Dr. Charles Hoopes received his undergraduate degree from Lebanon Valley College before completing graduate studies in anthropology at Wake Forest University. He began his medical studies at the Duke University School of Medicine, graduating in 1992 and remained at Duke for his residency in general surgery. He completed a residency in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Michigan before returning to Duke for fellowship training in thoracic transplantation. In 2002 he joined the faculty of the University of California San Francisco as an Assistant Professor of Surgery, rising to Associate Professor and Director of the Thoracic Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support programs in 2005. He was recruited to the University of Kentucky as the Jason Alexander Gill Professor in Thoracic Surgery in 2010 and served as Director of the UK Transplant Center from 2011 until 2015. He was appointed Section Chief of Thoracic Transplantation and Co-Director of the Comprehensive Transplant Institute at UAB in February of 2015. Dr. Hoopes holds an MPH degree from School of Public Health at the University of California (Berkeley).
Historical research interests focused on (1) the evolutionary history, genomic organization and transcrptional regulation of the porcine alpha 1,3 galactosyltransferase gene responsible for hyperacute rejection of pig to primate xenotransplants (Hoopes and Platt, 1997, Transplantation 64:347), (2) the molecular biology and genomic organization of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) as infectious agents in clinical xenotransplantation (Hoopes and Platt, 1999, Transplantation 67:1391) and (3) molecular strategies for identifying novel specific endogenous retroviral transcripts in potential xenodonor genomes (Hoopes and Platt, 1997, Transplantation Proceedings 29:897).
Current research interests focus on the role of the microbiome in pulmonary transplantation as it relates colonization kinetics of the allograft, the impact of microbiome data on regulatory aspects of the immune response, and the impact of species diversity on allograft function and chronic allograft loss.
Currently, in conjunction with the University of Kentucky Center for Muscle Biology, we are investigating the key proteomic and structural modifications that underpin increased systolic function in human patients after mechanical unloading with ventricular assist devices (Haynes et al, 2014, J Mol Cell Cardiol 72C:1-8). The aim of this project is to establish a mouse model of ventricular unloading (heterotopic cardiac transplant) to determine the time-course of unloading-induced recovery as an approach to sarcomere based therapies for the failing ventricle including an early analysis of microRNA expression patterns in the mechanically unloaded ventricle
