Tackling obesity
In June 2008 we were shocked to learn that Australia has become the most obese nation in the world. In response to the problem the University of Sydney announced it will focus its already significant research expertise in the fight against obesity and related illnesses by setting up a world-class $385 million centre.
A new world-class centre
The University's new Centre for Obesity, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Research, supported by a government grant of $95 million, will draw on expertise from discipline areas as diverse as psychology, sports science, materials engineering and nanotechnology. It will include almost 100 research groups, enabling them to maximise research potential and create Australia's largest clinical trials facility.
"Over the next 20 years chronic diseases brought on by obesity, particularly diabetes and cardiovascular disease, will be a major health concern for Australia," says Ian Caterson, Director of the University's Institute of Obesity, Nutrition and Exercise.
"By having a range of different discipline areas involved, this will lead to high-quality translational research being produced by the new centre".
A report by the Baker Institute in 2008 showed that four million adult Australians, 26 per cent of the population, were obese, overtaking the United States, which has an obesity rate of 25 per cent. The report, which examined the body mass index of 14,000 adults, warned that growing middle-aged waistlines would result in an extra 700,000 cardiovascular-related hospital admissions in the next 20 years, costing an additional $6 billion in health care.
A key strategy of the University of Sydney and its partners is to place themselves, indeed Australia as a whole, at the international forefront of research and training relevant to the control of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, already three of the leading causes of death and disability in Australia. The University aims to create an 'ideas factory', attracting some of the world's leading experts, who will initially join existing faculties and research teams while the new facility is being constructed.
The University's new centre, supported by a government grant of $95 million through the Higher Education Endowment Fund, is due for completion in 2013, with the new 35,000 metre-square precinct located adjacent to the University's Camperdown Campus and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. This location, eventually accommodating more than 5000 researchers and postgraduate students, will help cooperation between researchers based at the hospital and those at University institutes.
"It will be one of the world's most intense concentrations of national and international research leaders and partners in health and related fields," says David Cook, Professor of Physiology and Associate Dean (Finance) in the Faculty of Medicine.
Lessons from locusts
The work of Federation Fellow Professor Stephen Simpson reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of the research that the new centre will encourage and promote.
Simpson won the 2008 Eureka Prize for his groundbreaking work on swarming locusts that has provided new insights into the dietary causes of the human obesity epidemic. He has developed a 'protein leverage hypothesis', which recognises that, like locusts, humans' protein intake is tightly regulated and takes precedence over other nutrients. His hypothesis has far-reaching implications for nutrition and ageing research.
Simpson's work spans the ecological scale to the molecular scale in biology – a huge undertaking which will continue to see him collaborating with scientists across many disciplines.
Another key focus of the centre's research will be the fight against the growing diabetes epidemic. The 2005 AusDiab Follow-up Study (Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study) showed that 1.7 million Australians have diabetes, but that up to half of the cases of type 2 diabetes remain undiagnosed. By 2031 it is estimated that 3.3 million Australian will have type 2 diabetes.