Donald Bolser, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Chair of Physiological Sciences
College of Veterinary Medicine
Donald Bolser, professor and associate chair of physiological sciences, is an internationally renowned scientist whose translational research portfolio explores the science and physiology of the neural networks in the brainstem that control airway protection and breathing.
Bolser’s research program centers on two interconnected areas, the actions of opioids on the respiratory neural network to understand depression of breathing by opioids, and the fundamental mechanisms of brainstem circuits responsible for the production and coordination of breathing and airway protective behaviors in mammals, like coughing, swallowing and laryngeal closure.
“There’s a compelling need for strategies to enhance the efficacy of airway protection in patients with aspiration syndromes as well as depression of breathing by opioids,” says Bolser. “We hope to gain a more detailed understanding of the central networks responsible for airway protective behaviors like swallowing and coughing, and the ways in which airway protective mechanisms are disrupted in neurological disease.”
In the past five years, Bolser’s lab has been funded by nearly $20 million in National Institutes of Health grants for ongoing studies, including two R01 grants totaling $5.3 million as principal investigator to study the two-fold project.
“Although the opioid crisis is well-acknowledged as a public health emergency in the United States, few fully appreciate that breathing failure is the proximate cause of death,” Bolser says. “When opioids are administered, they reach the entire brain neural network through the circulatory system, and more research is required to understand the impacts of opioids on the brain circuit that regulates breathing.”
The long-term goal of Bolser’s research program is to generate a unified predictive model of the central neural network controlling breathing and airway protection – in other words, a comprehensive framework to predict how the brain prevents food and drink from entering the lungs and blocking normal breathing.
Bolser, who has three decades of decorated service, leadership and mentorship at UF, has over 160 career publications, with 25 of those in the last five years.
He’s a steering committee member for UF’s Breathing Research and Therapeutics Center and, outside UF, Bolser’s international reputation has led to several respected leadership roles, including membership on four NIH study sections, as a member of an NIH Program Project Review Committee, as former co-chair for the NIH Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions Steering Committee and external referee for the Bridge to Artificial Intelligence grant award program, and as a member of the American Physiological Society Respiration Section Awards Committee.