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My primary interest is understanding factors that control smooth muscle excitability and contractility. I apply techniques from the single cell level up to the whole animal. Areas of focus include urogenital, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular systems. I am also very interested in laboratory instrumentation development, and I am a consultant for my family businesses Med Associates, Catamount Research and Development, and Living Systems Instrumentation. As such, I am involved with developing instrumentation for behavioral neurosciences and many areas of physiology.
We are studying how the specialized urothelial cells that line the lumen of the urinary bladder modulate bladder function. Our approach is to use isolated strips of urinary bladder to examine how strips with the urothelium intact respond to various experimental perturbations as compared to bladder strips in which the urothelium has been physically removed. In this way, we can better understand how the urothelium contributes to regulation of urinary bladder contractility. Our findings will help us determine if the urothelium could serve as a therapeutic target in developing treatments of bladder dysfunctions such as overactive bladder and urinary incontinence.
Hannah R. helps out making buffers and reagents, as well as performing data analysis on transient pressure events in isolated urinary bladder preparations. She is also learning dissection skills and how to operate our multi-photon microscope to measure calcium signals in isolated sheets of mouse urothelium that express the genetically encoded calcium indicator, GCaMP6f.
Collaborators
Dr. Klug studies how capillary networks in the brain regulate blood flow in response to neuronal activity. He pioneered the use of an en face retina preparation for studying neuron-vascular interactions. He is well-versed in cell and tissue physiology approaches, live cell imaging techniques, and an overall great guy! Always willing to collaborate and lend a helping hand, Nick helped us out with some imaging studies in the urinary bladder, and now is becoming a convert to the “Bladder World”. We have active collaborations examining how signaling molecules produced locally in the urinary bladder may regulate normal storage/voiding functions of the urinary bladder.
Check out Nick’s lab website at:
Dr. Vizzard’s research interests include studying the neural control of the urinary bladder, with a particular emphasis on bladder pain and overactive bladder/urinary urgency. Margaret’s lab employs multidisciplinary approaches, including anatomical tracing to map neural circuits, immunohistochemistry and biochemical methods to examine plasticity associated with pathological conditions, electrophysiology to examine cell-cell communication pathways, and in vivo bladder function testing. Thus, her approach is quite integrative in nature. I enjoy working with Margaret and her team on general bladder function projects where we attempt to assess in vivo bladder function in rodent models. We also collaborate on co-mentoring student research projects, where we can combine our strengths and approaches to provide students with exciting learning and professional development opportunities.
Learn more about Margaret’s research and lab at:
https://www.med.uvm.edu/neuro/vizzard_lab
Dr. Heppner’s studies electrophysiology of cells in the lower urinary tract, including smooth muscle and urothelial cells. He is an expert at the use of a sharp microelectrode for recording membrane potential under physiological conditions in fresh tissue preparations. Tom also contributes to many other projects that are part of Mark Nelson’s lab at The University of Vermont, where he has trained and mentored many a scientist over the years. In fact, when I was a young PhD student in Mark Nelson’s lab, Tom taught me how to do patch clamp electrophysiology on freshly isolated single smooth muscle cells. We’ve been working together in some capacity ever since. In recent years, we serve as Co-Principal Investigators on a grant examining how the urinary bladder senses fullness.
Check out Tom’s full bio at:
https://www.med.uvm.edu/pharmacology/bio?BioID=22044
Research in Dr. Tykocki’s lab focuses on studying how the urinary bladder senses fullness, and how this goes awry in pathological conditions such as stress and anxiety associated with urinary urgency. He is a true instrumentation guru, which is probably one reason we get along so well! I met Nathan several years ago while he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Vermont, and I was running a biomedical instrumentation company as part of my wife’s family businesses. Nathan did some equipment installation and training sessions with some of our customers, and I quickly realized what a great and fun guy Nathan is. He is always positive and enthusiastic. We currently collaborate on projects looking at how the wall of the urinary bladder senses mechanical forces, and on understanding how cells in the bladder respond to stress, and elicit changes that alter voiding function in chronic conditions.
Check out Nathan’s lab website at: