Examples of Research Activities on the Duluth Campus

Mustafa al'Absi, Ph.D.
Professor of Behavioral Medicine
Max E. and Mary LaDue Pickworth Endowed Research Chair
Director of the Duluth Medical Research Institute
Focus: Mechanisms of stress and pain and linkages with addiction

Dr. Mustafa al'Absi is the founding director of the Duluth Medical Research Institute (DMRI). He is a professor of behavioral medicine at the Department of Behavioral Sciences with a joint appointment in the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. Dr. al'Absi's research program focuses on neurobiological and psychophysiological mechanisms of stress and pain and linkages with addiction. He has been on the leading edge of conducting research to identify biological and psychological factors that are responsible for the harmful effects of stress. For example, he is credited with identifying multiple novel biomarkers of addiction relapse related to stress and for discovering that risk for hypertension is preceded by disruption in the processing of pain signals, which may have implications in the ability to detect signs of a heart attack.

Robert Cormier, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Focus: Colorectal cancer

A cancer geneticist with a primary research focus in the genetics of colorectal cancer, Dr. Cormier’s current projects employ forward and reverse genetic approaches in mice to identify genes that modulate intestinal cancer development. The hope is that these discoveries will prove useful in developing new modalities for the prevention and treatment of human colorectal cancer.

Lester R. Drewes, Ph.D.
Professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Focus: Function of brain blood vessels; brain barrier research

Dr. Drewes’ research focuses on the function of blood vessels in the brain especially the capillaries. He wants to know how chemicals in the blood are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and how this process becomes dysfunctional in diseases such as stroke, Alzheimer’s and the like. Understanding the blood-brain barrier is also critical for designing new therapies for delivery to the brain and for bioengineering the brain vessels to combat brain cancer, epilepsy, Parkinson’s and neurodegenerative diseases. Development of novel neuroprotective drugs is a major goal of these projects.

Janet Lyn Fitzakerley, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology
Focus: Hearing, sensory physiology, brain development and aging

Dr. Fitzakerley’s research focuses on hearing, sensory physiology, brain development and aging. She studies changes in brain electrophysiology during auditory system development and the underlying causes of Meniere's disease, an abnormality of the inner ear. She is also collaborating on the development of a hearing protection system for neonatal intensive care unit incubators.

Goran Hellekant, Ph.D., D.V.M.
Professor, Physiology and Pharmacology
Focus: Neurophysiology of sense of taste

Dr. Hellekant’s main research area is in the neurophysiology of the sense of taste. His team is particularly interested in the coding of human taste, the specificity of taste nerve fibers, psychophysics of taste, the phylogeny of the sense of taste, and sweet and bitter taste receptors. His latest research examines the relationship between taste and pain in the mouth region and his research results contribute to understanding dysfunction of the chemical senses, developing new food and beverage products and replacing alcohol in beverages. Among the problems he has addressed are: the nature of the sweet and bitter taste, the effect of ethyl alcohol on the tongue, and oral factors which influence taste, such as salivation and blood circulation. Dr. Hellekant’s ultimate goal is to understand the human sense of taste in its widest sense, and his laboratory is the only one in the world with the technique to record nerve impulses in certain taste fibers.

Lois Jane Heller, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology
Focus: Cardiac physiology

Dr. Lois Jane Heller has spent much of her research career studying cardiac physiology and how it is altered by various physiological and pathological conditions such as aging, hypertension and cardiac hypertrophy. She has enjoyed fruitful collaborations with colleagues studying cardiac influences of anaphylactic shock, copper deficiency, anti-neoplastic drugs, and currently, genetic susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. Dr. Heller has recently been involved in human studies with the University for Seniors at UMD investigating cardiac reflexes in healthy older individuals.

Jon Holy, Ph.D.
Department of Anatomy
Focus: Cancer treatment

Centered around novel approaches toward treating cancer, Dr. Holy’s research includes three areas: a) Natural product screening including, identifying specific classes of plant products that selectively inhibit the growth, or induce the death, of cancer cells; and learning exactly how these compounds function to selectively target cancer cells; b) engineered stem cells, including working to apply the artificial chromosome technology developed by Dr. Ed Perkins to modify stem cells so that they produce and secrete a number of biomolecules with known anti-cancer effects; and seeking to understand the mechanisms by which engineered stem cells migrate and "home" to tumor sites within the body to facilitate a more localized delivery of the anti-cancer biomolecules; and c) using nanotechnology to study how multiwalled carbon nanotubes influence the developmental program of undifferentiated cells, including both normal stem cells and embryonal carcinoma cancer cells. The goal is to control cancer cell growth and induce cancer cell death.

Joseph R. Prohaska, Ph.D.
Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Focus: Role of copper in brain development and function

Dr. Prohaska studies copper and other metals and brain development and function. His work may help in treating Alzheimer's and Parkinson Disease and is important for understanding nutrition and brain development. Specifically he is interested in understanding the neurochemical roles of copper; for example: why insufficient copper during a brief period of development leads to persistent abnormal sensory motor dysfunction in adulthood.

Jean F. Regal, Ph.D.
Professor, Pharmacology and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Director of the Academic Health Center Duluth Women’s Mentoring Program
Focus: Defining mechanisms and mediators of asthma

Dr. Regal's research laboratory is focused on defining mechanisms and mediators of asthma. As a chronic inflammatory lung disease caused by numerous different allergens, asthma has a serious impact on both children and adults. Her work in basic animal models of asthma is comparing the dose of allergen that causes asthmatic symptoms in young vs adult, male vs female animals. The experiments will provide the basis for determining whether allergen avoidance in the young is a realistic therapeutic strategy in reducing asthma morbidity and mortality in both children and adults.

Dr. Regal is also Director of the Academic Health Center Duluth Women’s Mentoring Program, a peer-mentoring program for women faculty in the Medical School Duluth and College of Pharmacy Duluth. The program is aimed at providing a positive and supportive environment for women faculty with the intent of fostering academic success, retention and promotion of women in the Academic Health Center Duluth.

Teresa Rose-Hellekant DVM, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology
Focus: Estrogens and growth of breast cancer

Terri Rose-Hellekant, D.V.M., Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. Her research focuses on the influence of estrogens and growth factors on breast cancer development. Dr. Rose-Hellekant's laboratory is interested in understanding the underlying mechanisms which drive the progression of the disease in order to identify molecules which may be indicators of cancer risk and/or used as chemopreventives or therapeutic targets. Much of her work is carried out in genetically engineered mouse models of breast cancer.

Patricia Scott, Ph.D.
Research Assistant, Professor Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Focus: Relationship between protein routing and cancer

How does the right protein get to the right place at the right time? And what are the consequences if it doesn’t? In order for proteins to function in the cell, they have to be transported to the right location. Dr. Scott’s laboratory studies the GGA family of proteins. (Golgi-localized, gamma-adaptin ear homology, Arf-binding). GGAs are adapters that connect specific membrane-spanning proteins to the cellular machinery that transports them to their correct location. Misrouting of these proteins can disrupt regulation of cell proliferation and contribute to carcinogenesis. The central hypothesis of Dr. Scott’s work is that dysregulation of GGA activity causes mislocalization of critical proteins, which then contributes to development of cancer.

George Trachte, Ph.D.
Professor of Pharmacology
Associate Dean for Research; Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs
Focus: Cardiovascular disease relationship to salt abnormalities

Dr. Trachte studies cardiovascular diseases related to electrolyte/salt abnormalities and how sodium reduces a key cardiovascular hormone (renin). High levels of salt cause high blood pressure and increase the chance of heart attack, heart failure and stroke. He is specifically analyzing the control of sodium and the role of natriuretic peptides in the whole process. Dr. Trachte also is working with Janet Fitzakerley, Ph.D. on the effect of natriuretic peptides on hearing.

Kendall B. Wallace, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Diplomate, American Board of Toxicology
Fellow, Academy of Toxicological Sciences
Director of the University of Minnesota Toxicology Graduate Program
Focus: Impact of toxic chemicals on human health

Dr. Wallace is an international leader in understanding and developing strategies for managing adverse human health effects associated with exposures to potentially toxic chemicals, such as medicinal or food additives, occupational or environmental exposures. His research is aimed at revealing mechanisms by which chemicals elicit their toxicity, and how the human body responds by altering gene expression and metabolic regulation in order to survive this toxic chemical insult. Diseases that characterize such metabolic states include diabetes and congestive heart failure.

Lorentz E. Wittmers Jr, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Chairperson Department of Physiology/Pharmacology
Focus: physiological response to stress

Dr. Wittmers’ primary research interests focus on physiological response to stress. He became an international expert in hypothermia. In addition to air temperatures, his studies have considered water immersion, drowning and the “diving reflex”. His work led to cardiovascular responses to a combination of cold water and alcohol consumption, supported by Minnesota Sea Grant. Dr. Wittmers today is studying, with Dr. Mustafa al'Absi, neurobiological and psychophysiological mechanisms of stress and pain and linkages with addiction.