Stephen H Wright, PhD
Biography
After receiving Bachelors and Masters degrees at UC Davis and a PhD in Marine Biology at UC Irvine, Dr. Wright pursued postdoctoral training in membrane physiology with Dr. Ernest Wright at the UCLA School of Medicine. He joined the Department of Physiology in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona in 1982 and has been Professor of Physiology since 1992 (and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics since 2004). The focus of his research has been on mechanisms of organic electrolyte transport, primarily in the mammalian kidney. The emphasis in recent years has been on the kinetics, energetics and selectivity of organic cation transporters, particularly OCT2 and MATE1.
Cancer Focus
Humans express hundreds of transport processes that mediate the movement of molecules into or out of cells. These molecules are generally nutrients or the waste products of routine metabolism, and many transporters selectively handle them. Other transporters, however, mediate the removal from cells and the body of toxic molecules, including, as it turns out, many chemotherapeutic compounds used in the treatment of diseases, including cancer. Our lab studies the mechanisms and selectivity of some of this latter group of transport processes in the hope of developing predictive models of drug-drug interaction.