Biography
After completing medical school and internal medicine training at the University of Missouri, Dr. Gorelick trained at Yale in Gastroenterology. After his clinical training, he began basic science training with Dr. James Jamieson at Yale. During that period he described calcium-calmodulin dependent protein kinase II and subsequently worked with Dr. Paul Greengard (Rockefeller University) to examine the enzyme's mechanism of activation, a response critical to neuronal memory.
His later work has focused on the mechanisms of acute pancreatits and how digestive enzymes, such as trypsin, are activated within the pancreas during this disease. Dr. Gorelick sees patients with gastrointestinal diseases at the VAMC in West Haven, CT. He is also the Deputy Director for the Yale physician Scientist program and directs a year-long course for the group that links basic science to clinical disease. He has also been the Director of the Yale Program in Investigative Gastroenterology for over 10 years. His laboratory at the VA studies the molecular mechanisms related to acute pancreatitis with a goal of developing tools that prevent or lessen disease.
Research Summary
The central interest of our laboratory is the mechanisms that initiate pancreatitis, a severe inflammatory disease that causes death in up to 5% of patients. The disease begins with the premature activation of pancreatic digestive enzymes within the acinar cell, inhibition of secretion, activation of inflammatory pathways, and cell death. We study the pathways that initiate disease with a goal of identifying therapeutic targets.
Speciailzed Terms: Exocrine pancreas; Pancreatitis; Intracellular proteolysis; Vacuolar ATPase; AMPK; Protein kinase C, survival factor, renalase, plasma-membrane calcium pump