Mission Statement

The mission of the Department of Integrative Medical Sciences is to provide scholarly teaching to medical, pharmacy, and graduate students; to provide service to the institution and to the scientific community; and to accomplish innovative scientific research to better the health of society.

Integrative Medical Sciences Research

The Department of Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) at Northeastern Ohio Universities is an interdisciplinary department comprised of investigators with a range of interests and disciplines, but with common intersections among their respective areas of research.

Faculty within IMS focus their research in three related areas.  One area pertains to cardiac and vascular phenomics  with a focus on matrix biology, neurohumoral signaling in the context of preconditioning or apoptotic programs, ion channel signaling in normal states and during the development of vascular disease, and vascular biology (including regulation of vascular tone) and vascular growth (collateralogenesis, angiogenesis).  Related to this area are research programs in lung development and understanding central mechanisms underlying behavior.  A second area relates to hepatic pathobiology with an emphasis on hepatic nuclear receptor signaling and liver production of lipids.  The hepatic and vascular areas are related from the perspective that an important cause of many vascular diseases stems from hepatic pathologies and altered production of LDL and HDL by the liver.  The third area of emphasis in IMS is inflammation, immunology and virology. Some of the investigators with a viral focus study viral-induced tissue degeneration and tumor formation. This third area relates to both the hepatic and cardiovascular focuses in the context of hepatitis and hepatic inflammation, and that inflammation is an underpinning to many beneficial cardiovascular adaptations but also can be detrimental if excessive or too prolonged.  The faculty of IMS, thus, represent several disciplines, e.g., physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry, molecular biology and virology, and are actively combining their efforts to provide interdisciplinary approaches to understanding basic mechanisms underlying normal physiological function and the basis of disease. 

Metabolic and Cardiovascular Disease Focus Area

The Metabolic and Cardiovascular Disease Focus Area is comprised of clinical and basic investigators interrogating basic and translational aspects of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.  Within the focus area are two research clusters—one focusing on cardiovascular diseases and the other on hepatic pathobiology.  The two clusters connect via common interests (e.g., disorders in lipid metabolism which impacts the development of vascular disease), experimental models (e.g., transgenic and knockout models), and experimental technologies (echocardiographic analyses of cardiac function and remodeling, gene knockdown strategies).  The mission of the investigators of the Metabolic and Cardiovascular Disease Focus Area is to conduct basic and translational investigations that promote our understanding of fundamental disease processes and also promote the development of new therapeutic approaches.  Investigators within the focus area are mainly at NEOUCOM, but there are investigators at the University of Akron, Austen BioInnovation Institute of Akron, and Akron General Hospital. 

Prospective Graduate Students

For prospective graduate student information about programs in:

    Cell & Molecular Biology (including Microbiology, Biochemistry and Immunology)
    Physiology
    Pharmacology

Please contact The Office of Graduate Education at (330) 325-6501. 
For information about faculty research interests please click IMS Faculty Research Interests.