Research Program: Tumor Biology and Progession
Assistant Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
Director, The University of Minnesota Biological Materials Procurement Network (BioNET)

schme004@umn.edu
612-273-5980 — office
612-625-875 — lab
Preferred method of contact: e-mail

Dr. Schmechel completed MD/PhD training at the University of Minnesota. He completed graduate work with Dr. Leslie Schiff in the Department of Microbiology, leading to a Ph.D. in 1999. He obtained his M.D. in 1998. After medical school, Dr. Schmechel moved to the University of Washington in Seattle, where he completed residency training in clinical and anatomic pathology. He recently returned to the University of Minnesota, where he is an assistant professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and a member of the Institute of Human Genetics.

Research Interests

Work in the Schmechel laboratory is directed toward a better understanding of genetic determinants of poor outcome in prostate cancer. Although prostate cancer is deadly in some men, the disease follows an indolent course in most patients diagnosed with the disease. Factors that determine whether prostate cancer will be clinically aggressive or indolent following initial treatment are not completely understood. The long term goal of the laboratory is to develop novel molecular diagnostic and prognostic tests that will facilitate "patient tailored" selection of therapy: men with tumors that are likely to be aggressive may be treated up-front with more intensive therapies, such as adjuvant chemotherapy, radiation, and/or biological therapies, whereas men with tumors likely to be indolent may wish to undergo more minimal therapy. Towards that goal, the laboratory is currently engaged in identifying and validating genes whose expression patterns correlate with clinical outcome. Further, the laboratory is working with co-investigators in radiology, urologic surgery, and pathology to test whether MRI methods, already used to measure tumor size and spread, may also be useful for measuring the biological aggressiveness of the cancer cells that comprise tumors. If successful, this preoperative MRI method may importantly inform clinical decision making for men with prostate cancer.

Selected Publications

Schmechel SC, LeVasseur R, Yang K, Sabath D. Identification of genes whose expression patterns differ in benign lymphoid tissue and follicular, mantle cell, and small lymphocytic lymphoma. Leukemia 2004;18:841-855.

McShea A, Kumar A, Schmechel SC. Custom DNA microarrays: powerful tools in the development and implementation of high throughput molecular diagnostics. In Vitro Diagnostic Technology 2004;59.

Smith JA, Schmechel SC, Williams BR, Silverman RH, Schiff LA. Involvement of the interferon-regulated antiviral proteins PKR and RNase L in reovirus-induced shutoff of cellular translation. J Virol. 2005;79:2240-2250.