Lawrence Mandarino arrived at ASU in December, 2004, to become the Chair of Kinesiology and the Director of the Center for Metabolic Biology, an interdisciplinary Center designed to bring together basic and clinical scientists to understand the mechanisms responsible for insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease.  Before coming to ASU, Dr. Mandarino spent more than 12 years at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in the Departments of Medicine, Biochemistry, and Physiology.  He has held faculty appointments at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, San Diego, after performing a postdoctoral fellowship in Endocrinology at the Mayo Clinic.

Research in the Mandarino laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms responsible for insulin resistance in human skeletal muscle.  Of particular interest are the roles of mitochondrial dysfunction and the regulation of IRS-1 (Insulin Receptor Substrate-1) function.  Experimental systems employed to study these issues include a wide variety of appropriate techniques, ranging from in vivo methods to assess human metabolic events, such as the euglycemic hyperinsulinemic clamp, muscle biopsies, arterial catheterizations, and use of stable isotopes to assess metabolic rates to cell culture and molecular biology techniques for addressing questions of insulin signaling.  The Proteomics Laboratory, with modern and highly powerful mass spectrometers that can be used for a variety of proteomics techniques, provides especially critical ability to analyze protein phosphorylation.  Dr. Mandarino’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health for over 20 years, and he has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals.