Jeffrey Tessem, PhD

Biography
Dr. Tessem received his Bachelors degree in Microbiology from Brigham Young University in 2001 and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in 2007. Dr. Tessem completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Christopher Newgard at the Duke University Medical Center's Sarah W. Stedman Center for Nutrition and Metabolism Research.

Research Interests
Both Type 1 (T1D) and Type 2 diabetes (T2D) are caused by a relative insufficiency in functional β-cell mass. Current therapeutic options for diabetes include daily insulin injections to maintain normoglycemia, pharmacological agents to stimulate β-cell function and enhance insulin sensitivity, or islet transplantation. A major obstacle to greater application of islet transplantation therapy is the scarcity of human islets. Thus, new methods for expansion of β-cell mass, applied in vitro to generate the large numbers of human islet cells needed for transplantation, or in situ to induce expansion of the patients remaining β-cells, could have broad therapeutic implications for this disease. To this end, our lab is interested in delineating the molecular pathways that increase β-cell proliferation, enhance glucose stimulated insulin secretion, and protect against β-cell death.

Teaching Interests
My teaching interests focus on nutrient metabolism and biochemistry. I am interested in the metabolic disorders that cause human diseases.