Dr. Rainey (Bill) is a research endocrinologist and the Jerome W. Conn Professor in the Departments of Molecular and Integrative Physiology and Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Bill graduated from UT Southwestern and followed with post-doctoral training in France before being recruited by to Southwestern where he was faculty for almost 15 years. He subsequently was director of the Medical College of Georgia Adrenal Research Program before moving to Michigan to join its internationally recognized team of adrenal researchers.
For almost 40 years Bill’s group has researched the cellular, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms that regulate adrenal steroid hormone and associated diseases. Over his career, Rainey has published over 300 peer-reviewed or invited articles focused on adrenal steroidogenesis and adrenal disease.
His recent research has focused on defining the mechanisms regulating normal and excess production of aldosterone with particular interest in the hypertension-causing disease, primary aldosteronism (PA). In the process of researching aldosteronism his team has developed first-in-field combined application next generation sequencing of DNA and RNA from formalin-fixed paraffin embedded patient adrenal tissue. This approach has allowed multicenter studies of archived pathologic samples and led to the discovery of novel genetic causes of primary aldosteronism.
Related to today’s seminar Rainey will discuss the historic aspects surrounding Jerome Conn’s description of the index case of primary aldosteronism as well as an update on the recent work defining the genetic causes of this disease.
