Dr. Jia Luo has been awarded the Pathology Endowed Chair in Alcohol Research. Jia joined the Department of Pathology as a tenured Professor earlier this summer after moving from the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Luo received his PhD in Cell Biology from University of Iowa in 1995 and performed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa. In 1999, Jia began his faculty career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at West Virginia University (WVU) in Morgantown, WV and in 2003 he moved to the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology at WVU. Dr. Luo subsequently moved to the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in 2008 as a full Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences.

Dr. Luo has a broad and well-funded research program centered on the effects of alcohol on CNS development as well as driving several organ-specific diseases. Specifically, he is studying 1) Alcohol-induced neurodegeneration in the developing brain and the roles oxidative stress, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and autophagy play in this destructive process; 2) The interaction of chronic alcohol abuse and thiamine deficiency in neurodegeneration and behavioral deficits; 3) The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying alcohol-induced induction and promotion of breast cancer; and 4) The mechanism of alcohol-promoted pancreatitis. These projects are supported by a VA Merit award, two NIH R01 grants and an NIH R21 grant. Consistent with his multi-faceted research program Jia has published extensively in the alcohol, toxicology, neuroscience and cancer literature. He is also very active with peer review at the national level serving on multiple editorial boards and NIH study sections.