Frank Burton, PhD

Dr. Burton is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and also affiliated with UMN’s Masonic Cancer Center & Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. He obtained his BS & BA degrees in Biology & Philosophy at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi; his PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Clyde A. Hutchison III & Marshall Edgell (inventing oligonucleotide-directed DNA synthesis & cloning techniques and discovering the mammalian LINES-1 repetitive DNA); and his postdoctoral training with J. Gregor Sutcliffe & Floyd Bloom at The Scripps Research Institute-La Jolla, California (inventing “physiological engineering” with a cyclic AMP-elevating transgene). While Assistant & part-time Associate Professor at UMN, his faculty research included the first transgenic "brain circuit-test" and the first transgenic mouse model of Tourette's Syndrome (TS) and comorbid Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) & trichotillomania (TTM), from which his model of hyperglutamatergic corticostriatal circuitry in these disorders stimulated clinical validation of D1 antagonist, antiglutamatergic, and opioid antagonist drugs to treat them. He’s now also a small pharma, biotech, & medtech entrepreneur who continues lecturing for Pharmacology while maintaining a small basic & translational academic UMN research lab at Hennepin County Medical Center’s (HCMC’s) Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI).