Juanita L Merchant, MD, PhD
Biography
Juanita Merchant, MD, PhD, joined the faculty at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson in July 2018 as a professor of medicine in the UA Department of Medicine and is chief of the UA Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Merchant earned her MD and PhD at Yale University School of Medicine (MSTP), has written or co-written more than 130 peer-reviewed research publications, and is editor or co-editor of four books and several book chapters. She is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigators (ASCI), Association of American Physicians (AAP) and National Academy of Medicine. Additionally, she a past elected member of the National Academy of Medicine Council. She is also a member of AACR and ASCO. She is currently President of AAP (FY 2025-2026). She has served on multiple NIH study sections and committees, including NIDDK Council and the Council of Councils. In 2016, she was appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC) for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which she also chaired in her final year on the BSC. Merchant is a co-PI on the NIH-AGA FORWARD program which was developed to increase the number of academic gastroenterologists. Merchant served as MSTP Associate Director at the University of Michigan and is also a member of the national advisory committee for the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program. She has remained continuously funded by NIH for her work on gastrin and neuroendocrine tumors; hedgehog signaling and gastric cancer; and transcriptional control mechanisms in colon cancer.
Cancer Focus
The research of my lab focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying normal and pre-neoplastic epithelial cell growth in the luminal gastrointestinal tract. Our recent studies involve the use of animal and cell culture models to dissect the pathways through which chronic inflammatory processes, generally from bacterial colonization leads to mucosal alterations in the luminal GI tract that set the stage for neoplastic transformation (pre-neoplasia). Ongoing projects in my laboratory include the role of sonic hedgehog in metaplasia/dysplasia leading to gastric gastritis ; the role of the nuclear protein menin in the genesis of neuroendocrine tumors, e.g., gastrinomas, carcinoids, and the role of the Krüppel-like transcription factor ZBP-89 (ZNF148) in mucosal restitution from infection to neoplastic transformation. More recently, Dr. Merchant identified a missense mutation HNF1A in patients with early onset colorectal cancer that when introduced into mice by gene editing induce colon polyps and eventually liver cancers but only when the mice are placed on a high fat diet.