtained his Bachelor of Science at the University of Haifa, Israel before completing his doctoral degree from the University of Washington School of Nursing focused on advanced statistics and frailty. Dr. Zaslavsky  is currently an Associate Professor  within the School of Nursing at the University of Washington. His research focuses on developing digital tools to promote health in older adults with frailty and dementia.

Project description:  Frailty, Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), and AD-related dementias are progressive conditions that disproportionally affect the same age group and share many risk factors and clinical features. Given that no treatments prevent or slow the progression of dementia, frailty might be a practical target for interventions to reduce the severity of the cognitive decline in persons with dementia. Lifestyle interventions such as healthy eating reduce risks of frailty and brain degeneration. The Mediterranean diet (MedD) is especially pertinent because of its cardioprotective, anti-inflammatory, and pro-metabolic properties, all of which are linked to the physiology of frailty and AD. In fact, observational and intervention studies have consistently shown that people adhering to MedD have less frailty, better brain morphology, and higher function. However, unfortunately, most MedD interventions are limited for implementation at the population level because of the high cost. This project is focused on the development of a mobile behavioral intervention to improve adherence to MedD for adults age 65 and older with mild-to-moderate frailty. The ultimate goal is to support population-level scalable and affordable interventions for secondary dementia risk reduction.