Bioenergetics: Open Access

Qingchun Tong

Qingchun Tong
Center for Metabolic and Degenerative Diseases
The University of Texas, USA

Biography

Dr. Tong is Assistant Professor of Molecular Medicine and adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. He obtained his PhD in Neural and Behavioral Sciences at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. His research is focused on energy balance regulation, obesity and diabetes.

Research Interest

The Tong lab studies how neurocircuitry in the brain controls feeding, energy expenditure and glucose homeostasis. To tackle the complexity in the hypothalamic neural network in the regulation of energy balance, Dr. Tong’s group will generate mouse models with gene-deletion restricted to defined groups of brain neurons. Using these animal models, as well as an array of techniques including immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, neuronal tracing and stereotaxic delivery, his group will try to delineate neural pathways in the brain underlying food intake, body weight and glucose homeostasis, and provide a framework for an effective drug design against the current epidemics of obesity and its associated syndromes.