A middle-aged man with glasses and light brown hair, smiling in front of a blurred blue background.

Gerald J. Spangrude, PhD

Languages spoken: English

Academic Information

Departments Adjunct - Pathology , Primary - Internal Medicine

Divisions: Hematology & Hematologic Malignancies

Gerald J. Spangrude, Ph.D. is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology and Hematologic Malignancies, Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pathology. Dr. Spangrude serves as the Director of the Stem Cell Biology Section of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the University of Utah. He is an investigator of the Huntsman Cancer Institute and a member of the Cell Response and Regulation program.

The Spangrude laboratory works with various models of stem cell biology. Dr. Spangrude's main area of interest focuses on adult stem cell populations obtained from mouse bone marrow tissue. He and his laboratory have devoted many years to elucidating the developmental pathway leading from stem cell to mature lymphocyte in the mouse model. They have identified several intermediate stages in this process, and have adopted in vitro techniques that allow following lymphoid development in a controlled culture environment. These studies will help the lab understand how lymphocyte cells are generated from adult stem cells, and will be useful in designing protocols to enhance lymphoid engraftment following bone marrow transplantation, which is a stem cell therapy currently utilized to treat blood cancers. Recent work in the laboratory has focused on the regulation of gene expression during T cell development in response to ascorbic acid. They hypothesize that ascorbic acid modulates development of the immune system by acting as a co-factor for demethylase enzymes that target either methylated histone or DNA. The methylation modifications play a key role in regulating gene expression by recruiting both enhancers and repressors to the regulatory sites that ultimately determine whether a gene is expressed. A second area of interest is in the replacement of brain microglial cells by bone marrow transplantation, and the role these cells play in modulating behavior. Dr. Spangrude and his laboratory team have shown that microglial cells unexpectedly contribute to the behavioral phenotype of HoxB8 mutant mice, and are currently following up on this interesting observation with additional transplant models. A third area of interest focuses on the role of the immune system in the evolution of breast cancer, and utilizes transplantation of primary breast cancer samples along with hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells into immunodeficient mice.

Dr. Spangrude obtained a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Montana in Missoula, and then a Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology from the University of Utah. He completed two Postdoctoral Fellowships: the first in Pathology at Stanford University in Stanford, California and the second in Lymphocyte Differentiation at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia.

Education History

Undergraduate University of Montana
 BS
Doctoral Training University of Utah
 PhD
Postdoctoral Fellowship Stanford University
 Postdoctoral Fellow
Postdoctoral Fellowship Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Lymphocyte Differentiation Unit
 Postdoctoral Fellow

Selected Publications

Journal Article

  1. Wagner LA, Wang S, Wayner EA, Christensen C, Perkins SJ, Ward GW, Weiss RB, Dunn DM, Redd MJ, Spangrude GJ, Gleich G (2013). Developing and mature human granulocytes express ELP 6 in the cytoplasm. Human antibodies, 22(1-2), 21-9.
  2. Manning J, Mitchell B, Appadurai DA, Shakya A, Pierce LJ, Wang H, Nganga V, Swanson PC, May JM, Tantin D, Spangrude G (2013). Vitamin C promotes maturation of T-cells. Antioxidants & redox signaling, 19(17), 2054-67.
  3. Gahring LC, Enioutina EY, Myers EJ, Spangrude GJ, Efimova OV, Kelley TW, Tvrdik P, Capecchi MR, Rogers S (2013). Nicotinic receptor alpha7 expression identifies a novel hematopoietic progenitor lineage. PloS one, 8(3), e57481.
  4. Ridges S, Heaton WL, Joshi D, Choi H, Eiring A, Batchelor L, Choudhry P, Manos EJ, Sofla H, Sanati A, Welborn S, Agarwal A, Spangrude GJ, Miles RR, Cox JE, Frazer JK, Deininger M, Balan K, Sigman M, Muschen M, Perova T, Johnson R, Montpellier B, Guidos CJ, Jones DA, Trede N (2012). Zebrafish screen identifies novel compound with selective toxicity against leukemia. Blood, 119(24), 5621-31.
  5. Dahlem T, Cho S, Spangrude GJ, Weis JJ, Weis J (2012). Overexpression of Snai3 suppresses lymphoid- and enhances myeloid-cell differentiation. European journal of immunology, 42(4), 1038-43.
  6. Sonderegger FL, Ma Y, Maylor-Hagan H, Brewster J, Huang X, Spangrude GJ, Zachary JF, Weis JH, Weis J (2012). Localized production of IL-10 suppresses early inflammatory cell infiltration and subsequent development of IFN-gamma-mediated Lyme arthritis. Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md., 188(3), 1381-93.
  7. Maddox J, Shakya A, South S, Shelton D, Andersen JN, Chidester S, Kang J, Gligorich KM, Jones DA, Spangrude GJ, Welm BE, Tantin (2012). Transcription factor Oct1 is a somatic and cancer stem cell determinant. PLoS genetics, 8(11), e1003048.
  8. Troadec MB, Warner D, Wallace J, Thomas K, Spangrude GJ, Phillips J, Khalimonchuk O, Paw BH, Ward DM, Kaplan (2011). Targeted deletion of the mouse Mitoferrin1 gene: from anemia to protoporphyria. Blood, 117(20), 5494-502.
  9. Cho S, Spangrude G (2011). Enrichment of functionally distinct mouse hematopoietic progenitor cell populations using CD62L. Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md., 187(10), 5203-10.
  10. Chen SK, Tvrdik P, Peden E, Cho S, Wu S, Spangrude G, Capecchi M (2010). Hematopoietic origin of pathological grooming in Hoxb8 mutant mice. Cell, 141(5), 775-85.