Mary Beth Humphrey, MD, PhD

Biography

The focus of Dr. Humphrey’s research program is to investigate the impact of myeloid cell activation and regulation in several human diseases including osteoporosis, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Humphrey has extensively studied homeostatic bone remodeling as well as conditions of abnormal bone remodeling such as osteoarthritis, post-menopausal osteoarthritis, or chronic inflammation-induced osteoporosis. As a faculty at UCSF and subsequently, at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC), Dr. Humphrey continued studies on the molecular mechanisms that regulate immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM) signals transmitted via immunoreceptor Triggering Receptor Expressed in myeloid Cells #2 (TREM2) in macrophages and osteoclasts. Recent studies are investigating the regulation of this pathway in microglial cells, brain resident macrophages, in Alzheimer’s disease. An additional line of work focuses on the anti-fibrotic and anti-inflammatory effects of vagal nerve stimulation on atrial fibrillation and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Their studies show that vagal nerve stimulation alters macrophages and T cell filtration into the heart that is associated with decreased cardiac fibrosis and improved heart function.

Email

MARYBETH-HUMPHREY@OUHSC.EDU

Publications

Research Interests:

• Improving TREM2-mediated microglial functions with small molecule inhibitors of SHIP1
• Improving heart failure with preserved ejection fraction with vagal nerve stimulation
• Discovering novel regulators of mesenchymal stem cells to improve bone healing
• Discovering novel regulators of hematopoietic stem cells
• Discovering novel mediators of osteoarthritis