Dr. Don Sens

Dr. Don Sens, is a Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He received the Ph.D. degree in 1976 from the Department of Chemistry at the University of South Carolina in the area of gene regulation of the arginine operon in E. coli. Postdoctoral training was with Dr. Harold Amos in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sens joined the faculty in the Department of Pathology at the Medical University of South Carolina in 1979 and attained the rank of full professor and director of pathology research in 1989. Dr. Sens joined the faculty at the UND SMHS in 2002 in the Department of Pathology. Dr. Sens has maintained active research support throughout his career, is a frequent reviewer of grants and manuscripts, and a active member of the Society of Toxicology. Dr. Sens has been the principal investigator of the P20 INBRE program since July of 2005. He is also the program coordinator for the Native American Research Centers for Health (NARCH) grant awarded to Cankdeska Cikana Community College in September of 2014. Dr. Sens’s research is anchored by the use of human tissues and derived cell cultures in biomedical research. The major theme of the applicant’s research is to prove the hypothesis that environmental agents which elicit human disease cause cellular alterations in cell structure and function that can be identified as predictive biomarkers of disease development and progression. Thee hypothesis is pursued under studies designed to show that environmental exposure to arsenic and cadmium are involved in the development and progression of human bladder, breast, prostate and renal disease and that such exposure produces biomarkers predictive of the disease process.