About me

My expertise is in the area of skeletal tissue biology. I have studied skeletal biology for more than 30 years and have broad knowledge across many areas in the field, including metabolic bone disease and orthopedic-related diseases. I have carried out numerous pre-clinical assessments of pharmacological compounds as they relate to safety and efficacy in the treatment of fracture and osteoporosis. I have expertise in skeletal tissue structure and the histomorphometric assessment of skeletal tissues, skeletal tissue cell biology and skeletal tissue transcriptomics. I was among the first four labs in the United States to develop in vitro osteoblast cultures and helped to establish the standard time dependent sequence of osteogenic differentiation in vitro. My laboratory also was one of four to initially isolate the proteins and clone the major extracellular matrix proteins of bone. I have served on the NIH IRG for Orthopedics, NASA and DOD review panels for orthopedic related research and worked on Special Emphasis Review Panels for the FDA. My current work focuses on relating genomic variants that define human bone quality to transcriptomic phenotypes of ostoeblasts and osteoclasts. Other studies in laboratory are focused on developing serum based diagnostics to follow the progression of fracture healing and define delayed and failed healing in humans.