College Welcomes Maria Bondesson, Xiang Li to Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty 

UHCOP recently welcomed two new faculty members into the Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences: Maria Bondesson, Ph.D., and Xiang Li, M.D., Ph.D.

Bondesson joins the department as a clinical assistant professor of Pharmacology from UH’s Department of Biology and Biochemistry and the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling, where she has worked since 2009. Bondesson earned her B.S. in Microbiology/Molecular Biology, Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the Karolinska Instituet in Stockholm, Sweden.

Her current research projects include studying how enodcrine disrupting chemical bisphenol A in combination with phytoestrogens affect signaling of the estrogen receptors; the applicability of zebrafish as a model system to detect chemical pollutants that perturb embryonic development; and the use of zebrafish screening methods for detection of chemicals that cause obesity and diabetes. Bondesson has authored/coauthored more than 30 papers in such peer-reviewed journals as PLoS One, Reproductive Toxicology and Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Gene Regulatory Mechanisms, as well as more than 40 published abstracts.

A Research Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, Li joins the college from Virginia Commonwealth University. Li earned her M.D. from Peking University in Bejing, her M.S. in Pharmacology & Toxicology from the Medical College of Wisconsin and her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Duisburg-Essen School of Medicine in Germany.

Li’s research interests include mechanisms of cardivoascular diseases and hypertension associated with aging, chronic kidney disease, autoimmune disease and infectious diseases, with a focus on the roles of exosome, microparticles, and non-coding RNA in these diseases. Her work has been published in PLoS One, the Journal of Molecular Medicine, the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and Cellular Phsyiology and Biochemistry.