Rate My Professor Bonnie Blazer-Yost

Bonnie Blazer-Yost, Ph.D., is a Professor of Biology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in the School of Science. She holds a B.A. from Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pharmacology at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. As a transport physiologist, Blazer-Yost's research examines the regulation of epithelial ion transport mechanisms that contribute to salt and water homeostasis in health and disease. Her early work focused on polycystic kidney disease (PKD), investigating mechanisms of cyst growth and advancing PPARγ agonists from in vitro cell studies through animal models to a human clinical trial as co-principal investigator.

Blazer-Yost directs the Hydrocephalus Research Center at IUPUI, where her laboratory develops pharmaceutical treatments for hydrocephalus by targeting cerebrospinal fluid production, neuroinflammation, and neuronal cell protection in genetic, post-hemorrhagic, post-traumatic, and other preclinical models using rodents and pigs. She serves as corresponding principal investigator on two Department of Defense grants—a Focused Program Award and an Expansion Award—totaling $11.7 million, collaborating with co-investigators from Indiana University, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and Purdue University. A Fellow of the American Physiological Society, she has produced over 140 research works documented on ResearchGate with approximately 2,447 citations. Key publications include "Characterization of TRPV4-mediated signaling pathways in choroid plexus epithelium" (Hulme et al., American Journal of Physiology - Cell Physiology, 2022), "Channels and Transporters in Astrocyte Volume Regulation in Situations of Ischemia" (Reed et al., International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2022), and "Hydrocephalus in a rat model of Meckel Gruber syndrome with disruption of ciliary gene Tmem67" (Shim et al., Disease Models & Mechanisms, 2019). Her contributions advance non-surgical options for treating hydrocephalus.