Jose A. Gomez, PhD

Jose Gomez, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology wihin the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin, Colombia. He earned his master’s degree in chemistry in the laboratory of Dr. David Petering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he employed various biochemical techniques to elucidate the process of activation of bleomycin. Dr. Gomez earned his PhD in pharmacology with Dr. Shigemi Matsuyama at Case Western Reserve University. His project focused on the mechanism of apoptosis in mammalian cells, specifically to develop cell permeable Bax-inhibiting peptides (BIP). He received a predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association to examine the apoptotic pathways that could be activated after myocardial infarction. In 2009, Dr. Gomez joined Dr. Victor Dzau’s laboratory at Duke University as a postdoctoral fellow. In the Dzau laboratory, he was initially involved in a project elucidating the role of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) in the response of the kidney to changes in blood pressure. He found that a subset of renal MSCs became renin-expressing cells in vivo. He used microarray technology and compared the differential expression of genes in juxtaglomerular cells versus kidney MSCs. At Vanderbilt Dr. Gomez’s studies will focus on elucidating the protein network required for the conversion of renal MSCs to renin-expressing cells, which may play a role in renin regulation and blood pressure homeostasis.