Allen W. Cowley, Jr., PhD

Harry & Gertrude Hack Term Professorship in Physiology

Contact Information

Education

PhD, Physiology and Biophysics, Hahnemann Medical University, 1968
BA, Economics, Trinity College, 1961

Biography

Allen W. Cowley, Jr., PhD has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin since 1980. He earned his doctorate in Physiology from Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania working with Dr. John Scott before joining Dr. Arthur Guyton in the department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center where he rose to the rank of Professor.

Dr. Cowley has served as President of the American Physiological Society (APS) as well as the President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences and Chair of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research of the American Heart Association (AHA). He has received the Walter Cannon, the Ernest Starling, the Carl Wiggers, and Ray Daggs Awards from the APS and the Novartis Award from the Council for High Blood Pressure Research and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the AHA. His research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1971 during which time he has mentored over fifty fellows and students in his laboratory resulting in over 325 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Leadership Positions

Professor and Chairman, Department of Physiology

Research Interests

Cardiovascular Physiology | Genetics and Genomics | Renal Physiology

Dr. Cowley has made seminal findings related to the role of the baroreceptor reflexes, the renin-angiotensin system and vasopressin in both the short and long-term regulation of arterial blood pressure. His research has revealed the importance of the renal medullary circulation in sodium homeostasis and the long-term control or arterial pressure. He proposed the novel hypothesis and then demonstrated that small reductions of blood flow to medulla of the kidney can produce chronic hypertension. More recent work has determined the impact of arterial pressure on the production of oxidative stress and renal injury in the renal medulla of hypertensive rats. During the past decade, he has pioneered efforts to attach systems level biology to the genome providing novel insights into the location of genes that underlie complex disease planting the seeds for the field now referred to as "physiological genomics".

Currently he directs two program project grants; one focused on the kidney and the physiological mechanism of blood pressure control and the second exploring the genetic basis of salt-sensitive hypertension.

Fields of major interest

Control mechanisms of cardiac output and arterial pressure

Neural and reflex control of the circulation (low and high pressure baroreceptor reflex mechanism)

Autoregulation of blood flow

Renal function and regulation of renal medullary blood flow

Reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide in kidney function

Fluid and electrolyte regulation (physical factors and neural and endocrine factors)

Vasopressin in cardiovascular control and fluid and electrolyte regulation

Mechanisms of hypertension

Genetics of hypertension

Physiological genomics

A comprehensive evaluation of alignment software for reduced representation bisulfite sequencing data.

(Sun X, Han Y, Zhou L, Chen E, Lu B, Liu Y, Pan X, Cowley AW Jr, Liang M, Wu Q, Lu Y, Liu P.) Bioinformatics. 2018 08 15;34(16):2715-2723.
Region-Based Convolutional Neural Nets for Localization of Glomeruli in Trichrome-Stained Whole Kidney Sections.

(Bukowy JD, Dayton A, Cloutier D, Manis AD, Staruschenko A, Lombard JH, Solberg Woods LC, Beard DA, Cowley AW Jr.) J Am Soc Nephrol. 2018 08;29(8):2081-2088.
A NOX4/TRPC6 Pathway in Podocyte Calcium Regulation and Renal Damage in Diabetic Kidney Disease.

(Ilatovskaya DV, Blass G, Palygin O, Levchenko V, Pavlov TS, Grzybowski MN, Winsor K, Shuyskiy LS, Geurts AM, Cowley AW Jr, Birnbaumer L, Staruschenko A.) J Am Soc Nephrol. 2018 07;29(7):1917-1927.
Stability of global methylation profiles of whole blood and extracted DNA under different storage durations and conditions.

(Li Y, Pan X, Roberts ML, Liu P, Kotchen TA, Cowley AW Jr, Mattson DL, Liu Y, Liang M, Kidambi S.) Epigenomics. 2018 06;10(6):797-811.
Transcriptomic analysis reveals inflammatory and metabolic pathways that are regulated by renal perfusion pressure in the outer medulla of Dahl-S rats.

(Evans LC, Dayton A, Yang C, Liu P, Kurth T, Ahn KW, Komas S, Stingo FC, Laud PW, Vannucci M, Liang M, Cowley AW Jr.) Physiol Genomics. 2018 06 01;50(6):440-447.
How can precision medicine be applied to temporomandibular disorders and its comorbidities?

(Wilentz JB, Cowley AW Jr.) Mol Pain. 2017 Jan-Dec;13:1744806917710094.
Inhibition of Mammalian Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 Attenuates Salt-Induced Hypertension and Kidney Injury in Dahl Salt-Sensitive Rats.

(Kumar V, Wollner C, Kurth T, Bukowy JD, Cowley AW Jr.) Hypertension. 2017 10;70(4):813-821.
Acute In Vivo Analysis of ATP Release in Rat Kidneys in Response to Changes of Renal Perfusion Pressure.

(Palygin O, Evans LC, Cowley AW Jr, Staruschenko A.) J Am Heart Assoc. 2017 Sep 12;6(9).
Increased Perfusion Pressure Drives Renal T-Cell Infiltration in the Dahl Salt-Sensitive Rat.

(Evans LC, Petrova G, Kurth T, Yang C, Bukowy JD, Mattson DL, Cowley AW Jr.) Hypertension. 2017 09;70(3):543-551.
Renal Delivery of Anti-microRNA Oligonucleotides in Rats.

(Usa KS, Liu Y, Kurth T, Kriegel AJ, Mattson DL, Cowley AW Jr, Liang M.) Methods Mol Biol. 2017;1527:409-419.
Breaking the Cycle: Estrous Variation Does Not Require Increased Sample Size in the Study of Female Rats.

(Dayton A, Exner EC, Bukowy JD, Stodola TJ, Kurth T, Skelton M, Greene AS, Cowley AW Jr.) Hypertension. 2016 11;68(5):1139-1144.
Role of Nox4 and p67phox subunit of Nox2 in ROS production in response to increased tubular flow in the mTAL of Dahl salt-sensitive rats.

(Zheleznova NN, Yang C, Cowley AW Jr.) Am J Physiol Renal Physiol. 2016 08 01;311(2):F450-8.

Allen W. Cowley, Jr., PhD