The Trace Elements in Biology and Medicine Conference

Mitchell Knutson is a Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry in the Food Science and Human Nutrition Department at the University of Florida. He has been studying iron and iron transport proteins for over 25 years. In the past 15 years, his research has focused on exploring novel roles of ZIP proteins in iron transport and homeostasis. 

His most recent research focus has been to characterize the roles of these ZIP proteins in iron homeostasis in vivo. Using ZIP14 knockout mice, he and his team have shown that ZIP14 functions in the liver and pancreas by mediating the uptake of non-transferrin-bound iron (NTBI), which appears in plasma in iron overload. They also showed that ZIP14 is essential for iron loading of the liver (hepatocytes) and pancreas (acinar cells) in mouse models of hemochromatosis. This finding identifies ZIP14 as a candidate drug target for treating tissue iron overload, a possibility that is now being pursued by his team in preclinical studies. Additional current efforts aim to further delineate the role of ZIP14 in iron loading of other clinically relevant tissues and to define how ZIP8 participates in iron homeostasis and iron overload. 

Knutson received his PhD in Nutrition from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed his postdoctoral studies in Molecular Biology at Harvard School of Public Health. 

He is the Director of the Nutritional Sciences Interdisciplinary PhD Program at the University of Florida and serves on the Editorial Board of The Journal of Nutrition and as a Contributing Editor to Nutrition Reviews.
 

Martina Ralle is an Associate Professor of Molecular and Medical Genetics at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Her career is devoted to investigating disease mechanisms and processes through the lens of altered metal homeostasis. At the center of her expertise are the development and application of bioanalytic tools to determine the concentration and distribution of physiologically relevant metals, and those associated with diagnostics or pharmacologic properties in biological specimen.

Ralle is also the Director of the Elemental Analysis Core at OHSU which uses Inductively Coupled Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS) to determine the elemental concentrations of biological or non-biological specimen. The Shared Resource serves OHSU and academic institutions in the U.S. and Canada and its services are widely recognized in the metallo-biological community. 

Her own research focuses on cellular copper (Cu) homeostasis and its role in disease processes. She and her research team evaluated the micro- and nanoscopic distribution of copper in tissue and cells models for Wilson disease and correlated stage of disease to the Cu abundance and distribution. One of their current projects is to determine the mechanisms of formation and degradation of intracellular copper stores in mammals. 

Ralle completed her PhD in Solid State Chemistry at the University of Bonn. A recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Feodor Lynen Fellowship, she did her postdoctoral studies in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Physical Chemistry at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Bioinorganic Chemistry at the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology.

Ralle is currently the President of the Faculty Senate at OHSU and a member of the Bio Panel Proposal Review Committee at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and American Chemical Society. She served as a Vice Chair of the 2018 FASEB Trace Elements in Biology and Medicine Science Research Conference.