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Dean Estrup received her BA degree in Physics from Boston University
and her M.S.
and Ph.D. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry
from Yale University, where she was a Higgins Scholar. She then
did a year of postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Geneva.
After returning to the United States she helped set up
the first research Biophysics Lab at the Bell Labs in New Jersey. Prior to
coming to Brown she was a
visiting assistant professor of chemistry
and molecular biology at Haverford College. She obtained her M.D.
degree in 1975 from Brown University School of Medicine. She then
did two years of residency training at Rhode Island
Hospital and
a third year at Memorial Hospital, where she was chief resident.
After a two-year fellowship
in rheumatology at the Brown affiliated
hospitals, Dr. Estrup opened an office for the practice of rheumatology
where she was medical director of the Arthritis Center of RI. For
a number of years, in addition to seeing private
patients, she also
served as Chief of Rheumatology at Memorial Hospital. She is a Fellow
of the American
College of Physicians, and a Founding Fellow of
the American College of Rheumatology. In 1999 Dr. Estrup was appointed
Associate Dean of Medicine for Clinical Voluntary Faculty and has
initiated several new programs for the clinical
faculty and continues to be active in teaching. Dean Estrup
was voted, the RI Woman Physician of the Year 2002 by the Board
of the RI Medical Women’s Association (RIMWA), and
is the recipient
of the 2002, Brown Medical School Excellence in Teaching Award. Dr Estrup was chosen as America's Best
Physicians( Rheumatology) for the year 2003 by the Consumers Research Council of America.
In the past
her research activities dealt with physical studies on soluble transfer
RNA, determining the “radiation-sensitive” molecular weight
of t-RNA by the decrease of amino acid binding power produced by
1 Mev electrons from a Van De Graaf generator, and obtaining the
action spectrum for the inactivation of the biological activity
of t-RNA by ultraviolet radiation. She also studied the binding
of metal ions to DNA, RNA, and synthetic polynucleotides using NMR.
She studied 50 S ribosomal proteins using immunochemical techniques.
More recent research interests include the pathogenesis, diagnosis
and therapy of gold lung disease in rheumatoid arthritis, and clinical
manifestations of human parvovirus infection. She lectures extensively
on the rheumatic diseases and especially on osteoporosis, osteoarthritis,
the COX-2 inhibitors and the newer therapies for rheumatoid arthritis.
As co-principal
investigator for a major seven years NIH-NIAMS grant of 8.96 million
dollars, on the Osteoarthritis Initiative, based at Memorial Hospital
of RI, Dr Estrup and her colleagues will try to uncover the biological
markers that help predict who will develop the most common form
of arthritis. We will study surrogate markers for osteoarthritis
of the knees in 1,250 subjects over the age of 50 who do not have
the diagnosis of osteoarthritis initially, but who will eventually
develop the disease over the study period. A subgroup of subjects
with mild or early osteoarthritis will be studied to follow the
progression of the disease. Subjects will be chosen if they have
one of the following risk factors, such as a history of trauma,
obesity, diabetes mellitus, or a family history of osteoarthritis.
X-rays and MRIs of the knees, as well as blood studies for genetic
and biochemical markers, will be obtained to eventually help predict
who is most likely to develop osteoarthritis.
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