Collaborations
MUBIG represents an innovative collaboration and joint effort among two physiologists in the School of Nursing and two physiologists in the School of Medicine. Since MUBIG was formed, external collaborations and the potential for interdisciplinary research have increased enormously. One pivotal collaboration has been with the prestigious Bone Biology Group in the School of Dentistry. In fact, the members of MUBIG are participants in the School of Dentistry’s Center of Excellence in Mineralized Tissues (CEMT).
As Center partners, MUBIG investigators have been awarded three research grants, one of which has extended collaborations even further to the School of Computing and Engineering, on the Volker campus. The Center collaboration has resulted in a recent submission of a Recovery Act “Grand Opportunity” grant proposal for which funding is pending. This proposal hypothesizes endocrine/cytokine crosstalk between bone and all three types of muscle to explain much of the commonality between loss of bone and muscle mass and function, a cutting edge and far reaching concept that will lead to multiple additional grant submissions.
MUBIG investigators also have forged collaborations with cardiologists at St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, muscle physiologists at the Columbia campus of the University of Missouri, as well as with renowned scientists in the U.S. and overseas, such as Drs. Jianjie Ma and Noah Weisleder, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Drs. C.K. Qu and Thomas Nosek, Case Western Reserve University; Dr. Jerome Parness, University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Hector Valdivia, University of Wisconsin and Dr. Hiroshi Takeshima, Kyoto University, Japan.