Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine Department Visiting Professor Series: Christopher Glass, MD, PhD

Lecture
Noon-1 PM: “DAMs, LAMs and SAMs – new macrophage phenotypes in metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases.“

Speaker Bio: Dr Christopher Glass, MD, PhD, is currently Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. He received MD and PhD degrees from UC San Diego and performed internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He returned to UC San Diego for fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism and joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1989.

Short Summary: His laboratory has had a long-standing interest in elucidating the molecular mechanisms by which sequence specific transcription factors, co-activators and co-repressors regulate the development and function of macrophages. A major focus has been on understanding the roles of nuclear hormone receptors and other signal dependent transcription factors in controlling programs of gene expression that underlie both their normal homeostatic functions in healthy tissues, as well as their pathogenic functions in the arterial wall, adipose tissue, liver and brain. Current studies use a combination of genetics and genomics to define general molecular mechanisms that establish macrophage identity and cell-specific responses to homeostatic and pathogenic signals in mouse models and human subjects. His laboratory is applying these approaches to understand and modify pathological programs of macrophage gene expression that promote the development of atherosclerosis, diabetes, hepatitis, and neurodegenerative diseases.