Iain Drummond
Education
- UC Berkeley 1987 Ph.D.
- Union College 1978 B.S.
Brief Biography
Iain Drummond received his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley for work on ionic signaling and the Drosophila heat shock response. His postdoctoral work at Northwestern University Medical School and the University of Chicago focused on gene regulation in Development and Kidney Cancer (Wilms tumor). From 1996-2019 Dr. Drummond was an Associate Professor in Medicine and Genetics at Harvard Medical School / MGH and Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute Kidney program. His lab established the zebrafish as a genetic system for discovering mechanisms of kidney development, disease, and regeneration. His work has revealed new genes required for cilia function in organogenesis and in human Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia, established the role of collective cell migration in nephron morphogenesis, discovered new pathways underlying kidney nephrotic syndrome, revealed cellular mechanisms linked to Polycystic Kidney Disease gene functions, and developed the zebrafish pronephros as an in vivo system to evaluate pathogenicity of human gene sequence polymorphisms. Now at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory as Director of the Davis Center for Aging and Regeneration, his lab studies 1) Vascular/epithelial interactions in kidney morphogenesis, 2) Genetic compensation for cilia gene mutations and 3) Growth factor mechanisms of stem cell-based kidney regeneration and how this can be translated to human cell-based therapy for kidney failure.