MacLean Lab

Dr. MacLean joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2001 after receiving his BS and MS from Brigham Young University and a PhD from East Carolina University.  He is now Professor of Medicine and Pathology and serves as Research Director of his Division, as the Director of the Energy Metabolism Program (affiliated with the Colorado Obesity Research Initiative), and as the Associate Director of the Colorado Nutrition and Obesity Research Center (NORC).  

Dr. MacLean’s research is focused on obesity, its metabolic consequences, and therapeutic strategies that can lead to long term weight reduction.   In recent years, he has turned his efforts to understand how obesity and weight loss affect certain aspects of women’s health, including the development of the mammary gland during gestation, lactation performance, parturition, the menopausal transition, and postmenopausal breast cancer.  He is supported by the National Institutes of Health, with grants from NIDDK, NICHD, and NCI.  Most recently, he was awarded an NCI-sponsored R01 entitled, “A Narrowed Window for Targeting Metabolic Flexibility in Breast Cancer Prevention,” which provides the resources to employ a novel preclinical model to study obesity’s effects on tumor promotion and for testing novel strategies for prevention and treatment.  ​