McClintock Life Sciences Lecture Series: Holly Ingraham

Title: Hormone-Responsive Neural Circuits and Why They Matter for Women’s Health

Overview: Basic biomedical research has produced numerous breakthroughs over the last 7 decades, yet progress in women’s health has lagged, even as the chronic disease burden among women outpaces that among men. A key barrier is limited understanding of how hormones act beyond traditional reproductive tissues—particularly in the brain and sensory systems—hindering our ability to explain or treat disorders that disproportionately affect women. Ingraham will present new studies illustrating how a deep dive into sex-specific, hormone-responsive neural circuits has uncovered previously unrecognized nodes that control brain–body physiology. Ingraham’s mechanistic approach provides a framework for closing the knowledge gap in female physiology and opens new therapeutic strategies for women’s health.

Lecture: Despite recent biomedical breakthroughs, progress in women’s health has been slow. A key barrier is understanding how estrogen acts beyond traditional reproductive tissues—particularly in the brain—hindering our ability to explain disorders that disproportionately affect women. Ingraham will present new studies that show how sex-specific, hormone-responsive neural circuits control brain–body physiology, providing a framework for closing knowledge and therapeutic gaps in women’s health.

Speaker: Holly A. Ingraham, Ph.D., is the Herzstein Endowed Professor at UCSF. Her research focuses on sex differences and hormone-responsive nodes in the brain that regulate female physiology. Through question-driven basic science, Ingraham seeks to uncover how females adapt to hormonal fluctuations throughout their lives. Ingraham has reframed and catalyzed progress in women’s health by defining new hormone-signaling pathways beyond those traditionally associated with reproductive tissues. Her lab recently discovered a brain-derived hormone produced in the female brain that helps offset bone degradation during lactation. Her high-impact studies have been featured in the NYT (10/26/21) and the NIH Director’s Blog (8/1/24) and have led to numerous distinguished lectureships and public forums on women’s health. She founded a biotech venture focused on alleviating age-related frailty and skeletal decline. Ingraham is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Ingraham’s innovative and multidimensional work has illuminated basic molecular processes that control endocrine development and pathways that govern female physiology. During her postdoctoral work in the Rosenfeld lab at UCSD, she drove the identification of Pit-1, one of the first tissue-specific regulators and a founding member of the POU transcription factor family. At UCSF, Ingraham demonstrated that the nuclear receptor SF-1 is a key developmental factor in establishing gonadal sex differences by regulating the peptide hormone anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH). Using biochemical and structural studies, her lab identified phospholipids as ligands for SF-1 (LRH-1) and demonstrated the in vivo impact of SUMOylation on receptor activity during endocrine organ development.

Summary: Holly A. Ingraham, Ph.D., is the Herzstein Endowed Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at UCSF. Her research identifies sex differences and hormone‑responsive nodes in the brain and peripheral tissues that regulate metabolic, skeletal, and gut physiology in females, reframing biomedical approaches to women’s health.

Cornell’s Barbara McClintock Life Sciences Lecture Series is among the most distinguished lecture series at the university. Established in 2018, the Barbara McClintock Life Sciences Lecture Series brings together colleagues from the natural, physical, and computer sciences and engineering communities in a single forum. Previously known as the Biology without Borders series, established in 2012, the lectures focus on identifying and showcasing life scientists whose research cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries.