Henry J. Pownall, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry at Weiss Cornell Medicine and a scientist at Houston Methodist Research Institute, will deliver the Catherine H. Bone Lecture in Chemistry at Wilkes University on Nov. 6. The event is at 7:30 p.m. in Stark Learning Center, Room 101. Pownall will speak about “Cardioprotection via High Density Lipoprotein Therapy—From Biophysics to Mouse Models.” The lecture is free and open to the public.
Pownall graduated from Wilkes College in 1967 with a master of science degree in chemistry. He earned a doctorate from Northeastern University. His doctoral training was in physical chemistry with postdoctoral fellowships in molecular spectroscopy at the University of Houston, and biochemistry at Baylor College of Medicine with an emphasis on lipid metabolism.
Over time Pownall moved from studying molecules to focus on in vivo models with living organisms, studying biophysics, peptide design, lipid synthesis and enzymology, and cell and molecular biology. His work is centered on high-density lipoprotein therapeutics, and energy metabolism as it relates to obesity-linked diabetes and human lipid metabolism. A major goal of his research is to determine how alcohol ingestion contributes to enhanced postprandial lipemia, attendant pancreatitis, or alcohol-induced reduction of cardiovascular disease, an effect mediated by increased HDL-cholesterol.
The Catherine H. Bone Lecture series was made possible by the endowments of its namesake, who taught chemistry at Wilkes from 1946 to 1965.
