Jack D. Caldwell, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department of Biomedical Science
University of Illinois School of Medicine
1601 Parkview Avenue
Rockford, IL 61107
USA
tel: (815)-395-5680
Laboratory (815)-395-5678

email: jackc@uic.edu

Hi, I'm Jack Caldwell. Welcome to my home page. This has a brief description of my teaching and research responsibilities here at UIC-Rockford. But first some about my family. I have a wonderful wife and two marvelous children, who you can see on my personal page. I study behavioral neuroendocrinology, which means how the brain coordinates reproductive behaviors with endocrine events. The old dogma was that steroids had to enter the cell and act in the cell's nucleus, but that is not entirely true. We have some very interesting data showing behavioral effects of estradiol that are non-genomic and some stuff so new I am not sure I should put it on the web. For more about my research click here.

Teaching

I am now the Course Coordinator for the Pharmacology course for medical students (Illinois' finest). I have added a Teaching page which will allow the students to view my in class powerpoint presentations, full lecture notes and medically important links. We are working on all new web pages here at UIC-Rockford, and hopefully I will be able to link to and from the new pages, but until then this is it.

Research

 My research is in the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology, which means that I study how the brain generates reproductive behaviors such as sexual and maternal behaviors. This has led me to delve into questions of how steroids like estradiol and progesterone interact with peptides such as oxytocin to change how, why and when we have sex. We have found that steroids act in a way that some have not yet considered. That is they act just like peptide hormones to affect membrane-bound receptors. Why do I believe this? For one, I have found that estradiol releases oxytocin (see my research page ) so quickly that it could not be a slow affect on peptide synthesis. More recently, we have found that a protein called sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) is made in the brain and is manipulated by estradiol levels (see Neuroendocrinology paper 2003) just like estradiol receptors alpha and beta. SHBG is known to bind steroids. But more recently, several laboratories have found that SHBG binds to membrane-associated receptors to initiate effects inside cells. We have found that like oxytocin, SHBG facilitates female sexual receptivity (see Brain Research papers, 2000 and 2002). In every brain region that has neurons making oxytocin, some of those oxytocin cells also make SHBG, suggesting that SHBG and oxytocin may act together to influence reproductve physiology and behaviors.

Here I am with my son Benjamin in front of Hidden Lake and Bearhat Mountain in Glacier National Park. My lovely daughter Sarah took this picture after our whole family hiked there from Logan Pass. It is hazy in the background because of multiple fires on the West side of the park.

My brother Larry and I recently returned from a family genealogy trip to Belleville Wisconsin.  That is where our Great-great-grandfather William Caldwell settled when he came to the US from Magilligan Ireland in 1843 at the age of 18.  Here is a web page that tells more.

And now for something completely different.

Here is a very interesting, if scary, web page click here.

When my friend Gustav Jirikowski came to visit lately we went on a fishing trip to Lake Michigan.  You can look at some pics of it here.

My mother, Mildred Temple Caldwell, celebrated her 90th Birthday on July 12, 2005 and I have put together a page full of pictures that were used to make a slide presentation at her party.  Here it is.

 


This page was created on 29 September 1999
Revised May 16, 2006.

Published by the University of Illinois-Chicago
If you have comments on this page please email them to:
jackc@uic.edu