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Meet the SOM PSTP trainees!

2023 Cohort

Jose Martinez, MD, PhD (Resident / Fellowship Level) – Department of Medicine

Martinez is a hematologist whose work combines RNA biology and bioinformatics to identify how different roles of spliceosome protein U2AF1 affect acute myelogenous leukemia progression

Justin Sperlazza, MD, PhD (Resident / Fellowship Level) – Department of Pediatrics

Sperlazza is a pediatric oncologist working on the understanding how chromatin directed therapeutics can influence tumor susceptibility to immunotherapy, particularly CAR-T therapy, in Ewing’s Sarcoma

Lauren Frazer, MD, PhD (Faculty Level) – Department of Pediatrics

Frazer has a research program focused on understanding the immune signaling pathway dysregulation that leads to necrotizing enterocolitis in infants.

Dominique Higgins, MD, PhD (Faculty Level) – Department of Neurosurgery

Higgins’ research interests are centered on understanding the impact of the NFkappaB signaling pathway on chemotherapy and immunotherapy based treatments of malignant brain tumors such as glioblastoma.

Klara Klein, MD, PhD (Faculty Level) – Department of Medicine

Klein is focused on studying whether GLP1 receptor antagonists, which are have been shown to have a multitude of beneficial effects in  the treatment of diabetes, have safety and efficacy in treating Diabetes Mellitus individuals  with kidney disease who are on hemodialysis.

2022 Cohort

Simon Gray, MD, PhD (Resident / Fellowship Level) – Department of Medicine

Gray will use his mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that remit and relapse with standard IBD therapies to test whether restoring a subset of normal gut bacteria can lead to remission.

Jeremy Meier, MD, PhD (Resident / Fellowship Level) – Department of Medicine

Meier’s project will understand how intracellular signaling molecule STING induces metabolic changes in T cells driving the development of T memory stem cells with increased efficacy against solid tumors.

Erica Brenner, MD, MSCR (Faculty Level) – Department of Pediatrics

Brenner is focused on understanding the safety and impact of estrogen-containing contraceptive products in adolescent and adult young women with inflammatory bowel disease.

Erin Steinbach, MD, PhD (Faculty Level) – Department of Medicine

Steinbach will build on her previous SOM PSTP research to understand how leakiness of the gastrointestinal tract contributes to the development of peanut allergies.

2021 Cohort

Klara Klein, MD, PhD (Resident/Fellowship Level) – Department of Medicine

Supported research focuses on using a novel glucokinase activator to prevent diabetic ketoacidosis in patients with Type 1 Diabetes and to identify additional therapeutic targets to prevent diabetic ketoacidosis

Shetal Patel, MD, PhD (Faculty Level) – Department of Medicine

Patel will determine if targeting metabolic pathways in immune cells can enhance immunotherapeutic approaches to lung cancer therapy

Clio Rubinos, MD (Faculty Level) – Department of Neurology

Rubinos’ PSTP project focuses on the role of neuroinflammation resulting from traumatic brain injury in the development of posttraumatic epilepsy.

Miriam Sklerov, MD, MS (Faculty Level) – Department of Neurology

Sklerov will study whether transcranial magnetic stimulation can be used to treat autonomic dysfunction and other non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease

Philip Spanheimer, MD (Faculty Level) – Department of Surgery

Supported work is to identify mechanisms of resistance to breast cancer therapy and patients at risk for treatment failure, as well as to discover new therapeutic targets.

Matthew Vogt, MD, PhD (Faculty Level) – Department of Pediatrics

Vogt is interested in what drives rare cases of severe pathogenesis seen in some children infected with common viruses including respiratory syncytial virus and enterovirus D68.

2020 Cohort

Alena Markmann, MS, MD, PhD (Resident / Fellow Level) – Department of Medicine

Markmann will focus on defining the molecular properties of subsets of protective human antibodies that develop after Zika virus infection to identify viral targets to improve vaccine and therapeutic antibody design.

Erin Steinbach, MD, PhD (Resident / Fellow Level) – Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics

As a PSTP Fellow, Steinbach will examine how peanut proteins and the intestinal epithelium interact in normal health and peanut allergy to identify new targeted therapies for preventing severe peanut allergic reactions.

Tessa Andermann, MD, MPH (Faculty Level) – Department of Medicine

Andermann will identify and track antimicrobial resistance in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation to understand how resistance gene dynamics in the gut influence the risk of infection with multidrug-resistant organisms.

Peyton Thompson, MD, MSCR (Faculty Level) – Department of Pediatrics

Thompson will enhance knowledge of childhood Hepatitis B in Africa, identify hotspots of disease, and model spatially targeted vaccination strategies to avert future cases in African children.