Stephen Woods Named Distinguished Research Professor

Stephen C. Woods, PhD, University of Cincinnati professor of psychiatry and director of the Obesity Research Center, is an internationally recognized obesity research expert. For his achievements, UC has named him a Distinguished Research Professor.

"Dr. Woods is a dedicated scientist and teacher," said John Hutton, MD, dean of the UC College of Medicine. "His commitment to fostering interactions and interdisciplinary efforts to gain a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of obesity has made the Obesity Research Center a leader in the field." Woods is involved in several important projects examining the mechanisms underlying the control of food intake and body weight. In cooperation with various UC researchers, he received a major grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate why individuals with high-fat diets tend to eat more and thus, become obese. In another study, Woods seeks to determine how signals, generated in the abdomen (or in the stomach, intestines, pancreas and liver) reach the brain and control energy balance.

In 1999, Woods and his research team received $5 million in funding from the Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) to conduct a collaborative project to study how appetite-controlling neurotransmitters in the brain control food intake and body weight. The researchers are conducting experiments to examine the role of several hormones that control food intake and body weight through their interactions with each other and their influence on the brain. "We want to understand how body fat may alter the secretion of hormones that affect hunger," Dr. Woods explains. "For example, we are examining leptin, a hormone released by fatty adipose tissue into the bloodstream and is thought to carry biochemical messages to the brain to curb appetite."

In the March 2002 issue of Nature Medicine, UC research colleagues of Woods reported details of the first documented research to prove that cloned animals, in this case mice, suffer from obesity. Woods and his fellow researchers are now conducting experiments based on those findings to understand why the cloned mice are prone to adult-onset obesity. The scientists have measured various parameters of obesity and found that the clones were not simply larger, but that they also displayed the characteristics of obesity, including increased body fat, increased levels of leptin and raised levels of insulin, which is released by the pancreas to convert carbohydrates into fat.

In a partnership with researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, Woods is seeking to determine the role of learning in the development of drug tolerance in animals and people.

"I am very excited about the many projects we are working on. There is an epidemic of obesity in the United States and throughout the world. I hope this research might someday be translated into treatments or cures," Woods says. "The goal of all our projects is to determine precisely how the brain normally gets information, related to how much fat is in the body. We may then be able to mimic certain brain signals therapeutically. A treatment might be used to fool the brain into thinking that a person weighs more than they actually do and may respond to the signal by eating less food and losing weight in a natural manner."

Woods has been a professor of psychiatry at UC and director of the Obesity Research Center since 1998. He serves on the Obesity Advisory Committee of Children's Hospital Medical Center and is on the University of Cincinnati Long-Range Research Planning Committee. He is a frequent ad hoc reviewer for several study sections at the National Institutes of Health and editor of Physiology and Behavior. Woods received a BS in zoology in 1965 and a BS in psychology in 1966 from the University of Washington. He received a PhD in psychology and physiology and biophysics from the University of Washington in 1970. He was a fellow in endocrinology at the Seattle Veterans Administration Hospital in 1970 and 1972.