Biography

Nancy Puzziferri, MD, MSCS, FACS, DABOM, is a fellowship-trained bariatric surgeon (University of California – Davis) practicing at Oregon Health & Science University. She completed an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award Master’s in Clinic Sciences to improve the quality of clinical research within bariatric surgery. She is the outgoing Chair of the Research committee for the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, a member of The Obesity Society and Obesity Medicine Association.

She has worked extensively on inter-disciplinary research aimed at elucidating the mechanisms of weight loss resulting from bariatric surgery. Collaborating with psychiatry, endocrinology, molecular biology, MRI physics, and biostatistics, she and her colleagues developed a longitudinal study using functional MRI to study the brain response to food cues before and after eating. The study was conducted in individuals with and without severe obesity, both before and after bariatric surgery. The study not only highlights the differences in brain response to eating for leans versus those with obesity (Puzziferri, Zigman et al., Obesity: April 2016), but also how bariatric surgery changes our perceptions of food and eating. This study also contributed to understanding how the protein LEAP2 modulates the appetite hormone Ghrelin in both humans and mice (Mani, Puzziferri et al., J Clin Invest Sept 2019).

Dr. Puzziferri currently co-leads an NIH-funded randomized controlled trial testing the effects of an essential amino acid supplement on muscle mass and protein synthesis after bariatric surgery. The overarching aim of the study is to optimize and maintain surgical weight loss long term for those with obesity.