James L. Boyer, M.D.

My research at MDIBL uses cellular, molecular, and physiological approaches to understand the basic mechanisms of how the liver secretes bile and eliminates foreign chemicals and environmental toxicants (xenobiotics). Much of our work at MDIBL uses marine skates and, more recently, sea lampreys. As a physician scientist, I am interested in utilizing these more primitive marine models to illuminate the pathogenesis and treatment of cholestatic liver diseases in man.

Recent PubMed Publications

Mechanisms of Xenobiotic Transport and Excretion in the Liver

The liver is an organ with many functions, one of which is to defend the body against the accumulation of xenobiotics and environmental toxicants. My laboratory is interested in how the liver functions as an organ of excretion; specifically how xenobiotics and environmental toxicants are taken up by the liver, metabolized, and eliminated into bile. In addition, we are interested in how the transport systems and enzymes that provide these functions undergo adaptive regulation when exposed to toxic compounds or when the bile secretory process is impaired in diseases that produce cholestasis. The later proccess involves transcriptional regulation and the role of nuclear receptors. At MDIBL, together with my colleague Ned Ballatori, we utilize the marine skate as an experimental model to study this process. This comparative toxicogenomics approach is designed to provide insight into the critical determinants of these defense mechanisms in human liver.