Roy Zent, MD, PhD

Roy Zent, MD, is the Thomas F. Frist Sr. Professor of Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is a member of the division of nephrology, the Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Medicine, and a professor in Cell and Developmental Biology and Cancer Biology. He received medical training at The University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and specialized in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of Cape Town. Dr. Zent received a Ph.D in cell biology from the University of Toronto in Canada and did a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Mark Ginsberg at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. He is board-certified in internal medicine and nephrology in South Africa, Canada, and the U.S. 

The main research focus of the Zent group is to define mechanisms of cell-extracellular matrix interactions and how they affect kidney development and function. The family of proteins focused on is called integrins, which are the principal cell receptors for extracellular matrix. The major projects in the group include: 1) defining the mechanisms whereby integrins regulate cell function and signaling; 2) defining how integrin cytoplasmic tails interact with cytoplasmic proteins to regulate cell function; 3) defining the structural determinants of specificity of integrin-dependent signaling. The primary techniques to answer these questions include the making and characterizing transgenic mice, cell biology and biochemical techniques, and structural methodologies, including 3-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance. Our group has extensive collaborations with other groups within the division of nephrology and other departments at Vanderbilt Medical Center.