People
Principal Investigators
Dr. Rabinovitch joined Stanford University in the summer of 2002 as the Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatric Cardiology, and staff scientist at the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also Professor (by courtesy) of Developmental Biology. Dr. Rabinovitch is a graduate of McGill University Medical School in 1971, and served on the medical faculty at Harvard, the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and at the University of Toronto where she was the Director of Cardiovascular Research. Dr. Rabinovitch has received recognition in her field with numerous awards, the most recent being the 2010 Louis and Artur Lucian Award for Research in Circulatory Diseases, McGill University. In 2008, she received the American Thoracic Society Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishment. She is the recipient of the 2006 American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award, and in 2005 she was the The American Heart Association Dickinson Richards Lecturer. Previous awards include the 2004 Canadian Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health (ICRH) Distinguished Lecture and Prize in Cardiovascular Sciences; the 2004 AHA Basic Research Prize; the University of Kentucky Gill Heart Institute Award for Outstanding Contributions to Cardiovascular Research (2003); the AHA Paul Dudley White International Lectureship Award (2002); a Research Achievement Award from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (1994); the Julius Comroe Lectureship from the American Physiological Society (1996), an Endowed Research Chair from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (1997); the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Award of Merit (1999); the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2000), and the McGill University Cushing Memorial Award in Pediatrics (1971). Dr. Rabinovitch is currently a Member of the NIH/NHLBI Scientific Advisory Council to the Director and the Executive Committee of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute. Dr. Rabinovitch is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the 4th World Congress of Pulmonary Circulation, and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, the Pulmonary Circulation Council of the American Thoracic Society, and the Executive Council of the American Pediatric Society, and the She serves on the Advisory Committees of the MPI for Heart and Lung ResearchBoard of the Max Planck Society. Research
Program Members of the Rabinovitch Laboratory:
Dr Bland is a graduate of Phillips Academy Andover (1958), Yale University (BA, 1962) and Boston University School of Medicine (MD, 1966). He completed an internship and residency in Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD (1966-69), followed by a 3-year stint as a US Army staff pediatrician and Chief of Newborn Medicine at Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii (1969-1972). During his military service, Dr Bland did several clinical studies that led to 4 published papers, one of which was a solo-authored paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. He twice received the Ogden C Bruton Award for research on the role of plasma proteins in neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. Dr Bland did a postdoctoral fellowship in lung vascular biology and newborn medicine at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California San Francisco (1973-74), where he became Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in 1975 and advanced to Professor of Pediatrics in 1984. An Established Investigator of the American Heart Association (1979-84), he was appointed to the Senior Staff of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UCSF in 1982. Dr Bland’s research has focused on lung fluid balance during development and on the pathogenesis and treatment of acute and chronic neonatal lung injury. He did a 1-year research sabbatical at Oxford University (1982-3), where in collaboration with Dr Richard Boyd he discovered that events associated with labor cause an increase in lung epithelial Na+,K+-ATPase activity, which provides the driving force for clearance of liquid from the lungs during and after birth. In 1989, Dr Bland moved from UCSF to the University of Utah School of Medicine, where he was Fields Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Lung Biology until 2002, when he relocated to Stanford University as Professor of Pediatrics in the Cardiopulmonary Research Program and the Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine. Dr Bland received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Boston University School of Medicine (1996) and recently was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Medicine from Uppsala University in Sweden (2004) for his research related to lung fluid balance during development and pulmonary edema in the pathogenesis of newborn lung disease. Research
Program Members of the Bland Laboratory: Research Staff - Rabinovitch Laboratory: Lingli
Wang, MD
Aiqin Cao, PhD
Silin Sa, PhD Silin earned her PhD from UC Merced. Her thesis work was part of a project funded by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, entitled “Building Cardiac Tissue from Stem Cells and Natural Matrices”. This project focuses on stem cell differentiation towards cardiovascular lineages for building 3D cardiovascular tissues with the differentiated cells. Silin received her B.S. degree in Bioengineering in 2005 from the South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China and her M.S. in Biotechnology from San Jose State University in 2007. Silin joined the lab in late 2012 and us working on the generation of IPSCs from skin and lung cells, and their differentiation into endothelial cells. Matthew Bill
Patricia A. de Rosario, RN
Fellows and Students - Rabinovitch Laboratory
Dr. Toshie Saito received her MD degree from Gunma university graduate school of medicine in Japan in 2000, and completed her internal medicine residency at Tokyo University and related hospitals in 2004. She started her career in basic science at Tulane University’s department of physiology and hypertension center in 2007 and studied renin-angiotensin system. Toshie became interested in autoimmunity then she moved to division of Rheumatology at Louisiana State University. She moved to Stanford University and joined Dr. Marlene Rabinovitch lab in fall 2010.
Originally from Singapore/Taiwan, Dr. Li moved to New Zealand in 2002 for her tertiary studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand in 2010. Her Ph.D. study investigated the biological roles of a developmental gene family that encode the PAX transcriptional factors in cancer cell proliferation and survival. Dr. Li is particularly fascinated by the multiple intertwined signaling cascades that work in concert to regulate many cellular processes. With this interest, she joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s lab in April 2011. Her postdoctoral project addresses the fundamental mechanisms that involve the production of nitrated fatty acids that underlie differential PPAR gamma mediated gene regulation in endothelial and smooth muscle cells.
Dr. Sweeney earned her BS in Rehabilitation Services from Springfield College in Massachusetts, her MS degree in Biological Sciences from University of Texas at El Paso and her MD degree (2004) from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. In 2005 she obtained her MPH degree from Johns Hopkins University -School of Public Health. At El Paso, Dr. Sweeney investigated metal resistance mechanisms in Cyanobacteria, followed by two years in the laboratory of Dr. Dwain Thiele at UT Southwestern Medical center studying the role of Dipeptidyl Peptidase I in hepatocellular apoptosis. As a Stanley Scholar at Columbia she studied the role of the Serotonin 1A receptor in peri-natal neurogenesis and anxiety. Dr. Sweeney completed her residency in pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 2008. She is currently a pediatric cardiology fellow here at Lucile Packard Children’s hospital at Stanford. In the lab, she studies the role of DNA damage response pathway activation in pulmonary arterial hypertension and the pulmonary vascular development in patients with tetralogy of Fallot and major aorto-pulmonary collaterals. Jan K. Hennigs, MD Dr. Hennigs joins the laboratory of Dr Marlene Rabinovitch as a post-doctoral fellow in October 2012. Dr. Hennigs received his MD from Hamburg University, Germany In 2007, and completed a postgraduate program in molecular biology and a DFG-funded doctoral thesis at the Center for Molecular Neurobiology Hamburg in 2009. Prior to joining the Rabinovitch group, he pursued postdoctoral training in molecular pathology and residency in the Department of Respiratory Medicine at the University Medical Center Hamburg - Eppendorf, where he served as a Junior-PI in the Pulmonary Hypertension interdisciplinary research group. Dr Hennigs investigates P53, apoptosis and cell transformation.
Dr. Miyagawa joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s lab as a post-doctoral fellow in May 2014. Dr. Miyagawa received his MD (2003) PhD in Cardiovascular Medicine (2010) from Kobe University School of Medicine in Kobe, Japan. He completed the training in cardiovascular medicine and internal medicine, and is a board certified member of The Japanese Circulation Society and The Japanese Society of Internal Medicine. His doctoral study focused on the role of endothelin system in doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy and its association with mitochondrial biogenesis. He pursued the research of pulmonary hypertension in Kobe University Hospital prior to joining Dr. Rabinovitch’s group. His current project focuses on the metabolic interaction between blood vessel cells in the pathogenesis of pulmonary arterial hypertension. His post-doctoral training is supported by Japan Heart Foundation and The Uehara Memorial Foundation.
Dr. Shalina Taylor received her PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2014. Her PhD study focused on the role of myeloperoxidase during neutrophil directional sensing. Shalina is interested in studying neutrophils and other inflammatory cells during pulmonary hypertension. Her postdoctoral work aims to determine whether neutrophil functions are abnormal in pulmonary arterial hypertension, and if this is further exaggerated by interaction with pulmonary arterial endothelial cells. Students,
Fellows and Research Staff - Bland Lab:
Bob Ertsey joined Dr. Bland's group in 2004. He
graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Biochemistry and from UC Santa
Barbara with an M.Sc. in Genetics. From 1983 to 2004 he was a Research
Associate in the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UC San Francisco
where he developed in vitro models of lung maturation and studied
the effects of chemical, mechanical and apoptotic factors on fetal lung
development. More recently, Bob published a study showing that poly(ADP)polymerase-1
[(PARP)-1], previously associated with apoptosis in lung, is maximally
expressed in late gestation, and controls the rate of lung differentiation.
He was the recipient of the Outstanding Performance Award of the Cardiovascular
Research Institute (2000) and University Service Award (2004).
Dr. Sana Mujahid joined the Rabinovitch/Bland lab in August 2013. She earned her BS in Biology from Christian Brothers University in Memphis and her PhD in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology from the Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University in Boston. During her time at Tufts, Sana investigated how miRNAs are regulated across gestation and between sexes during the late pseudoglandular to early saccular stage of lung development. Her graduate work also focused on understanding the role of miRNAs and Hox proteins in regulating lung airway and vascular development, and how these molecules are altered by clinical therapies given to premature infants. For her postdoctoral research, she is interested in investigating how miRNAs are deregulated as a result of ventilator induced lung injury, and addressing how Elafin may prevent this deregulation.
Juliet Masumi joined the Bland lab in February 2014. She earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a B.S. in Religious Studies from California State University, Fullerton in 2010. Following graduation, from 2010 to 2013, she worked as a Research Assistant at the University of California, Irvine, investigating the function of the Fibronectin type-III domain containing 3 (FNDC3) family of gene products during mammalian development. She primarily focused on the basis for neonatal lethality present in Fndc3b-mutant mice through analysis of cardio-pulmonary histopathology. Administrative Staff - Rabinovitch/ Bland Lab:
Michelle Fox, BA, RVT Michelle joined the Dr Rabinovitch/Bland group as an Administrative Associate in September 2004. She received a BA in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1995. Immediately after graduating, Michelle entered the Veterinary field as an Assistant and continued to learn and received her Registered Veterinary Technician license in 2001. Prior to working at Stanford, she was the head nurse at Peninsula Equine Medical Center in Menlo Park where her duties included everything from front office work to administering and monitoring anesthesia on 1000+ lb horses. She continues to be a part of their surgery team one day a week and also works one Saturday a month at a small animal hospital in Menlo Park.
Dr. Michal Bental Roof joined Dr Rabinovitch/Bland group as Academic and Research Program Officer in September 2002. In that capacity she oversees grant proposal development, manuscript preparation, and regulatory issues (IRB, APLAC, biosafety protocols). She is also the site coordinator for the Stanford PHBI Transplant Center, and the coordinator for the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Science Concentration of the School of Medicine. Michal holds a BSc in Chemistry (with distinction) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and MSc and PhD Degrees in the Life Sciences from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. She received a Weizmann Institute’s Special Distinction Award for MSc students, and was a recipient of the prestigious Chaim Weizmann Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Michal has worked in a diversity of fields within biology and basic biomedical research, as well as in chemistry. She brings to the group her experience from her previous position at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was Scientific Development Administrator of the Institute for Medicine and Engineering (IME) where she worked with the Director on Institute initiatives and interdisciplinary special projects, including development of strategies to create proposals for unique funding opportunities, and the design and implementation of IME seminars, conferences and symposia to facilitate the integration of medical sciences and engineering.
Recent Alumni Pursuing Research Careers:
Dr. Hopper earned her BA in Molecular Biology from Pomona College and MD from the University of Michigan. While in medical school, she participated in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's NIH Research Scholars program, in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Balaban in the NHLBI. There she used proteomics techniques to study the role of signaling pathways in the regulation of mitochondrial energy metabolism during cardiac ischemia. Dr. Hopper went on to complete a residency in pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston, and she completed a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Stanford. In the lab, she used induced pluripotent stem cells to study pulmonary hypertension in patients with congenital heart disease.
Dr. Isabel Diebold, MD, is a board certified pediatrician who joined the Rabinovitch/Bland group in January 2013. Dr. Diebold graduated from the Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, with a degree of doctor of Medicine, and earned her Habilitation 2012 from the Medical School of the Technical University Munich. She completed her Residency in Pediatrics at the German Heart Centre Munich, the Department of Pediatrics Klinikum Schwabing/Munich and Klinikum Rechts der Isar of the Technical University Munich, Germany. At the institute of Prof. Agnes Görlach, MD, Department of Experimental and Molecular Pediatric Cardiology at the German Heart Centre Munich, she focused on the regulation of NADPH oxidases and Hypoxia-inducible factors in vascular cells in response to different stimuli associated with vascular remodeling such as hypoxia, the coagulation factor thrombin and the vasoactive peptide urotensin-II. Her research in our lab focused on DNA damage response in pulmonary artery hypertension and critical pathways through which bone morphogenetic protein receptor 2 (BMPR2) signaling protects the pulmonary artery vasculature. Dr. Diebold was funded by a grant from the German Heart Foundation.
Dr Stefanie Preuss joined our lab in April 2012. Supported by a 2-year grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG), her research focused on novel treatment strategies to promote formation of alveoli and micro-vessels in developing lungs in a neonatal ventilation mouse model. Previously, she conducted experimental research on improvement of surfactant therapy in a neonatal piglet model of acute respiratory failure.
Dr. Mark Kaschwich received his MD degree from the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel Germany. In Feb 2012 hecompleted his residency in general surgery at the University Hospital Kiel (UKSH). He has an additional qualification in Emergency Medicine and is trained as an ATLS-instructor. Beside his clinical work he conducted research focussing on the biodistribution of the human elastase inhibitor elafin. Miguel Alejandre-Alcazar, MD, PhD Dr. Miguel Alejandre Alcázar received his MD in 2006 from the Justus-Liebig University Giessen, School of Medicine, where he conducted both in vivo and in vitro studies on the role of TGFβ/BMP signalling in the pathogenesis of hyperoxia-induced lung injury in newborn mice. This was followed by residency training in Pediatrics at the University Hospital of Erlangen (2006-2010). He then went on to study perinatal inflammation and its long-term impact on pulmonary and renal function in the Interdisciplinary Program of Molecular Medicine (IPMM) at the University of Cologne, where he earned his PhD. His research in the Rabinovitch/Bland lab was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG). to study the role of growth factors, specifically TGF-β and EGF signalling, and transcription factors of cell differentiation, in the pathogenesis of ventilator-induced lung injury newborn mice.
Dr. Anne Hilgendorff joined the Rabinovitch/Bland group
in May 2008 with a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG).
She graduated from the Justus-Liebig University School of Medicine
in Giessen, Germany with a degee of Doctor of Medicine, and completed
her Residency in Pediatrics at the Justus-Liebig University in
Giessen and the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.
She is currently pursuing a Fellowship in Neonatology at the Center
of Perinatal Medicine Grosshadern, Ludwig-Maximilian University
in Munich, Germany. During her Residency in Pediatrics and following Fellowship
in Neonatology she focused on acute and chronic pulmonary adaptation
in the term and preterm newborn infant. Through clinical studies
and experimental approaches she investigated the role of surfactant
proteins and further members of the innate immune system as well
as markers of the inflammatory response in the injured newborn lung.
As an investigator of the Giessen Research Center in Infectious Diseases,
part of the Human Genome Network, she studied preterm infants suffering
from early-onset sepsis and respiratory distress syndrome in genetic
association studies and non-hypothesis thriven approaches using micro-array
chip technology. With the Bland Lab, Dr Hilgendorff is investigating changes
in gene expression and lung morphology following long-term mechanical
ventilation in transgenic and non-transgenic newborn mice.
Chris Rhodes received a first class BA degree in Natural Sciences: Pharmacology from Cambridge University in the UK in 2007. He went on to complete his UK MRC-funded PhD studies at Imperial College London, investigating the role of iron homeostasis in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension. Following this, in 2011 he moved to the US to join the Rabinovitch laboratory to continue basic and translational scientific research into the pathophysiology of pulmonary hypertension.
Dr. Edda Spiekerkoetter rejoined our lab in September 2009 as a Scholar in the Stanford K12 Career Development Program in Genetics and Genomics of Pulmonary diseases. Dr. Spiekerkoetter received a B.Sc. from the University in Tuebingen, Germany in 1988, and her M.D. from the University of Freiburg in 1995, Germany. Following a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care at Hannover Medical School, Germany, she joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s lab (2002-06) as a postdoctoral fellow, funded by a fellowship award from the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (2003-05). Dr. Spiekerkoetter continued her clinical training with fellowships in Pulmonary and Critical Care (2007-08) and in Critical Care (2008-09) at the Stanford University Medical Center. She is Instructor of Medicine in the department of Pulmonary and Critical Care, and is an Attending Physician in Pulmonary Hypertension, the focus of her basic and translational research. Edda's current project is to develop an assay for screening FDA approved drugs and small molecules for their potential to induce BMPRII signaling. She is working closely with the High-throughput Bioscience Center at Stanford. She is also interested in micro RNA expression in pulmonary hypertension and the potential of microRNAs to regulate BMPRII expression. A third project investigates elafin and EGF-receptor induced regression of pulmonary artery occlusion in an organ culture system of lungs from patients transplanted for PAH.
Dr. Vinicio A. de Jesus Perez was born and raised in Puerto Rico where he completed a BS in Biology in 1996 and obtained his MD at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences campus in 2000. He then moved to Boston where he completed a three year residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. After the end of his residency in 2003, he continued subspecialty training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver; it was during this time that Vinicio developed an interest in pulmonary hypertension and decided to pursue a career in basic science research. On July 2004 he transferred to Stanford University where he is currently a staff physician in the adult pulmonary hypertension service. In January 2005, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Marlene Rabinovitch to pursue his interest in pulmonary hypertension research. J Joanna Peterson joined the Bland lab in January 2011. She graduated from the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia with a BEng in mechanical engineering (hons I) and a Masters in biomedical engineering. She will graduate with a PhD from the University of Sydney later this year. Joanna’s PhD research on tendon degeneration used tissue culture methods and in vivo animal models to alter loading patterns in tendon, and analyze individual regions of tendon from molecular, biochemical, histological and mechanical perspectives. In the Bland Lab, Joanna will utilize these same methodologies to investigate the effect of long-term mechanical ventilation on the lung tissue of newborn mice.
Dr. Yu-Mee Kim graduated from the Ewha Women’s University, Seoul, Korea with a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering (Environmental Health Science) in 2001. In 2006, she graduated from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill with a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering (Molecular Toxicology). Dr. Kim's Ph.D. thesis research, conducted at the UNC and the US Environmental Protection Agency, focused on the molecular mechanisms underlying proinflammatory responses of primary human bronchial epithelial cells after the exposure to air pollutants, including metals and nanocarbon particles. Dr. Kim was a recipient of a DAAD scholarship (German Academic Exchange Service, 2000), a Society of Toxicology/Inhalation Specialty Section Student Award (2006), and a North Carolina Society of Toxicology Student Award (2006). Her postdoctoral research identified the serine elastase elevated in pulmonary vascular disease, and a second project investigated the role of microRNAs in the development of pulmonary vascular disease in mice. Dr. Kim's post doctoral research was supported by American Heart Association Western States Affiliation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2007-2009).
Dr. Ying-Ju Lai joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s group in August 2009. Ying-Ju graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Justus Liebig in Giessen, Germany in 2009. Her Ph.D. research, conducted at the University of Giessen lung Center (2004-2009) focused on the prostanoid signaling in pulmonary arterial hypertension. She obtained her Master degree from National Taiwan University 2002, and In 2003-04 was an Associate Researcher at the Biomedical Engineering Centre of the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan, where she worked on the development of a drug delivery system for anti-lung cancer gene therapy. Ying-Ju's research focused on the regulation of elastin production and assembly in pulmonary hypertension. Molong Li joined the lab in 2008 whilst pursuing a bachelor of science degree in Biomedical Computation (graduated in 2010) as a Stanford undergraduate. He worked closely with Dr. Tero-Pekka Alastalo studying downstream targets of BMPRII and their involvement in pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Dr. Kakoli Parai joined the Bland Lab in January 2008. She graduated with a B.S. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Nagpur University, India and a Ph.D. in Cardiovascular Physiology & Pharmacology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada in 2004. During her first postdoctoral study at Northwestern University she received NIH postdoctoral grant from NHLBI (2006-2008). During her time in the Bland lab, she investigated changes in blood vessel expression following long-term mechanical ventilation in newborn mice. Tero-Pekka Alastalo, MD, PhD
Dr. Nesrine El-Bizri joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s group in Toronto in 2001, and relocated with her to Stanford in 2002. Dr. El-Bizri graduated with a B.S. in Biology and M.Sc. in Physiology from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Sherbrooke in Canada. She won the first prize Evelyn MacGlowyn Award from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (2001), and is supported by an American Heart Association (Pulmonary Hypertension Association) Post-doctoral fellowship (2001-2003). Dr. El-Bizri's research focused on the roles of Mts-1 and the BMP type II receptor in the pathobiology of pulmonary vascular disease. Back to top Laura H. Rubinos, BS Janine
M Bekker-Powers, PhD Nirupama
Deshpande , PhD Georg
Hansmann, MD Stefan Schellong Roham
Zamanian, MD Back to top
Eliana
Martinez, MD Sandra
Merklinger, CNS/N., MN, PhD Allan
Lawrie, PhD Eric
Shinwell, MD |
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Dr. Aiqin Cao received her PhD degree from Purdue University in 2007. She joined the lab in April 2011, following post-doctoral studies in Stanford’s Division of Endocrinology, where she studied the molecular mechanism of human oncostatin M (OM) mediated signal transductions in lipid metabolism. She identified long chain acyl-CoA synthetase-3 (ACSL3) as a molecular target for peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta, and in a second project demonstrated that the suppression of proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) expression by OM is a new mechanism that increases LDLR protein in liver cells. Aiqin’s current project is studying the link between BMPR2 function and naturally occurring PPARgamma ligands, the nitro-fatty acids (NO2-FA) and the potential role of nitro-fatty acids in preserving PA vascular homeostasis. She is also working on the differentiation of endothelial cells from skin or lung cell IPSCs.
Toshie Saito, MD
Caiyun Grace Li, PhD
Nathaly Sweeney, MD, MPH
Shalina Taylor, PhD
Sana Mujahid, PhD
Juliet Masumi 
Michal
Bental Roof, PhD
Nils Nickel, MD, PhD
Rachel Hopper, MD
Isabel Diebold, MD
Stefanie Preuss, MD
Mark Kaschwich, MD
Anne Hiigendorff, MD
Christopher Rhodes, PhD
Edda Spiekerkoetter, 
oanna Peterson, B.Eng, PhD
Yu-Mee Kim, PhD
Ying-Ju Lai, PhD
Molong Li
Kakoli Parai, PhD 
Lucia
M. Mokres, DVM
N
Christophe Guignabert, PhD
Berit Jacobson joined Dr. Bland's group as a research
assistant in 2003. Berit graduated in 2002 from The University of Michigan
with a Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology and Cognitive Science. Berit
investigated changes in gene expression due to prolonged
lung stretch in newborn mice, and set up the systems used in the lab for ventilating newborn mice.
Dr. Allan Lawrie graduated from Napier University (Edinburgh, Scotland)
in 1996 with a BSc (Hon) and The University of Sheffield (Sheffield,
England) in 2001 with a PhD. He was a recipient
of Stanford University School of Medicine Dean's Fellowship award for
post-doctoral scientists (2003-04). Allan’s research focused
on the investigation into the role of serotonin in the production and
release of Mts1 from pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells. Mts1 is a
member of the S100 family of proteins and was originally found to be
important in metastasis of breast cancer.