Pennington Biomedical Research Center

The Pennington Biomedical Research Center, located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a campus of the Louisiana State University System and conducts both clinical and basic research. Its mission is to promote healthier lives through research and education in nutrition and preventive medicine. It is the largest academically based nutrition research center in the world, with the greatest number of obesity researchers on faculty. The Center’s nearly 600 employees occupy several buildings on the 234-acre campus.

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Research Priorities

The comprehensive research program at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center focuses on six key areas: Functional Foods, Health and Performance Enhancement, Nutrition and Chronic Diseases, Experimental Obesity, Clinical Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome, and Nutrition and the Brain. Researchers in these divisions rely on the latest molecular, physiological, clinical, behavioral, and bioinformatics technologies with the ultimate goal of preventing common diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.

History

In 1980, Baton Rouge oilman and philanthropist C.B. "Doc" Pennington and his wife, Irene, provided $125 million to fund construction of the nutritional research center. With a U.S. Department of Defense contract and funding from the Louisiana Public Facilities Authority, Governor Buddy Roemer proclaimed the official opening of the Center in 1988. Dr George Bray, a renown obesity researcher, was recruited to be the first executive director of the center and under his leadership the center reached its present status in the scientific world.

Today, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center houses almost 600 employees, 14 research laboratories, 17 core service laboratories, an inpatient and outpatient clinic, two metabolic chambers, a research kitchen, an administrative area, more than $20 million in technologically advanced equipment, and a team of over 80 scientists and physicians with specialties such as molecular biology, genomics and proteomics, neuroanatomy, exercise physiology, biochemistry, psychology, endocrinology, biostatistics and electrophysiology.

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