The Rainey Lab is involved in collaboration with multiple national and international scientific teams. These collaborations facilitate the sharing and analysis of data as well as the development of new protocols for adrenal and ovarian research.

Dr. Gary D. Hammer, M.D., Ph.D. is a medical endocrinologist specializing in the treatment of adrenal and gonadal diseases. Work in his laboratory has focused on the mechanisms by which signaling and transcriptional programs initiate adrenal-specific growth and differentiation with an emphasis on the dysregulated growth of adrenocortical stem cells in development and cancer.

Dr. Hammer's research focuses on the molecular underpinnings of adrenocortical growth in development and cancer. His laboratory's goals are to characterize the adrenocortical stem/progenitor cell population and elucidate how altered regulation of these cells contributes to adrenocortical disease, namely hypoplasias, dysplasias and cancer.

http://www.med.umich.edu/hammerlab/

Dr. Richard Auchus, M.D., Ph.D. is a professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes (MEND) and director of the MEND Fellowship Program. He received his medical degree and Ph.D. in pharmacology from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Auchus completed his residency at the University of Iowa and an endocrinology fellowship at UTHSC-San Antonio/Wilford Hall Medical Center. Dr. Auchus came to the University of Michigan from University of Texas, Southwestern Medical School, where he was a Professor of Internal Medicine - Endocrinology.

Dr. Auchus is a steroid biologist with expertise both in basic science and clinical/translational science. His work has included translational research into: molecular and genetic mechanisms of human hypertension, improved diagnostic studies and management in primary aldosteronism and Cushing syndromes, modifier genes in 21-hydroxylase deficiency, cardiovascular disease in polycystic ovary syndrome, and the endocrinology of traumatic brain injury.

Dr. Tobias Else, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes (MEND). He received his medical degree at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and he completed his residency and fellowship at the University of Michigan. He was the organizer and is now the director of the Michigan Endocrine Oncology Repository (MEOR). His research program focuses on adrenal cancer, both adrenocortical cancer and pheochromocytoma. In addition, he is working to define genetic causes of familial hyperaldosteronism. His research is funded by private foundations as well as the American Heart Association and National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Adina Turcu, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes (MEND). She completed her Endocrinology Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.

Dr. Turcu’s interests span a wide spectrum of translational and clinical studies of adrenal pathology, including: congenital adrenal hyperplasia, primary aldosteronism, Cushing syndrome, pheochromocytoma/paraganglioma and nonfunctioning adrenal tumors. Dr. Turcu has expertise in mass spectrometry and dedicates much of her research to the development of novel biomarkers with clinical utility in adrenal disorders.

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas

Dr. Perrin White, M.D. is the first holder of the Audre Newman Rapoport Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Endocrinology. Recruited to UT Southwestern in 1994 from Cornell University Medical College in New York City, he is a Professor of Pediatrics and directs the pediatric endocrinology program at UT Southwestern. His research focus is glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid biosynthesis and action.

University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, Mississippi

Dr. Celso Gomez-Sanchez, M.D.

Italy

Dr. Franco Mantero, M.D. is a Full Professor of Endocrinology and Director of the Division of Endocrinology at the University of Padua, Italy. A graduate of the University of Padua, he did his post-graduate studies at the Universities of Florence and Padua, where he became Associate Professor in Medicine in 1981, and Full Professor in Andrology at the University of Catania, in 1986. He was then Chairman of the Division of Endocrinology at the University of Ancona, and later returned to Padua in 2000. He carried out post-doctoral research with Professor Mach in Geneva and Professor E. Biglieri in San Francisco.

His basic and clinical research includes pathophysiology of aldosterone, endocrine hypertension, steroids, enzyme deficiency syndromes, states of glucocorticoid excess, apparent mineralocorticoid excess, adrenal tumors and molecular tumorigenesis, genetics of hypetension, pituitary tumors, and male infertility.

He has published more than 400 peer reviewed papers and is editor of several books on Adrenal and Endocrine Hypertension. He has served on the Editorial Boards of a number of journals, such as J.Hypertension, Clinical Endocrinology, J. of Endocrinological Investigations, and Steroids.

He is also a council member of the International Society of Endocrinology.

Dr. Paolo Mulatero, M.D. is an Associate Professor in Internal Medicine at the University of Turino. Dr. Mulatero received his M.D. from the University of Turino in 1991 and conducted scientific research at University of Glasgow, UK and the College de France in Paris. His research focuses on the pathophysiology of essential and secondary hypertension.

Dr. Silvia Monticone, M.D. received her M.D. from the University of Torino in 2007. After conducting clinical and scientific research as a resident in Internal Medicine, she was awarded a research fellowship at Georgia Health Sciences University in the laboratory of William Rainey. Dr. Monticone's research focuses on adrenal causes of secondary hypertension and pathophysiology and regulation of aldosterone production.

Sendai, Japan

Dr. Hironobo Sasano, M.D., Ph.D. is the Director of the Department of Pathology at Tohoku University Hospital, Sendai, Japan. His research interests include steroid biosynthesis, metabolism, and actions in the adrenal cortex and gonads. He also studies sex steroid dependent neoplasms, such as human breast, endometrial, and ovarian carcinomas.

Dr. Yasuiro Nakamura, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Fumitoshi Satoh, M.D, Ph.D. received an M.D. in 1991 and a Ph.D. in 1997 both from Tohoku University. He completed a Research fellowship in the Department of Metabolic Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College of London, UK (Professor S.R. Bloom). Dr. Satoh is currently Professor; Division of Division of Nephrology, Endocrinology, and Vascular Medicine, Tohoku University Hospital.

Australia

Professor Raymond Rodgers - B Agr Sci, M Agr Sci, Ph.D. is a Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and an Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He was the former president of the Endocrine Society of Australia and is an editor for Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology.

South Africa

Professor Amanda Swart, Ph.D. is a biochemist at the University of Stellenbosch and is one of a handful of South African scientists whose research endeavors benefit from a R2 million research grant from the South African Rooibos Council (SARC).

It is not the first time that her work on the ability of this unique African herbal tea to lower stress levels, have received funding from the SARC. “The support I have received over the past four years has enabled my research team to make significant findings, and to prove scientifically the anecdotal claims that rooibos tea has a calming effect,” says Prof Swart, an associate professor in the SU Department of Biochemistry.

Professor Pieter Swart, Ph.D. Prof Pieter Swart's research focuses on the steroids that are released by the adrenal gland. In studying the longer gestation periods of the karakul sheep in the south-western parts of Namibia, he discovered that a certain plant that the sheep fed on, the gannabos, caused a delay in parturition. Normally cortisol levels in the foetus rise towards the end of pregnancy, stimulating the onset of the birth process. The gannabos was found to contain certain compounds that apparently blocked cortisol production thereby prolonging pregnancy by as much as 60 days.