The opportunity to build excellence from the ground floor up motivates Jonathan Geiger to return to UND

The opportunity to help develop the Center of Excellence in Neuroscience while continuing his research was “absolutely” a critical factor in the decision by Jonathan Geiger, Ph.D., to join the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

He came on board officially July 1 as chair of the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Therapeutics and principal investigator of the $10.3 million COBRE (Center of Biomedical Research Excellence) grant, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the largest single research grant ever awarded to the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

He is returning to his alma mater where he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees.

“People here are doing work that’s not only important but also complementary to work we do in our lab” at the University of Manitoba, which he recently left. “It’s easy for me to see linkages and synergy between the work on both campuses,” he said.

Geiger plans to help recruit new faculty members over the next four years to join the cluster of neuroscientists focusing on brain research at the medical school. One new recruit is Saobo Lei, Ph.D., an electrophysiologist from NIH whose work has been published in the top-rated scientific journals in the world.

Geiger is most eager to jump into a brand-new initiative.

“The research enterprise here is on a very steep incline,” he noted, “and it’s fun to get in at an early developmental stage, when you can have an impact and make it even more successful. The reward will come from seeing current and new faculty become even more successful, and mentorship by others and me will help in this regard.”

He is anxious to participate in the medical school’s plans to “build a critical mass of like-minded neuroscientists, so the success will be self-perpetuating – and the health of North Dakotans, and people everywhere, will be better as a result of the kinds of research that we are doing here.

The brain is very complicated, Geiger said, with its different cell types.

“There are different types of neurons in different parts of the brain, and each connects to thousands of other neurons,” he explained. Communication between and among nerves is highly complex, and can occur within the nerve as well as between other nerves and other types of cells.

Add to that the fact that each part of the brain has different functions; nerves can “talk” within an area and talk to other parts of the brain, he said. Further, the brain is not static: it can learn and change through a process called “neuroplasticity.”

“The brain is not like other organs,” Geiger emphasized. “If there’s a problem in one part of the brain (from injury or illness), it can compensate in another part.”

“We know so much more about the brain than we did years ago,” he continued. “It’s an interesting and complicated organ.” But also one of the most feared, Geiger suggests, “because if something goes wrong in the brain – whether it’s seizures, effects of drug use, dysfunction – people can be isolated, ostracized, stigmatized.

“So it’s really important to try to figure out how the brain works, what can go wrong, and how to fix the problems so that we can help people living with and suffering from various conditions.”

The whole field of drug addiction is opening up, he adds, noting that new information has been identified that provides much-needed hope.

“It’s a perfect time to be at UND,” he said. “Success will help breed other successes.”

Graduate students seeks the "final frontier" with neuroscience research

Patrick Stevens, a graduate student in UND’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, has been fascinated with the field of neuroscience since he was introduced to it in his undergraduate studies by Sally Pyle, assistant professor of biology at UND.

This area of research is “the final frontier,” said the Grand Forks native who is working in the lab of Van Doze, Ph.D., in the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Therapeutics. “We know a lot about what goes on in other parts of the body” but less about “what the brain does physiologically.”

Stevens is studying neurophysiology – the study of how the different parts of the brain interact – which scientists believe plays an important role in the understanding of learning and memory. It’s an area that captured his imagination in a journal club last semester when many of the papers he was reading were written by Doze’s colleagues from Stanford University.

“It’s a concept that is really interesting to me,” he said. So much so that he turned down a better-paying offer from Oregon State University to accept a spot in Doze’s lab after completing a bachelor’s degree in biology in May at UND.

The son of Lowell and Mary Kay Stevens, longtime Grand Forks residents who recently moved to Asheville, N.C., he hopes someday to teach and conduct research as a college professor, but added, “That’s a long way off.”

This experience “will increase my knowledge base and give me direction on where I want to go,” he says, and “will be really important for when I start my own research lab.”

Stevens’ wife Lindsey is working toward a graduate degree at UND in elementary education.

Does smaller size mean longer life?

These UND research mice appeared on the cover of the scientific journal Trends in Genetics. Holly Brown-Borg, associate professor of pharmacology, physiology, and therapeutics, is studying the genetics of aging. The mice are the same age, one normal (left) and the other with a dwarf gene. Dwarf mice live 50 to 60 percent longer than their “normal” counterparts. The obvious question: Does the dwarf gene affect life span in other mammals, including humans? The work of Dr. Brown-Borg and her colleagues at other medical schools, such as Wake Forest, may someday provide the answer.

Two devastating diseases that impact this region

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive degenerative disease that affects an estimated 1.2 million people in the United States and Canada. The disease is caused by the death of brain cells that secrete dopamine, a neurotransmitter that inhibits brain cells which control movement and other body functions. Symptoms include tremors, body rigidity, and problems in movement.

Alzheimer’s is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain, and the most common form of dementia. It affects about four million Americans; one in 10 people over 65 and nearly half of those over 85 have the disease. It is a brain disorder in which nerve cells in the brain die, making it difficult for the brain’s signals to be transmitted properly. It affects memory, judgment, and thinking, diminishing the sufferer’s ability to work or take part in daily activities.