New Chair for Cell and Developmental Biology

Doug Engel Photo: Martin Vloet

J.D. (Doug) Engel, Ph.D., joined the U-M Medical School faculty on September 1, 2002. Engel is the school’s first G. Carl Huber Professor of Developmental Biology, as well as professor and chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.

An expert on the genetics of transcription factors and how they control the development of red blood cells, Engel comes to U-M from Northwestern University, where he was a professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology, and the associate director for basic sciences of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. He also held Northwestern’s prestigious Owen L. Coon Chair in Molecular Biology.

“The Medical School is fortunate to have attracted such an outstanding scientist, mentor and leader to serve as our newest department chair and first Huber Professor,” says Allen S. Lichter, M.D., dean of the U-M Medical School. “Strengthening and enhancing our reputation for scientific research is vital to our goal of becoming one of the top five medical schools in the country by 2010. Doug Engel has the vision, knowledge and experience to help us meet that goal.”

G. Carl Huber was professor of anatomy and histology at the U-M from 1887–1934. He was an internationally known expert on the structure of the autonomic and sympathetic nervous system. During and following World War I, Huber conducted a series of investigations on nerve regeneration, which were responsible for the autotransplant of peripheral nervous tissue after traumatic injuries.

“The University of Michigan has an outstanding reputation as one of the world’s premier scientific institutions and academic enterprises,” Engel says. “There is more activity and excitement here in genetics and genomics — areas of particular interest to me — than at any other institution. I’m delighted to be part of it.”

Engel uses molecular genetics to study how tissue-restricted transcription factors, which turn genes on and off, regulate mammalian development. His goal is to understand how these factors act to generate the enormous variety of potential cell responses involved in mammalian organ and tissue formation and function. “When something goes awry in the normal regulatory processes controlled by these transcription factors, their misregulation can result in different forms of cancer, inherited blood disorders, or impairment and dysfunction of several organ systems,” Engel says.

As part of his responsibilities, Engel also will direct the U-M Center for Organogenesis, an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the study of how tissues and organs form and are maintained during embryonic development. The Center’s goal is to use this knowledge to create artificial organs, stem cell therapies or organ transplantation systems to correct genetic and acquired diseases.

“It is the most pre-eminent organization of its kind in the country,” says Engel, who hopes to build the Center for Organogenesis into a unique national center focusing basic, translational and clinical research on multiple human diseases.

A native of California, Doug Engel received a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of California-San Diego in 1970 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Oregon in 1975. He was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology before joining Northwestern’s faculty in 1978. Author of more than 100 research articles, Engel serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious scientific journals. He was appointed as a Distinguished Visiting Faculty member by the Mombushyo (the Japanese version of the National Science Foundation) in 1997, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“ My goal is to see the U-M Department of Cell and Developmental Biology become one of the top 10 in the country,” Engel says. “Our current faculty are very high quality, but the department is too small. Dean Lichter has given me a green light for new recruitment, and I’m anxious to get started.”

Kim-Chew Lim, Engel’s wife, also has joined the Medical School as an independent assistant research scientist. She studies genes involved in breast cancer. Engel has two adult children, Geoff and Katrina, who live in Chicago.

—SFP