Dr. Lumpkin's physiology laboratory primarily conducts studies in examining the regulatory relationships between the brain, endocrine glands, and the immune cells of the body. Lumpkin's research examines how stress or stressors such as infectious agents (HIV), neuropeptides, stress hormones, and emotional trauma disrupt the brain hormone systems that govern sexuality, growth, metabolism, and immunity, thereby causing chronic disease. Specifically, his research has revealed why stress and HIV infection cause failures of growth, puberty, and growth hormone production in pediatric AIDS patients, body wasting and sexual dysfunction in adult AIDS patients, and exacerbation of immune systems failure in HIV/AIDS. He has extended these scientific investigations into understanding how certain complementary medications and mind-body techniques (relaxation/biofeedback) reduce stress and improve the hormonal and immune status of the body. Lumpkin also discovered and patented the use of a peptide hormone receptor binding compound to block the damaging effects of the HIV/AIDS virus on nerve cells in the hypothalamus of the brain and on cells of the pituitary gland, thereby restoring normal brain hormone function that leads to improvements in chronic illnesses. Dr. Lumpkin teaches both medical students and lay audiences about all aspects of neuroendicronology, neuroimmunology, stress and their associated disease states.