Located in the new UCSD Moores Cancer Center, the Nutrition and Weight Control Unit (NWCU) functions as part of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program. Under the leadership of Cheryl Rock, PhD, RD, the unit is comprised of academic staff and research dietitians, as well as a core group of dedicated senior and junior research staff. The professional staff and academic faculty at the NWCU represent a diversity of disciplines, including nutritional science, psychology, exercise physiology, and biochemistry, as well as extensive and diverse research, community involvement and clinical activities.

Typically, multiple research studies are conducted concurrently at the NWCU, and most of these studies require active participant involvement with the staff and facilities. The Moores UCSD Cancer Center’s second floor Research Clinic is where the NWCU study participants complete their clinic visits. These visits may take anywhere from one to two hours, and may involve filling out questionnaires, taking of body measurements, and a blood collection. The expert and certified staff provide the utmost care for the participants during these visits. The two clinical trials that are currently being conducted at the NWCU are the Survivors’ Health And Physical Exercise (SHAPE) Study with breast cancer survivors, and the NEAT (Nutrition, Exercise And Thoughts) Trial with overweight women.

The laboratory component of the NWCU, which also serves as a component of the Cancer Center Nutrition Shared Resource, has the capability of determining blood and peripheral tissue concentrations of micronutrients, dietary constituents, and relevant metabolites. In addition to biochemical measures conducted using enzymatic or other standardized methodologies, such as those utilized by clinical laboratories, laboratory personnel have particular expertise in the biochemical analysis of carotenoids, retinoids, vitamins, relevant metabolites (e.g., homocysteine, glutathione), lipids, and selected phytochemicals (e.g., curcumin, curcumin metabolites) using high performance liquid chromatography methods. A specialty of this service is the development of new methods for the quantitative analysis of dietary biomarkers, phytochemicals and related metabolites. Because this laboratory provides analytic data for clinical trials, the laboratory is an active participant in several quality assurance programs.

The NWCU collaborates with exercise physiology and fitness experts and faculty based at San Diego State University. For research purposes, cardiopulmonary fitness testing and state-of-the-art body composition measurements are conducted under the expert direction of these academic and research staff.

The research efforts at the NWCU targets the development of broader efforts transferable to clinical practice and public health, and thus, aims to have a substantial effect on reducing disease risk through healthy weight management, improved quality of the diet, and increased physical activity.