Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology

Bio

Dr. Patrick Pagano received his Ph.D. from New York Medical College in 1991 and completed his postdoctoral training in 1994 at the Vascular Biology Unit at Boston University Medical Center Vascular Biology Unit in endothelial cell biology and vascular dysfunction. Dr. Pagano began his independent career studying reactive oxygen species in the vasculature as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Boston University Medical Center in 1996. In 1998, Dr. Pagano joined the Hypertension and Vascular Research Division in the Department of Medicine at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit as Senior Staff Investigator. In 2003, he became the Division’s director of Vascular Biology Research. He simultaneously held academic positions at Case Western University and Wayne State University. In the summer of 2008, Dr. Pagano joined the Vascular Medicine Institute (VMI) as a tenured Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Chemical Biology at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine.

Research Interests

The major focus of the research in the Pagano lab is the study of NADPH oxidases, a complex family of proteins that catalyze the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Our research interests have centered on the investigation of the pivotal role this enzyme class plays in physiological cell signaling as well as under pathological conditions. Since the deleterious role of high levels of ROS (a.k.a. oxidative stress) has been described for many disorders in the cardiovascular system as well as in cancer and neurodegenerative disease, great efforts have been dedicated to the development of isoform-specific inhibitors of NADPH oxidases that, in turn, can be used as (a) tools to delineate the role of this class of enzymes in normal and pathological cellular signaling pathways; and (b) therapeutic agents and scaffolds for the development of new drugs.

Education and Training

Selected/Representative Publications

For a complete bibliography, click here.