The Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center will host Ryan Allen, an assistant professor of physiology and cell biology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 24, in BELL 2267. Allen's research investigates how metabolic disease influences inflammation and immune function. In his talk, he will share a current project from his lab dedicated to developing a drug-responsive mouse model of atherosclerosis, a disease where fatty deposits clog the arteries, and how toll-like receptor 8 (TLR8) contributes to macrophage dysfunction in atherosclerosis.

Abstract: Allen's laboratory focuses on understanding how metabolic diseases influence inflammation and immune function to identify new therapeutic strategies for human diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. His expertise spans lipid and lipoprotein homeostasis, macrophage biology, non-coding small RNAs and bioinformatics. Current independent projects in Allen's laboratory are dedicated to developing a drug-responsive mouse model of atherosclerosis, understanding how toll-like receptor 8 (TLR8) contributes to macrophage dysfunction in atherosclerosis and how hyperlipidemia influences the host response to infection.

Biography: Allen is a native of Beebe in central Arkansas and received his bachelor's and master's degrees in biology from Arkansas State University in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He later received his Ph.D. from the Edward A. Doisy Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Saint Louis University in 2014. His graduate work focused on microRNA control of sterol homeostasis and featured manuscripts in PNAS, EMBO Molecular Medicine and Circulation Research. He later received post-doctoral training in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he studied lipoprotein transport of small RNA and atherosclerosis. As a junior faculty member at Vanderbilt, he published first-author papers in the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles and Nature Cell Biology.  In 2022, he was hired as an assistant professor by the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

This event is supported by NIGMS of the National Institutes of Health under award number P20GM139768. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Please contact Kimberley Fuller, fullerk@uark.edu, for more information.

For those unable to attend in person, this seminar will also be available via Zoom.