Course Organizers
Denis G. Baskin, Ph.D., received his doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley and is now a VA Senior Research Career Scientist and Research Professor of Medicine and Biological Structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He currently is Director of the Cellular and Molecular Imaging Core Laboratory for the University of Washington’s NIH Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center. His research focuses on the neuroendocrinology of body weight regulation, particularly CNS mechanisms that mediate the effects of insulin and leptin on energy homeostasis. Dr. Baskin is a Past President of the Histochemical Society and currently is President of the International Federation of Societies for Histochemistry and Cytochemistry. He is former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry and now serves as the Journal’s Executive Editor in addition to serving on the editorial boards of other journals, including Endocrinology.
William L. Stahl, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Physiology and Biophysics and Neurology, University of Washington School of Medicine. He is Executive Director of The Histochemical Society. Education: B.S., Chemistry, University of Notre Dame, 1958; Ph.D., Biochemistry, University of Pittsburgh, 1963; Postdoctoral fellow, Institute of Psychiatry, London, 1963-65; Research Associate, National Institutes of Health, 1965-67. Regular academic appointments have been at the University of Washington and the Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Medical Center from 1967-2003. He was Visiting Scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, Göttingen, Germany, 1975-76. Memberships: The Histochemical Society, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Society for Neuroscience. He has over 100 publications on mechanisms and modulation of ion transport systems in the nervous system and on the role of oncogenic epidermal growth factor receptors in modulation of microtubule function in cancer cells. Email: mail@histochemicalsociety.org
Course Speakers
Dr. Richard W. Burry Ph.D., is Director of the Campus Microscopy and Imaging Facility (CMIF) at the Ohio State University, and a faculty member in the Department of Neuroscience in the College of Medicine. Over the last 25 years, Dr. Burry has used and published many technologies for detection of proteins in tissues and cells. The list of microscopy methods includes: light and electron microscopic immunocytochemistry, rapid freezing for transmission electron microscopy, freeze-fracture, electron microscopic autoradiography, cryo-ultramicrotomy, and scanning laser confocal microscopy. For the last 20 years he has directed the CMIF, the biomedical core microscope facility at the Ohio State University, which includes electron, confocal and optical microscopes with a complete range of sample preparation equipment. Dr. Burry has served as a member of the Editorial Board and Associate Editor of the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry. He served as a Council Member, Secretary and in 2002 as President of the Histochemical Society. In 1997 he has was responsible for bringing Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry on line with HighWire Press.
Gwen V. Childs, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair, Dep. Of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR. She received the B.A. in Biology from Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA and the Ph.D. in Anatomy at the University of Iowa. She has been Assistant Professor of Anatomy at the University of Nebraska, Associate Professor of Anatomy at Northwestern University, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. She has been a Councilor and President of the Histochemical Society and a member of the Endocrine Society and has served on editorial boards of the Journal of Histochemistry Cytochemistry, Endocrinology, J. of Endocrinology, Cell Vision, The FASEB Journal, Regulatory Peptides, and Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology.
The research in Gwen Childs laboratory has been focused on the regulation of specific anterior pituitary cells by neuroendocrine and adipokine peptides and growth factors. Regulation of these pituitary cells may come from the nervous system via nerve fibers that secrete into the blood stream. Regulation may also come from other cells in the body, including the pituitary cells themselves. Her current studies focus on how leptin from adipocytes or pituitary cells functions to regulate somatotropes and gonadotropes. She is addressing these questions with novel transgenic mice models in which leptin receptors, or leptin is selectively knocked out in somatotropes or gonadotropes with the use of Cre-LoxP technology. She will investigate the role of leptin in postnatal development of somatotropes or gonadotropes and its role in the maintenance of reproductive competence. These studies utilize cell biology, cytochemistry , physiology, and molecular biology tools to investigate the regulation of pituitary cell function. Author of Our Favorite Cytochemistry Protocols website
Allen M. Gown, M.D. is Medical Director & Chief Pathologist of PhenoPath Laboratories. Dr. Gown is a pathologist-scientist recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in the diagnostic and research applications of immunohistochemistry (IHC). He has developed numerous clinically important monoclonal antibodies used around the world, and continues to be at the forefront of clinical investigative studies employing IHC and other modalities. Dr. Gown founded PhenoPath Laboratories, a well-respected physician-owned and -operated national reference pathology laboratory that provides immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, flow cytometry, and molecular testing services. He is also Clinical Professor of Pathology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, and an Affiliate Investigator in the Clinical Research Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA. Dr. Gown has contributed extensively to the expanding horizons of immunohistochemistry, with over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He was former Assistant Editor of the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, as well as a past president of the Histochemical Society.
Gloria E. Hoffman, Ph.D. Dr. Hoffman is a professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a member of the Program in Neuroscience.
Dr. Hoffman graduated from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and received her Ph.D at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. She was a faculty member at the University of Rochester, University of Pittsburgh, and is currently a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She runs the Cell Imaging Core for the Center for Reproduction. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, Endocrinology, Experimental Neurology and Biology of Reproduction. She has perfected and devised methods for double and triple labelling with immunocytochemical techniques and devised a quantitative non-radioactive in situ hybridization procedure that enables determination of the level of mRNA expression in inidivual cells without compromising the ability to maintain cell morphology and antigenicty of various proteins. With these approaches, her laboratory addressed neuronal phenotype changes in the prolactin regulatory neurons during lactation – and the degree to which such changes enable continued prolactin secretion even in the absence of suckling. A separate, although related direction in her laboratory focuses on the injured brain. These studies examine the role that ovarian hormones play in seizure-induced brain damage, mechanisms of secondary damage following head trauma, and glial changes after seizures and during the development of Huntington’s disease. Evolution of these injury projects is expanding to address the question of how brain circuits change to shift glucose metablism and food intake after chronic sleep deprivation and neuronal/endocrine dysfunction in the premutation of the Fragile X gene.
Alison J. North, Ph.D. is the Director of the Bio-Imaging Resource Center and a Research Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller University, having moved to New York to establish the center in April 2000. She was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, UK, then received her doctorate from Oxford University, using immunoelectron microscopy to study the muscle defects caused by Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Her first post-doctoral research position was undertaken in Salzburg, Austria, performing immunoelectron microscopy studies of the smooth muscle cytoskeleton, and her second in Manchester UK, researching desmosome organization. A Wellcome Trust Career Development fellowship enabled her to follow this up with studies of the dynamics and assembly of desmosomes, which is when she became hooked on live cell imaging. She now trains and assists hundreds of Rockefeller University researchers in a wide selection of widefield, confocal, multiphoton and deconvolution microscopy techniques, as well as maintaining oversight of the electron microscopy service. She has served as a reviewer and panelist for several different granting agencies in the UK and the USA and her images and movies have been used in science exhibits at the International Center of Photography in New York and on the television science series “Nova”.
Kevin A. Roth, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Roth graduated from the University of Michigan and received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. He came to UAB after spending 17 years at Washington University in St. Louis where he trained in anatomic pathology and neuropathology before joining the faculty in 1989. Dr. Roth was promoted to full professor in the Departments of Pathology and Molecular Biology and Pharmacology at Washington University in 2001 and moved to Birmingham the following year. In addition to his duties as Director of the Division of Neuropathology, Dr. Roth is Director of the UAB Comprehensive Neuroscience Center and the Alabama Neuroscience Blueprint Core Center, an NIH funded interdisciplinary core facility that provides technical support for NIH funded neuroscientists throughout the Southeast.
Dr. Roth’s research focuses on the molecular regulation of neuronal cell death and he has a particular interest in neural stem cell biology. He is an accomplished immunohistochemist and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry. Dr. Roth is also on the editorial board of the American Journal of Pathology and the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology. He has served as a reviewer for granting agencies in five different countries and has been an invited speaker at several meetings in Europe and Asia. Dr. Roth was recently elected to be a member of the American Association of University Pathologists (Pluto Club).
