This Thursday Speaker Bio: Dr. Murray Ardies

Dr. Ardies earned a Bachelor of Physical Education from The University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada in 1975 following which he worked for the Government of Manitoba as an exercise-specialist and then as Co-Director of Operation ReNu, a public health education program that emphasized proper diet and physical activity as preventive medicine. In 1978 he earned a Master’s degree with a Major in Health Education and a Major in Physical Education along with a minor in Nutrition from Northern Michigan University, Marquette MI and then a multi-disciplinary PhD at UT-Austin in 1985 with majors in Pharmacology, Nutrition, and Exercise Physiology where we demonstrated that exercise can prevent alcohol-induced mitochondrial dysfunction in liver. He then worked at the Ichan School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in NYC on developing new methodologies for CYP and CYP reductase purification with Dr. Jerome M. Lasker (CYP450-GP). Next, at Stanford University Medical School he worked on projects to purify and characterize steroid-binding proteins from yeast with Dr. Peter Molloy and then at the Department of Anesthesia with Dr. James Trudell where he helped characterize molecular mechanisms of alcohol and halothane toxicity involving direct immune attack on liver cells. In 1989 he joined NEIU where he was first to demonstrate that exercise could prevent alcoholic fatty liver; the first to show that exercise alters CYP enzyme activity in liver; and the first to show that exercise enhances antioxidant, Phase II, and redox-control enzyme functions in liver and lung. Along with Dr. C.S. Yang (Rutgers) he demonstrated that exercise enhances the metabolism of carcinogens by CYPs. he also was among the first to show that exercise-benefits were tied to a generalized stress-response mediated in part by the activation of the AP-1 response element and its transfer into nuclear DNA. With Dr. Craig Dees (Provectus Pharmaceuticals) he demonstrated that Red Dye #3 was both estrogenic and a DNA damaging agent in breast cells, resulting in the removal of Red #3 from most foods. In addition to research, he was editor and author of the first reference book on the molecular etiology of chronic diseases and their prevention by dietary components and exercise (CRC Press, 2014) and Coordinator of the graduate degree program in Exercise Science at NEIU during this time. He retired from NEIU in 2015 and was subsequently awarded Emertus status in recognition of my research and administrative contributions to NEIU.