Program
Summary
Dr. Birnbaum is
a Professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology
at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He
received his B.A., M.D., and Ph.D. from Brown University,
the latter for studies on the hormonal regulation of hepatic
glycogenolysis. After internship and residency in internal
medicine at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO, he completed
post-doctoral training as a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow at
the University of California, San Francisco and at Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Institute in the laboratory of the late Ora M. Rosen.
He then moved to Harvard Medical School, initially as an
Assistant and Associate Professor in the Department of
Cellular and Molecular Physiology, and then in the Department
of Cell Biology.
In 1994, Dr. Birnbaum moved to the University
of Pennsylvania to become the Rhoda and Willard Ware Professor
of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases and an Investigator
in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dr. Birnbaum's
research concerns a number of aspects of the regulation
of metabolism and growth. Major problems currently under
study include the mechanism by which insulin regulates
a number of physiological metabolic functions, particularly
glucose uptake into muscle and adipose tissue. These studies
include consideration of both insulin signal transduction
cascades and the trafficking of the insulin-responsive
GLUT4 glucose transporter among various subcellular compartments.
Recently, Dr. Birnbaum has initiated experiments aimed
at clarifying how contraction and exercise also stimulate
glucose uptake into muscle. It has now become clear that
insulin and IGF-1 also exert profound effects on cell survival
and growth, even in the absence of concomitant changes
in cell proliferation. Dr. Birnbaum is currently studying
these processes in mammalian tissue culture cells, mice
and in the model organism, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
These observations have led to a consideration of the factors
that regulate the growth and survival of pancreatic beta
cells, and likely influence susceptibility to pancreatic
endocrine failure and diabetes mellitus..
Publications Please visit PubMed
for a complete list of publications.
Easton RM, Cho H, Roovers K, Shineman DW, Mizrahi M, Forman MS, Lee VM, Szabolcs M, de Jong R, Oltersdorf T, Ludwig T, Efstratiadis A, Birnbaum MJ. Role for Akt3/Protein Kinase B{gamma} in Attainment of Normal Brain Size.
Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Mar;25(5):1869-78.
PMID: 15713641 [PubMed - in process]
Hammerman PS, Fox CJ, Birnbaum MJ, Thompson CB.
The Pim and Akt oncogenes are independent regulators of hematopoietic cell growth and survival.
Blood. 2005 Feb 10; [Epub ahead of print]
PMID: 15705789 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Patel NA, Kaneko S, Apostolatos HS, Bae SS, Watson JE, Davidowitz K, Chappell DS, Birnbaum MJ, Cheng JQ, Cooper DR.
Molecular and genetic studies imply Akt-mediated signaling promotes PKC{beta}II alternative splicing via phosphorylation of SRp40.
J Biol Chem. 2005 Jan 31; [Epub ahead of print]
PMID: 15684423 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Steppan CM, Wang J, Whiteman EL, Birnbaum MJ, Lazar MA.
Activation of SOCS-3 by resistin.
Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Feb;25(4):1569-75.
PMID: 15684405 [PubMed - in process]
Birnbaum MJ.
On the InterAktion between hexokinase and the mitochondrion.
Dev Cell. 2004 Dec;7(6):781-2. Review.
PMID: 15572122 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
