Contact: Will Sansom
Phone: (210) 567-2579
E-mail: sansom@uthscsa.edu

STOCKAND
Printer Friendly Format

San Antonio (March 6, 2007) — James D. Stockand, Ph.D., associate professor of physiology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, will receive major national recognition April 29 at the Experimental Biology meeting of the American Physiological Society (APS) in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Stockand is this year’s APS Henry Pickering Bowditch Award Lecturer, an annual honor conferred to only one APS member under the age of 42. APS President Dale Benos, Ph.D., selected Dr. Stockand to present a lecture at the Experimental Biology meeting. The research will be considered for publication in the Society journal of Dr. Stockand’s choosing.

Dr. Stockand will receive an honorarium of $2,500, reimbursement of expenses incurred while participating in the Experimental Biology meeting, and a plaque.

At 37, Dr. Stockand already is well funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, recently was promoted to associate professor, and has had an impressive number of articles published in the top journals in his field, said David S. Weiss, Ph.D., professor and chairman of the department of physiology.

“He is at the absolute forefront of his particular area of research, which is the structure and function of ENaC (short for Epithelial Sodium Channel), an ion channel that is crucial to reabsorption of salt by the kidneys,” Dr. Weiss added.

Dr. Stockand is part of a cluster of physiology faculty members studying ion channels, which are implicated in a slew of disease states including hypertension and epilepsy.

“The channel I study moves sodium and is very important for setting blood volume and blood pressure,” Dr. Stockand said. “If salt is not properly reabsorbed at the kidney, you get a disease called renal salt wasting, which results in low blood pressure and electrolyte imbalance. This can lead to death.”

Cases have been documented of people who have mutations in the channel and have the resulting renal salt wasting, he said. However, these cases are rare.

Much more common is the reverse problem — salt-sensitive hypertension. A large majority of hypertension cannot be traced yet to single gene mutations. Salt sensitivity, though, seems to be a culprit in many of these cases.

“Since the channel I study is involved in controlling salt balance, it is a likely candidate to be defective in the hypertension associated with salt sensitivity,” Dr. Stockand said. “This is a very prevalent form of hypertension, and is particularly devastating in African Americans. We are studying the cellular mechanisms controlling salt reabsorption to find promising targets for new therapeutic interventions.”

An estimated 72 million Americans (33 million men and 39 million women) had high blood pressure in 2004, according to the American Heart Association. The prevalence rate was 41.4 percent among African Americans and 28.1 percent among whites. Data show that hypertension is associated with shorter life expectancy.

“Dr. Stockand’s Bowditch Award from the APS is a very significant comment on the impact of his experimental ideas on his area of research,” said Merle S. Olson, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. “This award is a wonderful national recognition of Dr. Stockand’s research group, and indeed our department of physiology, from his peers who know and understand his scholarly contributions.”


###

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $536 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14.3 billion biosciences and health care industry, the leading sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $35 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 22,000 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, psychiatry and clinical neurosciences, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields. For more information, click on www.uthscsa.edu.