Prashant Nighot, MVSc, PhD

Dr. Nighot completed his PhD training at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2008 in the area of Comparative Biomedical Sciences. Since then, throughout his post-doctoral training and academic career, Dr. Nighot has studied intestinal mucosal homeostasis in health and disease. After post-doctoral training, Dr. Nighot joined the University of New Mexico School of Medicine as Assistant Professor of Medicine in 2014. In 2018, he joined the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology in the Department of Medicine at Penn State College of Medicine as an Associate Professor. Dr. Nighot’s lab is interested especially in the role of defective intestinal tight junction (TJ) barrier in inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. TJ barrier defects allow penetration of luminal antigens, leading to excessive immune and inflammatory response. Dr. Nighot’s projects have been supported by NIH K01 and R01 awards. In collaboration with basic and clinician scientists, the goal of the Nighot lab is to use basic science findings for a better understanding of the pathogenesis of gastrointestinal (GI) diseases and their prevention. The focus of Dr. Nighot’s teaching is GI pathophysiology. He serves as a co-director for the GI medical course and also enjoys teaching in the graduate courses.