The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center

UA Regents Professor Mark Haussler Receives
Prestigious International Research Award

Oct. 13, 2005
From: George Humphrey, (520) 626-7301
Susan Guthrie (602) 631-6555


Mark R. Haussler, PhD

Mark R. Haussler, PhD, Regents Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at The University of Arizona College of Medicine, recently received the William F. Neuman Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR).

Dr. Haussler, who also is acting head of the proposed Department of Basic Medical Sciences for the new Phoenix expansion of the UA College of Medicine, accepted the award at the Sept. 24 meeting of the international biomedical research society in Nashville, Tenn.

The Neuman Award is the oldest and most prestigious award bestowed on an ASBMR member for outstanding and major scientific contributions in the area of bone and mineral research, and for contributions to associates and trainees in teaching, research and administration. Dr. Haussler's research laboratory at the UA College of Medicine has made some of the most important and seminal discoveries in the bone and mineral field, particularly in regard to vitamin D action. A recognized leader in the area of bone mineral regulating hormones, he served as ASBMR's 13th president in 1992.

The Haussler lab has published 260 papers and has been continuously funded by National Institutes of Health research grants for 34 years. During his career, Dr. Haussler and his laboratory have produced high-impact results that literally have defined the molecular actions of vitamin D and its hormonal control of bone and mineral metabolism. His translational research investigations have revealed fundamental insights of vitamin D metabolism to a nuclear sterol hormone (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D), which functions to control gene expression. Studies by the Haussler lab have advanced the field and produced long-term ramifications for both basic and clinical bone/mineral sciences.

Dr. Haussler joined the UA in 1971, and has been a Regents Professor since 1990. He has trained 27 young scientists, many of whom have gone on to distinguished academic careers. He also is an award-winning classroom teacher of first-year UA medical students, having been honored as "Lifetime Basic Sciences Educator." He also has been recognized for teaching graduate students in the laboratory and in lecture settings.

According to the award nominator, B. Lawrence, Riggs, MD, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minn., "Few members of ASBMR have made the fundamental contributions to bone and mineral research that Mark Haussler has. He has made or participated in studies of almost all of the major discoveries in vitamin D metabolism from the first appreciation of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D and its nuclear receptor onward; has been a major contributor to elucidating the role of the vitamin D endocrine system in bone and calcium/phosphate physiology and to how its disruption leads to clinical disease; and, finally, has helped to develop the new area of nutrigenomics, the participation of novel, nutritionally generated ligands (hormones derived from food sources), as well as common polymorphisms in the vitamin D receptor gene, in regulation of growth and in the development of cancer. Moreover, Mark's work epitomizes the spirit of ASBMR, not only being positioned at the interface between basic science and clinically relevant insight, but involving active collaboration."

 

 

Susan Guthrie
Senior Public Affairs Coordinator
University of Arizona, College of Medicine - Phoenix
4001 N. Third Street, Suite 401
Phoenix, Arizona  85012
602-631-6555 (office) 480-241-7738 (cell)
sguthrie@email.arizona.edu

www.phoenix.arizona.edu

 

To read about the expansion of the UA College of Medicine in Phoenix go to http://www.phoenix.medicine.arizona.edu/About/News/Campus/