2024 Research Retreat
Speakers
Keynote Speaker
9:00-9:45 AM
Stephen Montgomery, PhD
Professor of Pathology
Multi-omics to Study Rare Variants in Genetic Diseases
Dr. Stephen Montgomery's laboratory studies genetic effects on gene regulation and gene expression to identify the molecular and cellular mechanisms which define human traits. They focus on understanding the effects of genome variation on cellular phenotypes and cellular modeling of disease through genomic approaches such as next generation RNA sequencing in combination with developing and utilizing state-of-the-art bioinformatics and statistical genetics approaches.
9:45-10:00 AM
Wei Gu, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pathology
"Minimally Invasive Tumor Classification
Wei Gu, MD, PhD, is a physician, engineer, and scientist whose research focus is methylation classification within the area of molecular pathology. He has pioneered technologies in cell-free DNA 'liquid biopsy' testing, CRISPR diagnostics, clinical metagenomic sequencing, non-invasive prenatal testing, and COVID diagnostics. Dr. Gu has received awards from the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award and the National Cancer Institute. As a physician, he is a board-certified molecular and clinical pathologist and maintains a clinical practice at Stanford Healthcare.
10:00-10:15 AM
Katrin Svensson, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pathology
"Hormonal Control of Systemic Energy Homeostasis"
Dr. Svensson is an Assistant Professor of Pathology in the School of Medicine at Stanford University and one of the Affinity Group Leaders of the Stanford Diabetes Research Center. She is also an Associate Editor at Endocrine Reviews. She received her Ph.D. from Lund University, Sweden and completed her postdoctoral studies with Bruce Spiegelman at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston. Her laboratory is dedicated to uncovering new signal transduction pathways and their therapeutic applications for metabolic disorders, including obesity, diabetes, and fatty liver disease. Her lab employs a combination of biochemistry, computational approaches, proteomics, and physiology to characterize hormones with previously unknown functions. Her lab has made several findings in their pursuit to improve metabolic health, including the discovery of Isthmin as a circulating hormone that regulates glucose and lipid homeostasis. Her laboratory is supported by grants from the NIH, American Heart Association, Innovative Medicines Accelerator, SPARK, and Merck.
10:45-11:00 AM
Maayan Levy, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Microbiology
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
"Towards Metabotherapy for Human Disease
The Levy lab focuses on the biology of intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) and their role in treating multifactorial human disease. IECs form a thin layer of individual cells separating the extremely distinct milieus of the gastrointestinal lumen and the mucosal lamina propria. The interconnectedness of the gastrointestinal tract with other organs is at the core of many aspects of physiology and disease. Most research on IECs has been dedicated to understanding the external influences—e.g., dietary and microbial molecules—and their role in intestinal pathologies. However, accumulating evidence shows that considering only environmental factors is insufficient to explain the complex etiology of IEC-dependent disease. How internal factors derived from different organ systems contribute to IEC biology and intestinal inflammation remains almost entirely unclear. The Levy lab will explore the internal—and particularly brain-derived—factors that influence the biology of IECs. The discovery of mechanisms by which IECs sense the state of the body and its impact on disease pathophysiology will facilitate systematic exploration of body-IEC communication pathways and their amenability to therapeutic intervention.
11:00-11:15 AM
Sean Bendall, PhD
Associate Professor of Pathology
Bottom-Up Organization of Single Cell Human Systems
Our goal is to understand the mechanisms regulating the development of human systems (both embryonic and adult). In particular, we are interested in clarifying the roles of both protein coding genes as well as pathobiology (disease state or pathogen) known to be uniquely human – therefore, not analogously studied in model organisms. Drawing on both pluripotent stem cell biology, hematopoiesis, and immunology, combined with novel high-content single-cell analysis (CyTOF Mass Cytometry) and imaging (MIBI Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging) we are creating templates of 'normal' human cellular behavior. Using these we can decipher the roles of protein regulators on cellular specification as well as the influence of human-specific pathobiology on system remodeling at the single cell level. This work will enable a better understanding of how disease corrupts this process. Ultimately, our objective will be to use such approaches to not only reveal how novel regulators function in the context of complex cellular systems, but also enable the mechanistic characterization of human pathobiology in primary human tissues. In doing so we will understand how changes in related physiological or pathological systems can be more readily recognized and controlled.
In addition to the lab's work on human hematopoiesis and pluripotent stem cell specification we are seeking collaborative partnerships surrounding problems in human immunology as well as in regenerative medicine, including efforts to exploit next generation single-cell analysis and new computational methods to create systems level models of these processes so that they may be better understood and directed.
11:15-11:30 AM
Brooke Howitt, MD
Associate Professor of Pathology
"From Forgotten to Center Stage: The Role of the Fallopian Tube in Pathogenesis of High-grade Serous “Ovarian” Carcinoma
Brooke E. Howitt, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Pathology Department at Stanford University. She received a BA in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and then obtained her medical degree from Stanford University. Dr. Howitt then completed an Anatomic Pathology residency and the Women’s and Perinatal Pathology Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where she subsequently was hired as faculty. Dr. Howitt joined the faculty at Stanford in 2017 as a gynecologic and sarcoma pathologist. She has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles and numerous book chapters. Dr. Howitt currently serves as a member-at-large on the Board of Directors for the International Society of Gynecological Pathologists and is on the editorial boards of Modern Pathology, International Journal of Gynecologic Pathology, and Human Pathology. Her research interests focus on gynecologic neoplasms and their precursor lesions using histopathologic examination, immunohistochemistry, DNA/RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and single cell genomics, aiming to better understand morphologic and molecular alterations associated with clinical relevance.
11:30-11:45 AM
Sharon Chinthrajah, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine (SNP)
Mechanistic Insights in Food Allergy
Doctor Chinthrajah joined the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research at Stanford University in August 2013 after completing her subspecialty training in Pulmonary/Critical Care and Allergy/Immunology at Boston Medical Center. She obtained her MD from Drexel University College of Medicine in 2004 and completed her Internal Medicine training at California Pacific Medical Center in 2007 and chief residency in 2008. Dr. Chinthrajah is currently Director of the Clinical Translational Research Unit at the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research at Stanford University. She oversees all the clinical trials, sees patients, teaches fellows, and is an investigator on many of the Centers clinical trials in food allergy and asthma.
"Asthma and food allergies have common underlying mechanisms and many patients with food allergies often have a history of other allergies or asthma. In fact, about 65% of the patients with food allergies at our Center also have asthma. Working with patients with both asthma and allergy, I am able to fully utilize both my training in Pulmonary and Critical Care and Allergy/Immunology."