Charles Brenner, PhD
Roy J. Carver Chair and Head of Biochemistry, Professor of Biochemistry and Internal Medicine, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa

Dr. Charles Brenner is a 1983 graduate of Wesleyan University, who spent 5 years doing yeast genetics and molecular biology research in industry at Chiron Corporation and DNAX Research Institute before conducting his graduate research at Stanford University. He earned his PhD for purification and characterization of the Kex2 prohormone convertase and then served as a post-doctoral fellow at Brandeis University, training in X-ray crystallography. He took his first independent position at Thomas Jefferson University in 1996, where he earned funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the Arnold & Mabel Beckman Foundation, and the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. Recruited to Dartmouth Medical School in 2003, he rose to serve as the Associate Director of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, among other leadership positions. At Dartmouth, Dr. Brenner made the seminal discovery of nicotinamide riboside as a vitamin precursor of NAD and earned additional funding from the NIH, the National Science Foundation and the Lung Cancer Research Foundation. In 2009, he was recruited to the University of Iowa as head of Biochemistry. There, he continued his groundbreaking research on nicotinamide riboside using quantitative metabolomics, animal models and human clinical trials to dissect its functions as a nutritional supplement and candidate drug. He is also known for contributions to molecular oncology, biochemistry and molecular biology education, recruiting 8 faculty members to the Department of Biochemistry, building the high throughput screening shared resource, and establishing the University of Iowa Obesity Research and Education Initiative. He has won a number of national and international awards, serves on prestigious peer review panels for NIH and other agencies, is a tireless mentor for trainees and faculty members, and is a long time contributor to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in multiple capacities. 

Research Summary and Publications

Relevant to the content of the CME activity, Dr. Brenner indicated he is a consultant for ChromaDex, Inc., co-founder and self-managed stock shareholder for ProHealthspan, LLC., and founder of NRomics.