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Obesity expert to deliver Charles Ross Memorial Lecture at SUNY Upstate Nov. 30

Jeffrey Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., who is nationally noted for his research on obesity, will deliver the 8th Annual Charles R. Ross, Ph.D., Research Memorial Lecture Nov. 30 at 4 p.m. in the Medical Alumni Auditorium of Weiskotten Hall, 766 Irving Ave., Syracuse. Friedman's lecture, titled "Leptin and the Regulation of Body Weight," is free and open to the public. The lecture is part of the SUNY Upstate Medical University's 14th Annual Charles R. Ross, Ph.D., Research Poster Session.

Friedman is a professor at Rockefeller University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In late 1994, Friedman and his colleagues isolated the mouse ob gene and its human homologue. They subsequently found that injections of the encoded protein leptin decreased body weight of mice by reducing food intake and increasing energy expenditure. Current research is aimed at understanding the mechanisms by which leptin transmits its weight-reducing signal.

Friedman was appointed assistant investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Rockefeller University in 1986, promoted to associate investigator in 1991 and investigator in 1997. He was appointed professor at Rockefeller in 1995 after serving as associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics. In 1995 he was appointed director of the Starr Foundation Center for Human Genetics and, in 1998, he was awarded the Marilyn M. Simpson Professorship.

For more information about the lecture, contact the Research Development Office at 315-464-4317.

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