As a mid-career professor in the University of Wisconsin Medical School’s Department of Anesthesiology in 1992, Kirk Hogan asked his father’s 72-year-old friend, a Trust & Estates-lawyer, when he planned to retire. “Lawyers never retire!” he said.

This got Hogan thinking. “Especially nowadays, all but a few doctors retire from something. They don’t retire to something,” Hogan said. He began to frame a rewarding two-handed career as both a UW medical researcher and as an Of-Counsel patent attorney at Casimir Jones. Hogan hunts, fishes, hikes and snorkels, but is always eager to return to work alongside some of the leading experts in molecular biology and patent law who transmute scientific discoveries into impactful new products that benefit us all.

In the mid-90s, Hogan discovered a connection between patients’ genetic predispositions and adverse outcomes after anesthesia and surgery. He invented a process of testing patients’ genes before their surgeries for these risks. ¹ After asking around his network of medical researchers in the Madison area for an attorney recommendation, Hogan was led to David Casimir and enlisted his help in getting the necessary patents for his discovery. “I filed a couple patents, and really, really enjoyed the process,” Hogan said.

This experience, as well as an energizing lunch with a table full of patent lawyers at a genetics conference in Washington, D.C. inspired Hogan to attend law school. He took classes on Food & Drug Administration (FDA). “The law allows some unapproved prescription drugs to be lawfully marketed if they meet the criteria of generally recognized as safe and effective (GRASE) or grandfathered,” reads the FDA’s website. Hogan noted that nitrous oxide was grandfathered by the FDA for medical use in the 1930s and, despite its widespread delivery in the interval, had no regulatory scrutiny for safety and efficacy at the time of his article’s publication or since. He countered the prevailing narrative by suggesting that nitrous oxide has harmed more than helped patients.

He also began to notice room for improvement in the legal field. “Doctors and scientists spout discoveries and inventions like geysers, but when they go and talk to attorneys, they don’t have many people that they can speak with eye-to-eye who share their enthusiasm,” Hogan said, referencing a relative dearth of lawyers with both the scientific backgrounds and legal skills of attorneys at the Casimir Jones firm. Motivated to fill this gap, Hogan graduated from UW Law School in 2003 and joined Casimir Jones at its inception in 2007.

Around the same time, Hogan discovered a new pharmacogenetic syndrome that causes profound neurologic impairments on exposure to the ubiquitous anesthetic gas nitrous oxide. He published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.  ²  “I’m pretty sure I’m the only senior author of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine who graduated cum laude from law school in the same month.” Hogan said. This article’s subject matter ranks as one of three contributions that Hogan says may be considered as particularly “impactful.” Since the publication’s appearance in 2003, use of nitrous oxide has tapered to a small percent of patients nationwide, and many hospitals including the UW-Madison’s have shut down its pipelines.

Nitrous oxide blocks synthesis of methyl groups needed for numerous metabolic pathways including DNA methylation, an epigenetic gene switching mechanism interposed between our ever-changing environment and our fixed DNA sequence inherited from our ancestors. Accordingly, Hogan and his colleagues flipped the nitrous oxide toxicity issue, and asked what are the consequences of enhancing DNA methylation on regeneration of the nervous system after injury?  In a second series of disruptive publications, it was discovered that the B-vitamin methyl donors and their analogs speed regeneration after spinal cord trauma. ³  Surprisingly, the regenerative benefits of enhanced DNA methylation are passed to the 4^th generation and beyond after supplementation only in the first generation. “We weren’t surprised that nitrous oxide reverses these surprising benefits,” Hogan notes. ⁴  Contrary to “The Central Hypothesis” (that information is transmitted uni-directionally from DNA to RNA to proteins, and not backwards) and “The Modern Synthesis” (that Darwin plus Mendel plus Watson and Crick frame “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”), these data are the first to document transgenerational inheritance of a beneficial trait in 2 different genera (rats and mice) after a shared exposure (spinal cord trauma) and a shared intervention (enhanced DNA methylation). “After 1000s of experiments we’re pretty sure that the principle applies throughout development and evolution, but we’re very much looking forward to replication in other models and in other’s hands.” Hogan says.

Most recently, in his NIH-funded research Hogan and his colleagues have been studying DNA methylation biomarkers in blood samples from persons with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, and from elderly persons who’ve experienced delirium and confusion after surgery and anesthesia.^{5, 6, 7} One upshot is the possibility that the same compounds that enhance nervous system recovery after injury after may help delay the onset and progression of dementia.  A second upshot is that while chairing a research session at a recent Alzheimer’s disease meeting, Hogan learned that he no longer qualified as “young elderly”. His Alzheimer’s research further intersected with his legal career when Hogan helped promote Casimir Jones 2024 Walk to End Alzheimer’s, where our enthusiastic staff helped raise almost $5,000.

Hogan’s passions for research and the altruistic uses for over-the-event-horizon technologies continue to steer his perspectives on retirement planning. Where many may feel apprehensive, by the AI build out, Hogan sees opportunity. “I grew up in the Nakoma and the Hill Farms neighborhoods of Madison. In the early ‘50s, there were just two black-and-white TVs on our block” Hogan said, “and now we have AI rings of power to up our game. I’m really encouraged and appreciative of this latest watershed,” Hogan said. Perhaps having a long-term view of technological advances helps him stay positive — and rapt.