Erich Kushner
Assistant Professor
303-871-4386 (Office)
Seeley G. Mudd Building, 2101 E. Wesley Ave. Denver, CO 80208
What I do
Craft young minds..
Enhance our understanding of how blood vessels are made..
Professional Biography
2004 B.S., Cellular and Molecular Biology - Fort Lewis College - Durango, CO
2010 Ph.D., Integrative Physiology - University of Colorado - Boulder, CO
2010-2016, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, NC
2016-Present, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Denver, Denver, CO
Research
A single person’s blood vessels will wrap around the earth four times if stretched end-to-end. With this in mind, it is no surprise that blood vessels are absolutely required for survival and are the first organ system to form embryonically. In a process called angiogenesis, endothelial cells, the most basic unit of blood vessels, proliferate, migrate and collectively move to form a complex and expansive vasculature system allowing nutrient penetration to every cell in our bodies. How individual endothelial cells collectively orchestrate such morphogenic feats in a reproducible and stereotyped fashion is unclear. Our lab investigates how blood vessels form at the cellular and molecular basis.
