Frank Jirik
Professor
MD, FRCPC
Contact information
Location
Preferred method of communication
ADMIN ASSISTANT
Cassandra McLaughlin
Email: cpugh@ucalgary.ca
Office: 403-210-9710
Research and teaching
Research areas
- Mouse models of cancer: preclinical and transgenic.
Biography
Past work has involved the generation and phenotypic analysis of a various genes in transgenic mice, as well as his work with many different models of human disease. His studies have cut across many disciplines and have largely focussed on the function of individual genes and gene-gene interactions in models of musculoskeletal disease, arthritis, neoplasia (e.g. models of breast cancer cell line induced osteolytic damage in a mouse model of breast cancer, prostate cancer, as well as colorectal and lung cancer), microCT imaging of murine bones, bioluminescence imaging of cancers, inflammatory bowel disease models, prion gene function, an autoinflammatory disease of children, and the phenotypic effects of selenoprotein deficiency. He has a longstanding interest in DNA repair and mutagenesis as demonstrated by publications involving mice lacking genes involved in Fanconi anemia, repair of alkylated lesions, as well as DNA mismatch repair. Recently, in collaboration with Dr. M. Weinfeld (U of Alberta), we generated mice allowing conditional mutations of polynucleotide kinase-phosphatase (PNKP).
