Uttam Garg PhD, DABCC, FAACC, FABFT

Dr. Uttam Garg, Ph.D., DABCC, FAACC, FABFT is a Director in the Division of Laboratory Medicine and a Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in 1987 from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, under the supervision of Dr. Nirmal K. Ganguly, the Director of the Indian Council of Medical Research, and Dr. Rakesh Bhatnagar, Professor of Biotechnology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. For his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Garg studied the effect of passive and active immunization with pili of Escherichia coli in the prevention of ascending pyelonephritis. He used the transport of glucose and amino acids, and renal brush border membrane enzymes as sensitive biochemical markers of renal damage to assess the protective effect of immunization with pili. For his graduate work, he was awarded the Major General Amir Chand Gold Medal, the highest research honor awarded by the institute.

Dr. Garg did his postdoctoral training at the New York Medical College in Pharmacology and Cell Biology under the direction of Dr. Aviv Hassid, currently Brownstein Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Tennessee. During his postdoctoral training, Dr. Garg received an American Heart Association Fellowship to study the role of nitric oxide and atrial natriuretic factors in the regulation of smooth muscle cell growth. Along with his mentor, he demonstrated that nitric oxide and cyclic GMP inhibit smooth muscle and mesangial cell growth and proliferation induced by serum and various growth factors, such as platelet-derived growth factor, epidermal growth factor, insulin-like growth factor, and fibroblast growth factor. They also demonstrated that nitric oxide exerts its effect both through and independent of cyclic GMP. At the New York University Medical Center, Dr. Garg, along with Dr. Mylar Bansinath, demonstrated the role of nitric oxide in the regulation of glial cell proliferation; he was awarded FIDIA Research Foundation Travel Award to present his findings at a symposium entitled, “Excitatory Amino Acids”, held in 1992 at Yosemite Park, California.

Dr. Garg completed his Clinical Chemistry Fellowship at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis under the direction of Drs. John Eckfeldt and Michael Tsai. After completing the fellowship, he continued his stay at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis as an Assistant Professor. Along with Dr. Eckfeldt as the Principal Investigator, Dr. Garg contributed to NHLBI-funded research grants, “Family Heart Study-Central Laboratory” and “Hypertension Genetics-Biochemistry Laboratory” as a co-investigator. The research group studied various cardiovascular risk factors, including homocysteine, lipids, factor V, and apolipoprotein E. During his stay at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Dr. Garg was awarded a Van Slyke Society Research grant entitled, “Approaches to Identify Homocystinuria Heterozygotes” from the AACC. He received the Richard Marshall travel award from the Midwest Section of Clinical Chemistry and a travel award from the AACC to present his findings. In addition, he developed several methods for clinical use, including a molecular assay for the diagnosis of hereditary hemochromatosis, an assay for cystathionine ß-synthase in cultured fibroblasts, a methionine loading test for the diagnosis of heterozygosity of homocystinuria, and a method for molecular diagnosis of sickle cell disease using microextraction DNA from Guthrie cards.