Kelle Moley, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology, learned many of the research methods she uses today from Oliver H. Lowry, M.D., Ph.D. a famous biochemist — and a memorable 82-year-old mentor.
During Moley’s internship in obstetrics and gynecology at the School of Medicine in 1988, Alan L. Schwartz, Ph.D., M.D., head of the Department of Pediatrics, introduced Moley to Lowry after he heard of her interest in reproductive endocrinology.
“Dr. Schwartz walked me right over to Dr. Lowry’s lab, and Dr. Lowry said I could work in his lab anytime,” Moley says.
During her postdoctoral fellowship in Lowry’s laboratory, Lowry taught Moley how to measure enzymatic reactions using nano-sized droplets of solution under oil to avoid evaporation.
These techniques of biochemical analysis enable researchers to measure the concentration of substances such as glucose in a single mouse embryo or in single cells. Moley receives calls each month from researchers who want to use these techniques in their projects.
“Dr. Lowry was incredibly brilliant, very humble and blatantly honest,” Moley says.
Moley is one of a handful of people in the world studying the effects of maternal type 1 and type 2 diabetes on the implantation and development of mice embryos. In 1999, she found that short-term exposure to high concentrations of glucose or insulin during the first 72 hours after fertilization is enough to alter the embryos and could help explain the higher rates of miscarriage and malformed babies among diabetic women.
Her research suggests that diabetic women who are trying to get pregnant should be very careful about controlling their blood sugar levels.
The research methods Moley learned from Lowry have helped her become one of the international stars in reproductive biology.
“Her work on carbohydrate metabolism in the embryo has been groundbreaking, and she is recognized nationally and internationally as the expert in this area,” says George A. Macones, M.D., the Mitchell and Elaine Yanow Professor and head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “In addition to her tremendous talent as an investigator, Dr. Moley is a caring clinician, wonderful mentor and fine citizen of the University.”
In 1998, Moley started her own laboratory, where she now spends 80 percent of her time. Maggie Chi, a technician who had worked in Lowry’s lab for 25 years when Moley joined the lab, works with her.
“I couldn’t have done all this without Maggie,” says Moley, also an associate professor of cell biology and physiology.
Moley also is known for cloning and characterizing two novel glucose transporters, GLUT8 and GLUT9, the latter of which she discovered in collaboration with her husband, Jeffrey Moley, M.D., professor of surgery. Her work on these proteins demonstrated that they changed location in response to insulin and that diabetes altered their expression.
Her research has significantly increased the understanding of molecular reproduction and glucose metabolism in diabetic animals and has shown how this research could be applied to humans with diabetes.
Moley also is director of the Fellowship Program in Reproductive Endocrinology and the Clinical Mentorship Program for the University’s Markey Pathway, a graduate program that provides students with a deeper understanding of disease.
Moley says her greatest love is mentoring young people to go into science.
“I think that’s my mission, coupled with patient care,” Moley says. “We have so many people now coming into medicine who want to try to figure out how to do research and patient care. I just give them examples of what I do.”
Moley has mentored more than 30 people, ranging in experience from high-school level to clinical fellows and postdoctoral research fellows. Most have gone on to medical school, graduate school or academic research careers.
Philip Stahl, Ph.D., the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Professor and head of the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, who has known Moley for 15 years, calls her an outstanding mentor. “She has empathy, concern, hope, enthusiasm and standards — all the things that make a great mentor,” he says.
As a child, Moley always liked science and spent time in her father’s lab at Pfizer Inc. in Groton, Conn. But her father, who developed drugs in his laboratory, told Kelle she should go to medical school because he thought it would be a more fulfilling field.
Ironically, her father went on to lead the team of five scientists at Pfizer who developed Zoloft, the popular anti-depressant drug.
“He has affected many more lives than I ever will,” Moley says.
At Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Moley majored in biochemistry and already knew she wanted a career in academic medicine. After medical school at Yale University, she chose a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at WUSTL and decided to focus on reproductive endocrinology because she planned to conduct mouse embryo research.
“This was about the time that in vitro fertilization was becoming very big, and the field seemed wide open as far as research,” says Moley, who also is vice chair for basic science research and director of the Division of Basic Science Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Over the years, Moley’s research has evolved into studying the developmental origins of adult disease — the idea that if something happens to an egg in vivo it can cause diseases the person has in the future, such as hypertension or type 2 diabetes.
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Kelle Moley University position: Professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of cell biology and physiology; vice chair for basic science research and director of the Division of Basic Science Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology Years at University: 14 Hobbies: playing flute and piano, playing in the handbell choir at Grace Episcopal Church in Kirkwood, running, knitting |
Historically, obstetrics and gynecology hasn’t been a leading research field, Moley says, and she’s hoping to change that.
“I think getting people more interested in reproductive biology as a scientific career combined with a medical career is very much needed in this country,” she says. “If I can train more young women and men to go into science and be physician-scientists in this field, I think that would be a huge success for me.”
Clinically, Moley sees women who are interested in having in vitro fertilization and prepares them for the procedure, testing their blood for hormone levels and prescribing medication to stimulate ovulation.
If a woman becomes pregnant, she follows her until she’s ready to be referred to an obstetrician. She also treats women who have polycystic ovary disease, a hormonal condition that prevents many women from becoming pregnant.
Moley and her husband, Jeff, have three boys: ages 14, 13 and 9. She spends much of her free time at their baseball, soccer and hockey games, and she also plays flute and piano when the family plays music together.
Jeff performs with a bluegrass band called Seldom Home, and the family enjoys St. Louis sports events, playing golf and relaxing at their lakeside A-frame at Innsbrook Resort. They also spend a lot of time traveling to Colorado and New York to visit relatives, and Kelle Moley’s father takes the family to Hawaii every other year.
Schwartz, the Harriet B. Spoehrer Professor of Pediatrics, sums up Moley’s contributions in this way.
“She is a local, national and international leader in reproductive biology — as a scientist, as a clinician and as an educator,” he says. “As a resident, she described how diabetes increases the risk of birth defects and complications in the babies of women who have this disease before they become pregnant, and she has pursued this research with laser focus and creative insight. We are thrilled that she is our colleague.”