Serdar Bulun
Serdar Bulun | |
|---|---|
| A picture of Dr. Serdar Bulun | |
| Born | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
Introduction
Serdar Bulun, MD is a physician scientist, who has made widely acknowledged contributions to the understanding and treatment of the common gynecologic diseases, endometriosis and uterine fibroids.
Dr. Bulun serves as the obstetrician and gynecologist-in-chief of the Prentice Women’s Hospital of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, IL and Chair of Northwestern University’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which is one of the largest and most influential women’s health programs in the world. He is one of the rare Turkish-trained physicians, who rose to the rank of a clinical department chair in the United States.
Bulun was born in Malatya, Turkey in 1959 and moved to Istanbul to attend the American Robert College and thereafter Istanbul University School of Medicine (Çapa Tıp Fakültesi). He received his residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and pursued a sub-specialty fellowship in reproductive endocrinology-infertility at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Starting from 2003, he has set up a world-renowned women’s health research program at Northwestern, and recruited and supported numerous faculty who focus on steroid hormone-related pathology of uterine, breast and ovarian disorders. Throughout his career, Dr. Bulun has been awarded over $70 million of research funding in endometriosis, uterine fibroids and breast cancer. In his laboratory, he mentored many PhD and MD-PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows.
Bulun has made a significant global impact on medicine via paradigm-shifting contributions to the genetics and steroid biology of the common gynecologic disorders, endometriosis and uterine fibroids, which collectively impact way more than 200 million women around the world.[1][2][3] He is internationally acknowledged for discovering the epigenetic basis of endometriosis and introducing aromatase inhibitors as a novel class of drugs to effectively treat it.[4] His team for the first time isolated tumor stem cells from uterine fibroids and targeted these to treat this disease.[5] He also contributed significantly to the genetics and systems biology aspects of hormone-responsive disorders of the breast including cancer.[6][7][8] He has published more than 200 scientific articles including reports in top-ranked journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, and the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, as well as several specialty journals in reproductive endocrinology.
Bulun has been a widely recognized pioneer of molecular medicine in the field of gynecology. He is the editor-in-chief of Seminars in Reproductive Medicine. He has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine), the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the honor societies for physician-scientists. He served as the 2015 president for the Society for Reproductive Investigation. He has received several prestigious awards, including the National Institutes of Health-MERIT award for his groundbreaking research work in endometriosis and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine Distinguished Researcher Award, and has served as a visiting lecturer at leading institutions around the world.
Key Scientific Contributions to Medicine
- Introduced aromatase inhibitors as a novel treatment for endometriosis[4]
- Discovered the key epigenetic defects in endometriosis leading to progesterone resistance[1]
- Isolated and therapeutically targeted stem cells in uterine fibroids[2]
- Discovered the first set of gain-of-function mutations affecting the aromatase gene leading to breast development and estrogen excess in prepubertal children[6][7]
Key Honors
- National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine, IOM, elected 2015)
- John J. Sciarra Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Northwestern University (2012–present)
- Association of American Physicians (AAP, elected 2012)
- American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Distinguished Researcher Award (2012)
- National Institutes of Health MERIT (R37) Award HD38691 (2010-2020)
- George H. Gardner Professor of Clinical Gynecology, Northwestern University (2006-2012)
- American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI, elected 2003)
External links
- http://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/sites/obgyn/research/labs/bulun/index.html
- http://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/sites/obgyn/
References
- ^ a b Bulun SE. Endometriosis.N Engl J Med.2009;360:268-79.
- ^ a b Bulun SE. Uterine fibroids.N Engl J Med.2013;369:1344-55.
- ^ Bulun SE, Lin Z, Imir G, et al. Regulation of aromatase expression in estrogen-responsive breast and uterine disease: from bench to treatment.Pharmacol Rev.2005;57:359-83.
- ^ a b Attar E, Bulun SE. Aromatase inhibitors: the next generation of therapeutics for endometriosis?Fertil Steril.2006;85:1307-18.
- ^ Ono M, Yin P, Navarro A, et al. Paracrine activation of WNT/beta-catenin pathway in uterine leiomyoma stem cells promotes tumor growth.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA.2013;110:17053-8.
- ^ a b Shozu M, Sebastian S, Takayama K, et al. Estrogen excess associated with novel gain-of-function mutations affecting the aromatase gene.N Engl J Med.2003;348:1855-65.
- ^ a b Demura M, Martin RM, Shozu M, et al. Regional rearrangements in chromosome 15q21 cause formation of cryptic promoters for the CYP19 (aromatase) gene.Hum Mol Genet.2007;16:2529-41.
- ^ Zhou J, Gurates B, Yang S, Sebastian S, Bulun SE. Malignant breast epithelial cells stimulate aromatase expression via promoter II in human adipose fibroblasts: an epithelial-stromal interaction in breast tumors mediated by CCAAT/enhancer binding protein beta.Cancer Res.2001;61:2328-34.