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Robert A. Maue, PhD

Contact Information

Professional Interests

Dr. Maue is interested in understanding the mechanisms important for the development and differentiation of neurons in the brain. In particular, he is interested in the means by which a family of growth factors known as neurotrophins (NGF, BDNF, NT-3) exert their influence the growth and electrical activity of neurons, including their regulation of process outgrowth and ion channel expression. His experiments have taken advantage of transgenic mice expressing mutant ion channel genes, knockout mice lacking neurotrophin receptors, and novel mouse models of NPC disease that he discovered to analyze neurons in primary culture, in brain slices, and in vivo. This has included immunocytochemical and morphometric analyses, Western blotting and biochemical assays, single-cell, real time PCR analyses of gene expression, patch clamp recording of ion channels and electrical activity, virus-mediated expression of fluorescent proteins in vivo and in cultured neurons, and behavioral analyses of cerebellar function. Among the focus of his efforts are a class of neurons in the brain known as cerebellar Purkinje cells, and his interest in events associated with their development has included the pathology and abnormal development of these neurons in neurological disorders such as Niemann Pick Type C (NPC) disease. NPC disease is a fatal genetic disorder associated with abnormal cellular cholesterol accumulation, and a hallmark of this disorder is the preferential loss of Purkinje cells. Given the recent appreciation of the importance of cholesterol in the brain, particularly during neurodegenerative diseases such as NPC disease, Alzheimer's disease, and Huntington’s disease, understanding the effects of NPC disease and cholesterol abnormalities on Purkinje cells has widespread implications.

Grant Information

National Institutes of Health, National Niemann Pick Disease Foundation, Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, Hereditary Disease Foundation, Epilepsy Foundation, Wellcome Trust

Biography

Bob received a B.S. in Biology from St John’s University in Minnesota, a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California - San Diego (including two research expeditions to Antarctica), and did postdoctoral research at Brandeis University in Waltham and at New England Medical Center in Boston before becoming an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth Medical School in 1989. He rose to the rank of Professor in the Department of Physiology and Neurobiology and the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, and in 2016 became a Professor in the Department of Medical Education in the Geisel School of Medicine. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychological Brain Sciences and the Department of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College.

Bob is a cellular and molecular neurobiologist with research interests in neuronal development, neurotrophic factors, electrical excitability, and developmental aspects of neurodegenerative diseases, and was the first Dartmouth faculty member to receive a coveted Sloan Research Fellowship. He has garnered external support for his research for more than 30 years from sources such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Epilepsy Foundation, Hereditary Disease Foundation, National Neimann Pick Disease Foundation, and Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation. He has spent more than 3 decades serving on and chairing numerous scientific advisory boards and grant review panels for the Veterans Administration (VA), NIH, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), including the NSF review panel for course, curriculum, and lab implementation (CCLI) proposals.

Bob is passionate about teaching, and in the past 30 years has taught a broad spectrum of medical students, graduate students, undergraduate students, and high school students in both the classroom and a variety of laboratory settings. This includes extensive teaching experience at Dartmouth College, where by invitation he has served as the course director for a systems neuroscience course and lab (2010-2021), for a physiology course and lab (2009-2020), a molecular and cellular neuroscience course (2007-2019), and an advanced neurobiology course (2006). He has mentored more than two dozen students in their Honors Thesis Research, including recipients of the “Christopher Reed Biologist Award for distinguished biological research”. He has served as the founder and co-director of a summer undergraduate nursing research program at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (2010-2020), as a member of the steering committee for the undergraduate neuroscience major (2010-present), and as a member of the committee on undergraduate research (CUGR) at Dartmouth (2013-2016). In 2013 he was one of two nominees from Dartmouth College for New Hampshire Professor of the Year. Beyond the confines of Dartmouth, Bob has taught at Hanover High School (2005-present) and Stevens High School (2010), as well as teaching and helping design teaching activities at River Valley Community College (2011-2015). For many years (2010-2020) a major focus was serving as a leader of the New Hampshire IdeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (NH-INBRE), a large NIH-supported initiative for developing research and science education opportunities for students at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) across the state of New Hampshire.

At the graduate student level, Bob is a member of both the Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) graduate program and the graduate Program in Experimental and Molecular Medicine (PEMM). As such he has served as a lecturer in MCB graduate student core course (1996-2005), course director and lecturer in the PEMM graduate student core course (2006-2013), and as a lecturer in the PEMM 211 and PEMM 271 graduate courses (2008-2010). He has trained nearly a dozen MD, PhD, and MD/PhD students in his lab, including recipients of the “Strohbehn Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research”. He has served as Co-Director of the prestigious “Ion Channels” summer course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1996-1998), and twice has served as a course faculty member in the Woods Hole summer Neurobiology course (1988; 2004). At the Geisel School of Medicine, Bob was a fixture in the Medical Neuroscience course (1990-2018) and for his efforts was nominated for the Excellence in Education Award on numerous occasions (2010, 2011, 2012). He has been involved in medical curriculum redesign, and served on several Redesign Task Force committees (2011-2014).