US-Ireland Alliance

Jon Brestoff – Tackling Obesity

By Conor Ryan

At the Perelman School of Medicine's Institute for Immunology, Jon is examining the latest results from his lab research, which uses lasers to capture and characterize cell profiles.  He is trying to discover how immune cells may regulate the development of obesity and related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes.  His Ph.D. work is critically important as countries around the world recognize the far-reaching health implications of the obesity crisis.

There are three disciplinary pillars in Jon's professional life - clinical medicine, lab research and epidemiology, a research discipline that forms the basis of all clinical trials and studies about human disease. As a 2010 Mitchell Scholar, Jon studied epidemiology in Ireland at University College Cork under the guidance of Prof. Jan Van Den Broeck.  The pair has since co-authored a textbook on the subject.

Following the completion of his Ph.D., Jon will return to medical school to finish his M.D. clinics.  He intends to focus his career on clinically oriented research, taking care of patients and using that clinical care to understand what the most important issues are to address in the lab.  Having already discovered an anti-obesity compound while an undergraduate at Skidmore College, he intends to continue tackling the obesity pandemic and related diseases.