Faculty

David Alpers, M.D.
William B. Kountz Professor of Medicine in Geriatrics

Dr. Alpers received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and his house staff training in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. After two years as a research associate at the National Institutes of Health he completed a fellowship in Gastroenterology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and was a junior faculty member at Harvard Medical School for 5 years. He was the chief of the GI Division at Washington University Scbool of Medicine from 1969-1996. Since 1998 he has served part time as a senior consultant to R&D (gastrointestinal, pain, and anti-inflammatory drug development) for GlaxoSmithKline.
Dr. Alpers served the American Gastroenterological Association as chair of the Research Committee, director of the Undergraduate Teaching Project, and as President (1990-91). In 1997 he was awarded the Friedenwald medal by the AGA for a lifetime of contributions to the field of gastroenterology. He has served as editor for the American Journal of Physiology - Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology (1991-1997), and for the Small Intestine and Nutrition sections of Current Opinion in Gastroenterology (1996-present). He was associate editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and of Annual Reviews of Nutrition, and is currently associate editor of the Textbook of Gastroenterology (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, T. Yamada, editor in chief), now in its 4th edition. He is senior author of the Manual of Nutritional Therapeutics (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 4th edition). He served on the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry from 1998-2003.

Dr. Alpers’ research activities include the structure/function relationships of the vitamin B12 binding proteins, and the biological role of intestinal alkaline phosphatase in intestinal physiology, especially fat absorption. His clinical research has focused on the psychiatric aspects of functional and inflammatory bowel disease.

Contact Information

Washington University School of Medicine
660 S. Euclid Ave., Campus Box 8031
St. Louis, MO 63110-1093
Phone: (314) 362-8943
Fax: (314) 362-8230
E-mail: dalpers@dom.wustl.edu

Publications

Recent Articles in Peer Review Journals

Karam SM, John R, Alpers DH, Ponery AS. Retinoic acid stimulates the dynamics of mouse gastric epithelial progenitors. Stem Cells 2005;23:433-41.

Gordon MM, Brada N, Remacha A, Badell I, del Rio E, Baiget M, Santer R, Quadros EV, Rothenberg SP, Alpers DH. A genetic polymorphism in the coding region of the gastric intrinsic factor gene (GIF) is associated with congenital intrinsic factor deficiency.
Hum Mutat. 2004 Jan;23(1):85-91.

Yassin F, Rothenberg SP, Rao S, Gordon MM, Alpers DH, Quadros EV. Identification of a 4-base deletion in the gene in inherited intrinsic factor deficiency. Blood. 2004 Feb 15;103(4):1515-7.

North C, Downs D, Clouse R, Alrakawi A, Dokucu ME, Cox J, Spitznagel EL, Alpers DH. The presentation of IBS in the context of somatization disorder. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology 2004;2:787-95.

Mahmood A, Shao JS, Alpers DH. Rat enterocytes secrete SLPs containing alkaline phosphatase and cubilin in response to corn oil feeding. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol. 2003 Aug;285(2):G433-41.

Narisawa S, Huang L, Iwasaki A, Hasegawa H, Alpers DH, Millan JL. Accelerated fat absorption in intestinal alkaline phosphatase knockout mice. Molecular and Cell Biology 2003;23:7525-30.

Mahmood A, Engle MJ, Alpers DH. Secreted intestinal surfactant-like particles interact with cell membranes and extracellular matrix proteins in rats. J Physiol. 2002 Jul 1;542(Pt 1):237-44.

Department of Medicine
Division of Geriatrics & Nutritional Sciences

David Alpers, MD