Rate My Professor Brian North

Brian J. North is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Creighton University School of Medicine. He earned his B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College and Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco under the mentorship of Dr. Eric Verdin. North completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School with Dr. David Sinclair and subsequently held the position of Research Assistant Professor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, working closely with Dr. Wenyi Wei’s laboratory. At Creighton, he contributes to the School of Medicine, Graduate School programs in Biomedical Sciences (Doctorate and Master of Science), and the Translational Hearing Center.

North’s research examines molecular and cellular pathways that regulate aging and contribute to age-related diseases, with a primary emphasis on tumorigenesis. He studies the interrelationship between aging and cancer, particularly the ubiquitin-proteasome system’s role in age-dependent targeting of tumor suppressors and oncogenes. His investigations cover E3 ubiquitin ligases in tumorigenesis, NAD+-dependent deacetylases, colon cancer, skin cancer, cardiac aging, age-related hearing loss, and aneuploidy. North has received the National Institutes of Health K01 Career Development Award (NIH/NIA AG052627), Gustavus Adolphus College Decade Award, and BIDMC/National Institutes of Aging T32 Translational Research in Aging Award.

He has produced impactful publications in high-profile journals. Selected works include “BubR1 Insufficiency Drives Transcriptomic Alterations and Pathology Associated With Cardiac Aging and Heart Failure” (Aging Cell, 2025), “BubR1 and SIRT2: Insights into aneuploidy, aging, and cancer” (Seminars in Cancer Biology, 2024), “The Role of Molecular and Cellular Aging Pathways on Age-Related Hearing Loss” (International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2024), “Genetic fusions favor tumorigenesis through degron loss in oncogenes” (Nature Communications, 2021), “SIRT2 induces the checkpoint kinase BubR1 to increase lifespan” (EMBO Journal, 2014), “The intersection between aging and cardiovascular disease” (Circulation Research, 2012), and “Sirtuins” (Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 2007). These contributions elucidate key mechanisms linking aging to cancer and related pathologies.