Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition
Division Overview
Our Division of Endocrinology provides the most advanced clinical care for endocrine diseases, is committed to training students, researchers, and physicians, and is strongly invested in basic and clinical investigations to advance our understanding and refine the therapy of endocrine diseases. You will find that our physicians and scientists are passionate about changing the way we treat endocrine diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and thyroid disease.
Please explore our website to learn about our division, and come to see us if you need dedicated and state-of-the-art medical care for an endocrine condition.
Dr. Christoph Buettner
Chief, Division of Endocrinology
About the Division of Endocrinology
The Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Nutrition provides care for patients with endocrine-related disorders, and diseases due to impaired hormone secretion or signaling. We are committed to training the next generation of endocrine specialists and researching prevention, causes, and treatments of endocrine and metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity.
The Division of Endocrinology is devoted to compassionate and state-of-the-art care of patients with endocrine diseases such as diabetes, obesity, disorders of cholesterol and lipid metabolism, pituitary and adrenal abnormalities, osteoporosis and other bone diseases, and thyroid and parathyroid disease.
Our tripartite mission is as follows:
- Provide state-of-the-art and comprehensive clinical service to our patients with endocrine disorders;
- Advance our understanding of diabetes and endocrinology through clinical and basic science research and
- Train physicians and other health care providers as well as researchers in the principles and practice of endocrinology.
Faculty
Fredric Wondisford, MD
Professor and Department of Medicine Chair
Christoph Buettner MD, PhD
Professor and Division Chief
Louis Amorosa, MD
Professor
Xiangbing D Wang, MD PhD
Professor
Sara Lubitz MD
Associate Professor and Program Director
Anupam Ohri, MD
Associate Professor
David A. Cohen, MD
Assistant Professor and Department of Medicine Vice Chair of Education
Ankit Shah MD
Assistant Professor
Kunal Shah, MD
Assistant Professor
Hyon Kim, MD
Assistant Professor
Jacqueline Plick, APN, CDE
Faculty Emeritus
Dr. Avedis Khachadurian, MD
Emeritus Clinical Professor
Dr. Stephen Schneider, MD
Emeritus Clinical Professor
Volunteer Faculty
Dr. Arthur Santora, MD
Clinical Associate Professor
Dr. Afshin Salsali, MD
Clinical Associate Professor
Research Faculty
Dr. Moshmi Bhattacharya, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dr. Abdelfattah El Ouaamari, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dr. Hyokjoon Kwon, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dr. Xiaoyang Su, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dr. Svetlana Minakhina, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Fellowship Details
Mission
Our mission is for fellows to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for providing ethical, humanistic, high-quality, and cost-effective care of patients with diabetes and disorders of endocrinology and metabolism in the inpatient and ambulatory settings
Clinical Training
The Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Nutrition offers an ACGME-accredited two-year fellowship starting July 1st of each year. The training program provides opportunities to observe and manage inpatients, outpatients, and consults, along the spectrum of endocrine disease. Fellows are supervised and closely mentored by dedicated faculty.
Trainees are an integral part of the inpatient multidisciplinary cardiovascular surgery and heart and renal transplant teams. The fellows develop their procedural skills using an onsite DEXA machine, continuous glucose monitors, and a thyroid ultrasound machine.
Education
To achieve the goals of the program, the twenty-four months of training are structured into two progressively advancing levels of competency-based objectives, with the aim of building the medical knowledge, technical skills, and competencies of the trainee. The curriculum addresses the art, science, and business of medicine, in addition to regularly scheduled conferences, including journal clubs, research presentations, case presentations, and neurosurgery and endocrine surgery tumor boards.
Fellows are regularly involved in the educational training of residents and medical students. In addition, fellows have the opportunity to take part in both laboratory-based basic scientific research and clinical research programs in the division.
Recent Changes
We have had new faculty members join us recently and they bring expertise in the fields of Obesity, Diabetes, and Women’s Health. New faculty members joining our Research Division are studying Kisspeptin signaling.
Most importantly, in 2020 we welcomed our new Chief, Dr. Christoph Buettner MD, PhD, who infuses the Division with tremendous excitement regarding research, clinical care, and education.
Publications and More
- The Role of Sensory Innervation in β-Cell Regeneration and Function
- Genetically and Anatomically Targeted Neuromodulation of Pancreatic β-Cells
- Substrate and Hormonal Regulation of Gluconeogenesis
- Sensory-Derived Signals Regulated Regeneration of Insulin-Producing Cells
- Anatomical-Functional Mapping of Pancreatic Sensory Neuronal Circuits
- Structural and Functional Mapping of Islet β-Cell Sensory Innervation
- Identification of Novel Delivery Systems for Diabetic Therapeutics
- Metabolomics Data Correction and Normalization Using Stable-Isotope Labeled Internal Standards
- Molecular Mechanisms of Thyroid Hormone Action
- Obesity, Type 2 DM; beta cell function and glycemic improvement after surgical weight loss
- Peripheral leukocytes and insulin resistance
- Long-Term Outcomes of NIFTP/UMP Tumors
- MPOWERED(TM) Phase 3 Clinical Trial of Octreotide Capsules in Patients with Acromegaly
Our Clinics
The Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, in partnership with other departments within the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, has established the PROUD Gender Center of New Jersey, a first of its kind in the state to offer a broad range of services and experts specializing in LGBTQ health care in one central location.
The center features a highly experienced, multidisciplinary team specializing in transgender health that offers primary care, hormonal therapy, and surgical procedures to support the transition of transgender patients. In addition to medical services, the center offers support and education programs, as well as resources for the transgender community and its allies. David Cohen and Sarah Lubitz are the Division endocrinologists who run a fellow clinic that provides hormonal care to transgender patients in our community.
See news coverage about this groundbreaking partnership by ABC7 Eyewitness News.
Our Facility
Accordion Content
-
The Metabolic Phenotyping Core Facility provides investigators with services to comprehensively assess metabolism in rodents. This is particularly relevant if one is interested in understanding the role of genes or drugs in controlling metabolism, and given the huge cost of the obesity and diabetes epidemic, this has potential relevance to many investigators at Rutgers who do not work on metabolism but may have stumbled upon a metabolic phenotype that may potentially have relevance for obesity and diabetes.
We provide advice on experimental design and metabolic phenotyping capabilities such as Indirect calorimetry, body composition, metabolic turnover studies, and hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp analysis in live animals, which includes data analysis and interpretation. Do not hesitate to contact us if you are considering using our services.
-
Indirect Calorimetry
To assess energy homeostasis including oxygen consumption, CO2 production, respiratory exchange ratio through indirect calorimetry, and in addition food intake and activity monitoring.
The core can perform indirect calorimetry for up to 24 animals in parallel (8 Comprehensive Laboratory Animal Monitoring System (CLAMS, Columbus Instrument) and 16 TSE metabolic cages). Eight of these indirect calorimetric cages are placed in one environmental chamber that allows the manipulation of the ambient temperature where the animals can be housed at a set temperature in a range from 4°C to 30°C to assess how metabolism is regulated during cold exposure or thermoneutrality commonly believed to be around 28°C.
The latter is important as many metabolic functions are influenced by the ambient temperature and the argument has been made that mice are under constant moderate cold stress at room temperature which changes the susceptibility to fatty liver and metabolic disease. Hence, conventionally housed mice are not a good model for human disease since humans wear clothes and do not experience cold stress.
Thus, it is informative to study mice at thermoneutrality as a more suitable model for human conditions, which the environmental chamber allows to do. The profound impact of ambient temperature on experimental outcomes is now appreciated in the metabolism and, for example, in the immunology field.
Body Composition
The ratio of lean mass and fat mass is critical to studying/understanding energy homeostasis and metabolic disease. The EchoMRI measures lean mass, fat mass, and free water content in restrained conscious mice using MRI. Body composition is assessed without anesthesia in less than three minutes, this can be repeated to confirm reproducibility as well as serially to monitor the effect of an obesity or drug treatment and/or specific gene ablation in metabolic control.
Tracer Infusion Studies
To determine metabolic flux and the turnover rate of specific molecules and the contribution of labeled substrates to metabolism and metabolic control, the core provides metabolomics analysis using stable-isotope labeled tracer infusion and LC/MS. Tracers are infused through the right jugular vein to establish and maintain a steady state for 6h, and serum samples are collected and derivatized to analyze with LC/MS (Metabolomics Core conducts LC/MS).
Enrichment of metabolites and flux analysis is conducted to determine the distribution of specific carbon sources and the turnover rate of metabolites. These results provide fundamental metabolic information in diabetes, NAFLD, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Metabolomics analysis is a critical technique to overcome the limitation of traditional metabolomics studies such as bolus injection because infusion maintains a steady state of metabolism, and state of the art LC/MS system enables determination of the enrichment and flux rate of many metabolites in the same sample.
Hyperinsulinemic-Euglycemic Clamp
The core provides a hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp using a stable-isotope labeled 6,6-D2 glucose infusion and LC/MS to study glucose metabolism and insulin action in mice. 6,6-D2 glucose is infused through the right jugular vein for 3h for basal clamp and then 6,6-D2 glucose plus insulin and 50% (w/v) glucose are infused for 3h to maintain euglycemia. The serum is collected to determine glucose enrichment and turnover rate using LC/MS.
This result provides key parameters of insulin action such as the glucose infusion rate and the rate of hepatic glucose production in the basal state and the hyperinsulinemic clamp period. Hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamp in this core uses a stable-isotope labeled tracer instead of traditional radioisotope and LC/MS, providing more accurate results and a safer methodology as no radioactivity is involved.