Mohamad MokademDepartment of Internal Medicine, Division of Digestive and Liver Diseases, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, USA
Biography
My name is Mohamad Mokadem and I am a native of Lebanon. I finished my undergraduate studies as well as my medical degree from the American university of Beirut (AUB) in 2003. I did my initial residency training in Internal Medicine at the AUB-Medical center where I also served as the Medical Chief Resident during 2006-2007. Then, I moved to the United States for advanced training where I did another residency in Internal Medicine at Indiana University in Indianapolis, IN (2007-2010) followed by fellowship training in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the UT Southwestern University (UTSW) in Dallas, TX. During that same period (extending between 2010 and 2014) I also finished post-doctoral fellowship training in obesity and metabolism with a focus on understanding the mechanism behind the beneficial effects of bariatric surgery. This was at the Center for Hypothalamic Research at UTSW under the supervision and guidance of Joel Elmquist DVM, PhD and Vincent Aguirre M.D, Ph.D. I was involved in developing a surgical model for gastric bypass in mice to apply to genetic mouse models in order to better comprehend the molecular mechanism underlying that operation. I recently took a faculty position at the University of Iowa as a physician-scientist in the department of Internal Medicine- division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Research Interest
My laboratory focuses on studying the mechanism of body weight and metabolic regulation after bariatric surgery in rodents (specifically Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) and sleeve gastrectomy (SG)). We have developed a reproducible model of RYGB in mice that recapitulates the human effects of RYGB on body weight, body composition, food intake, fecal calories, glucose homeostasis, and lipid homeostasis. We are interested in looking at the outflow messages delivered from the re-arranged gut (post-surgery) into other parts of the body (including the brain, liver, pancreas and fat tissue). This re-arrangement is currently thought to communicate the energy status of luminal tract to other organs and including the center for energy balance. These messages maybe in a form of hormones (like GLP-1 P-YY, CCK etc...) or neuronal signals (like the afferent neurons of the Vagus nerve). This is, of course, important given the implications of understanding the RYGB mechanisms on developing less-invasive alternative therapies for weight loss, diabetes, and other related metabolic conditions