B P. Herring, PhD

Research in the Herring laboratory focuses on understanding the mechanisms that regulate the phenotype of smooth muscle cells under physiological conditions and under pathological conditions such as diabetes. His laboratory is particularly interested in how diabetes affects the activity of the gastrointestinal tract. Collaborative studies with physicians in Gastroenterology are using human tissues to examine the molecular pathways through which diabetes impairs gastric emptying to cause gastroparesis. These human studies are being combined with novel mouse knockout and knockin models to determine the mechanisms underlying these pathological changes. Additional collaborations with Dr. Jeffrey Elmendorf, are unraveling the transcriptional events that affect glucose and cholesterol metabolism to result in insulin resistance in fat and skeletal muscle.

We are interested in understanding the mechanisms that cause gastroparesis.