Winner, Ruth Loos, has dedicated her career to understanding the biology that underlies body weight regulation. Her research focuses on the identification of genes associated with obesity to gain insight into the biology that underlies body weight regulation. She contributed to the discovery of the first obesity locus, FTO (Science 2007) and led the work that identified the second locus, near MC4R, showing that common variants in a monogenic gene affect body weight in the general population (Nat Genet 2008). She continued her gene discovery work, leading the obesity workgroup in the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium, identifying >1,500 BMI-associated loci. Enrichment analyses based on the genes in identified loci have pointed to the brain as a critical player in body weight regulation, consistent with models of extreme obesity. These discoveries have been reported in five seminal papers, published in Nature and Nature Genetics, with Dr. Loos as lead author.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has provided support to the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) for Early Career Network development activities. The Novo Nordisk Foundation has had no influence over award selection or meeting agendas.