Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., runs a National Institute of Health (NIH)-funded translational laboratory focusing on the enteric neurosciences. The laboratory is part of the Enteric Neuroscience Program at Mayo Clinic, of which Dr. Farrugia is director. His laboratory studies gastrointestinal smooth muscle, pacemaker cells of the gastrointestinal tract known as interstitial cells of Cajal, and enteric nerves.

The aim of Dr. Farrugia's work is to understand at a cellular, subcellular and molecular level how the normal functions of the gastrointestinal tract determine the defects that result in diseases such as diabetic gastroparesis, slow transit constipation and irritable bowel syndrome. Dr. Farrugia hopes to develop new strategies to treat these diseases by developing targeted disease-modifying agents, by using a variety of state-of-the-art techniques, including high-resolution imaging, ion channel activity recording and next-generation sequencing, and by creating cellular and tissue models of disease.

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