Alvin Powers, MD, is Director of the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism within the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
His areas of expertise include: diabetes, endocrinology, metabolism, thyroid disease, and thyroid cancer. His research focuses on understanding how glucose stimulates insulin secretion by pancreatic islet cells and to characterize and reverse abnormalities in this process that are present in diabetes.
Studies in Dr. Powers' lab involve the human pancreas or human islets transplanted into immunodeficient mice to generate information relevant to human diabetes. Dr. Powers' research utilizes research approaches such as RNA and protein analysis, genetically modified mice, in vivo physiology, radioimmunoassay, adenovirus mediated gene transfer, transplantation of murine and human islets, confocal microscopy, and immunocytochemistry and involves collaborations with vascular biologists, development biologists, biomedical engineers, and transplant biologists.