Selected Grantee Publications
Lipocalin-2 Is an Anorexigenic Signal in Primates
Petropoulou et al., eLife. 2020.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58949
The hormone lipocalin-2 (LCN2) suppresses food intake in mice. Researchers demonstrated that LCN2 increases after a meal and reduces hunger in people with normal weight or overweight, but not in obese individuals. The researchers also showed that LCN2 crosses the blood-brain barrier and binds to the hypothalamus in vervet monkeys. LCN2 was found to bind to the hypothalamus in human, baboon, and rhesus macaque brain sections. When injected into vervets, LCN2 suppressed food intake and lowered body weight without toxic effects in short-term experiments. These findings lay the groundwork to investigate whether LCN2 might be a useful treatment for obesity. Supported by ORIP (P40OD010965), NCATS, NIDDK, NIA, and NHLBI.
Epidemiological and Molecular Characterization of a Novel Adenovirus of Squirrel Monkeys After Fatal Infection During Immunosuppression
Rogers et al., Microbial Genomics. 2020.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32614763/
Adenoviruses frequently cause upper respiratory tract infections, often causing disseminated disease in immunosuppressed patients. A novel adenovirus was identified, squirrel monkey adenovirus 1 (SqMAdV-1), as the cause of a fatal infection in an immunocompromised squirrel monkey (Saimiri boliviensis). A nucleotide polymorphism at the stop codon of the DNA polymerase gene results in a 126 amino acid extension at the carboxy terminus. A single adenovirus variant, SqMAdV-3, has similarity to tufted capuchin (Sapajus apella) adenoviruses. The largest group of adenovirus variants detected, SqMAdV-2.0-2.16, has high similarity (93-99%) to the TMAdV, suggesting that squirrel monkeys may be the natural host of the TMAdV. Supported by ORIP (P40OD010938, R24OD018553), and NIAID.