Mayo Clinic’s well-regarded clinical program in digestive disorders now has a new partner — the Mayo Clinic Center for Cell Signaling in Gastroenterology (MCCCSG). Nicholas LaRusso, M.D., an internationally-recognized clinician-investigator in gastroenterology, will serve as director.
Supported by a five-year, $5.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the MCCCSG launched in September and is one of 18 such digestive disease research core centers in the country. Its goal? Understand the signaling pathways that control the function of gastrointestinal cells in health and disease.
Research themes for the MCCCSG include genetics and gene regulation, membrane receptors and ion channels, and signal transduction. Cross-cutting these themes are three disease focus areas: carcinogenesis, enteric neurosciences and liver pathobiology.
At Mayo Clinic, “centers” serve as hubs that bring together multidisciplinary groups of basic scientists and clinical researchers. Although the MCCCSG is focused on gastroenterology, its members come from a variety of fields in addition to GI — areas like endocrinology, physiology, immunology, pathology and oncology. This team approach to research encourages collaboration, which in turn enables faster translation from the lab to clinical trials and, ultimately, from trials into widespread clinical practice.
For more on Dr. LaRusso’s research, check out the recent article “Making Sense of Cilia” from Discovery’s Edge, Mayo Clinic’s research magazine.
— Matt Sluzinski
