David B. O'Gorman

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Position: Assistant Professor
Degree: MSc PhD
Postdoctoral Fellowship: 2001-2003, 2003-2005 Children's Health Research Institute
Research interests: Dupuytren’s contracture, wound healing, fibrosis, extracellular matrix-growth factor interactions

Office: Lawson Health Research Institute, Room E2-137
Phone: 519.646.6100 Ext. 64397 (Office) Ext. 65347 (Lab)
Fax: 519.646.6049
E-mail: dogorman@uwo.ca

Subsequent to training in clinical biochemistry as a medical technologist, Dr. O'Gorman graduated with a PhD from the Department of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2001.  He arrived in Canada in 2001 as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Lawson Health Research Institute and was a recipient of the Dr. David W. Whaley Post-Doctoral Fellowship 2003-2005. He was appointed to the Division of Plastic Surgery in the Department of Surgery in 2005 and the Department of Biochemistry at Western University in 2007. With Dr. Bing Siang Gan, he directs the HULC Cell and Molecular Biology Laboratory with a research focus on Dupuytren's contracture and abnormal wound healing conditions such as hypertrophic scarring.  Since 2007, Dr. O'Gorman's research has been funded by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Canadian Society for Surgery of the Hand, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Laboratory Info: The Cell and Molecular Biology laboratory of the Hand and Upper Limb Center is co-directed by Dr. Bing Siang Gan, a plastic surgeon and physician/scientist, and Dr. David O'Gorman, a molecular biologist.  The primary research interests of the lab are the molecular mechanisms that promote Dupuytren's disease progression and recurrence, and fibroproliferative conditions such as hypertrophic scarring and frozen shoulder syndrome.  Cell and Molecular Biology lab personnel are skilled in the isolation and culture of primary cells from surgically resected tissues onto collagen and other culture substrates that more closely mimic their in vivo origins.  The cell culture facility includes a Flexcell unit, allowing us to mimic biomechanical interactions of primary cells in two and three-dimensional environments under physiologically relevant stress.  The lab has expertise in assessing DNA, RNA and protein expression, interactions and signaling pathway analyses.  Finally, the lab has a deconvolution fluorescence microscope unit for two and three-dimensional imaging of primary cells in culture.

Residents and other staff with interests in the molecule mechanisms of scarring, Dupuytren's disease and other fibroproliferative diseases are welcome discuss their research goals with Drs Gan and O'Gorman.  The lab offers training in primary cell culture and a variety of molecular biology techniques including DNA/RNA isolation, real-time PCR quantification, chromatin immunoprecipitation, western immunoblotting, immunofluorescence microscopy, and a variety of cell proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis assays.