The faculty of the GI Section is involved in a variety of clinical, translational and basic research projects in the digestive tract, liver and pancreas. The faculty work closely with the Arizona Cancer Center, the only NCI designated cancer center in the southwest, which also has a GI SPORE (one of five NCI funded Specialized Programs in Research Excellence in the nation). The University of Arizona has top rated researchers and unparalleled resources in optical sciences and biomedical engineering. The following list gives a selection of research interests of current GI faculty members.
- Barrett’s esophagus – from biomarker prediction of neoplastic progression to endoscopic ablation of high grade dysplasia and early adenocarcinoma.
- Mechanisms of gastro esophageal reflux in a state of the art physiology/motility lab equipped with cutting edge devices that can assess GI physiology and study sleep, refractory GERD and noncardiac chest pain.
- Clinical and translational research on the prevention and early detection of colorectal cancer. This includes high throughput studies using human biospecimens to study the molecular pathology and genetic epidemiology of colorectal cancer, phase III chemoprevention studies for its prevention and comparative effectiveness research on methods for colorectal cancer screening.
- Portal hypertension, viral hepatitis. Have current collaboration with NIDDK (hematology) to examine whether there are mutations in the telomere repair gene in patients with cirrhosis. Have multiple on-going studies sponsored by pharamaceutical companies for the treatment of hepatitis C, NASH and thrombocytopenia in patients with liver disease.
- Use of novel optical and spectroscopic methods to detect early cancer and other diseases. Methods employed include high contrast imaging, confocal microscopy, mucosal reflectance, targeted cellular autofluorescence, light scattering spectroscopy, 2-photon microscopy, photo- acoustic imaging and targeted lipid microspheres.
