Interview: Interview with David Mangelsdorf for Personalized Medicine

David Mangelsdorf is Professor and Chair of Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas (TX, USA) where he holds the Beatrice and Miguel Elias Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science and the Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology. He received his BSc in biology and chemistry from Northern Arizona University (AZ, USA) in 1981 and his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Arizona (AZ, USA) in 1987. He did his postdoctoral studies at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies (CA, USA; 1987-1993). David Mangelsdorf has also been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (MD, USA) since moving to Dallas in 1993. His current research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of transcriptional signaling by nuclear hormone receptors and exploiting their ligand dependency to discover novel therapeutic options for fighting diseases such as atherosclerosis, gallstone disease, cholestasis, metabolic syndrome, cancer and infectious parasitic diseases. His research team recently discovered a correlation between the expression of two nuclear receptor proteins in non-small-cell lung cancer tissue samples with patients' clinical outcomes. The research features in PLoS Medicine and suggests that the nuclear receptor proteins could serve as therapeutic targets in non-small-cell lung cancer.