Professional Bio
Danielle Dean, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her interests are how nutritional status and environmental-gene interactions contribute to aging and diseases like diabetes.
While much effort has been focused on understanding beta cell biology because of insulin's well known role in diabetes, very little is known about signals regulating other islet cells. Alpha cells secrete glucagon in response to hypoglycemia, but persons with diabetes have hyperglucagonemia contributing to hyperglycemia. In an effort to understand the molecular mechanisms that determine alpha cell mass in the pancreatic islet, Dr. Dean identified a liver-alpha cell axis, a crosstalk between liver glucagon signaling and alpha cells sensing of amino acids.
She started her independent laboratory at Vanderbilt in 2019. Much of the lab's focus is to understand how a liver-alpha cell axis regulates islet cell growth and how this axis might contribute to liver and alpha cell dysfunction in obesity and diabetes.
Publications
Education
MS - Biochemistry & Cellular & Molecular Biology - University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2002
PhD - Molecular & Systems Pharmaology - Emory University, 2011
Fellowship - Molecular Endocrinology - Vanderbilt University, 2017
Contact
Email
Kimryn.Rathmell@Vumc.Org
Address
777 Preston Research Building
2220 Pierce Ave
Nashville, TN 37232-6307