Dr. Blask is currently Professor of Structural & Cellular Biology, Tulane Univ. School of Medicine, where he is also the Head of the Laboratory of Chrono-Neuroendocrine Oncology and Associate Director of the Tulane Center for Circadian Biology. He is also a member of the Tulane Cancer Center. For 30 years he has focused his research on circadian rythms, therapeutics of cancer by melatonin as well as the consequences of the circadian disruption of melatonin production by light at night on cancer risk. He has published over 250 journal articles, reviews, chapters and abstracts on this topic. His research has been supported by funding agencies such as the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Edwin Pauley Foundation.
He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Pineal Research, Neuroendocrinology Letters and Integrative Cancer Therapies and is a consultant for the photobiology group of the International DarkSky Association. Dr. Blask has also served as a member of the working group on shift work for the International Agency for Cancer Research of the World Health Organization. Dr. Blask’s laboratory in collaboration with George C. Brainard, PhD and his group, were the first to discover and establish the nocturnal circadian melatonin signal as the first soluble circadian anti-cancer signal in human subjects. They also were the first to demonstrate that human exposure to polychromatic light at night induces circadian disruption/suppression of the melatonin signal that results in the stimulation of human cancer growth progression and metabolism.