Marcelo Correia, MD, PhD

Contact Information:

Office: E400 GH 
Phone: 353-7812
Faculty Profile 

Brief discription of current research: 

As a Research Scholar at Dale Abel Laboratory (currently at Renata Pereira Laboratory), my research is centered in the metabolic effects of skeletal muscle-specific depletion of dynamin related protein 1 (DRP1). I established and validated inducible and constitutive murine models of skeletal muscle-specific depletion of DRP1. My results show that mice with inducible depletion of DRP1 are protected from weight gain and diabetes during high fat diet. The molecular mechanisms underlying these phenotypes involve the endoplasmic reticulum stress response and secretion of myokines such as FGF21 and GDF15. My activities in Pereira’s Laboratory include mentoring undergraduate students. I have had the privilege of mentoring 6 pre-med students who successfully received internal fellowships over the last 3 years. Of note, 2 of my mentees currently hold Iowa Biosciences Academy fellowships, an NIH-supported program that sponsors outstanding minority students for a future MD/PhD career. I am also interested in clinical research and currently conduct a clinical trial to assess the utility of very low-calorie diet for the management of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04861571). This project is funded by a Stead Family philanthropy grant. I am also a co-investigator in 2 clinical studies addressing the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic neuropathy led by Dr. Mark Yorek at the VAMC in Iowa City (grants RX003826; R01DK126837) and the principal investigator in 4 international randomized clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical industries run at the UIHC Preventive Intervention Center.

3 most influential diabetes/obesity/metabolism publications:

  • Agapitov AV*, Correia ML*, Sinkey CA, Haynes WG. Dissociation between sympathetic nerve traffic and sympathetically mediated vascular tone in normotensive human obesity. Hypertension. 2008 Oct;52(4):687-695. *Equal contribution. Marcelo Correia is the corresponding author.
  • Sun Y, Liu B, Smith JK, Correia MLG, Jones DL, Zhu Z, Taiwo A, Morselli LL, Robinson K, Hart AA, Snetselaar LG, Bao W. Association of preoperative body weight and weight loss with risk of death after bariatric surgery. JAMA Network Open. 2020; 3(5): e204803. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.4803.
  • Hart A, Sun Y, Titcomb TJ, Liu B, Smith JK, Correia MLG, Snetselaar LG, Zhu Z, Bao W. Association between preoperative serum albumin levels with risk of death and postoperative complications after bariatric surgery: a retrospective cohort study. Surg Obes Relat Dis. 2022; 18(7):928-934. doi: 10.1016/j.soard.2022.04.006.
  • Herrington GJ, Peterson JJ, Cheng L, Allington BM, Jensen RD, Healy HS, Correia MLG. The use of very low‐calorie diets in subjects with obesity complicated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: a scoping review. Obes Sci Pract. 2022; 8(4):510-524. doi: 10.1002/osp4.589.

Quote:

Science is a relentless search for Truth