Christopher K. Glass

Biosketch

Dr. Glass is a physician-scientist recognized for his work on molecular mechanisms that control macrophage functions in health and disease. Dr. Glass majored in Biophysics at UC Berkeley and received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from UC San Diego. He performed internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston before returning to UC San Diego for fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism. Dr. Glass was a founding member of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego and is currently Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Medicine. 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.

Research Interests

The primary goal of my laboratory is to understand the mechanisms by which sequence-specific transcription factors, co-activators and co-repressors regulate the development and function of macrophages in health and disease. A major direction over the past five years has been to define the genome-wide locations and functions of these proteins through the use of assays that are based on massively parallel DNA sequencing. The combination of these technologies with molecular, genetic, lipidomic and cell-based approaches is providing new insights into mechanisms that regulate macrophage gene expression and function that are relevant to a broad range of devastating human disorders for which treatments are not available or are ineffective. One of most important recent efforts has been to define the transcriptomes and regulatory landscapes of human microglia in order to better understand pathogenic mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's Disease.