In 1992-93, he served as President of the Histochemical Society. . The two systems are intimately connected through the hypothalamo-pituitary axis and the feedback loops by which hormones can influence the functions of the nervous system. The long-term research interests of this laboratory have centered on the roles of several chemical messengers regulating the nervous, the neuroendocrine, and the reproductive systems. In recent years it has become recognized that the maintenance of dynamic cell populations depends on the balance between the rate of cell proliferation and that of programmed cell death or apoptosis. Normally this suicide program is prevented from being activated by survival signals received from other cells.
Hormones are the major survival signals in endocrine tissues.
Our current studies utilize the seminiferous epithelium and its control by its most important survival signal, the hormone testosterone, as a model system to understand hormonally controlled apoptosis. We are evaluating the role of known molecular targets of testosterone in the seminiferous tubules. In addition, we are studying several other gene products which have been identified as indispensable for normal spermatogenesis, but their relationship to testosterone and apoptosis is less obvious. Our studies are aided by the successful development of a transgenic mouse model which produces very high amounts of ABP and shows a progressive defect in spermatogenesis.