Our Team
Dr. Rabinovitch is proud to lead a team of talented individuals working together to advance cardiopulmonary research.
Marlene Rabinovitch, MD
Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatrics, Cardiology
Director, Basic Science and Engineering (BASE) Initiative,
Betty Irene Moore Children's Heart Center
Dr. Rabinovitch joined Stanford University School of Medicine Faculty in the summer of 2002 as the Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatric Cardiology, and Scientist at the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease. In 2018, she became the Director of the Basic Science and Engineering (BASE) Initiative in Stanford Children's Health of the Betty Irene Moore Children's Heart Center. She is also the Associated Director in Basic Research at Stanford’s Cardiovascular Institute. From 2002-2013, she was appointed as Professor (by courtesy) of Developmental Biology. Dr. Rabinovitch is a graduate of McGill University Medical School and completed her pediatrics training at the University of Colorado and sub-specialty training in cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She was Assistant Professor at Harvard and then moved back to Canada where she became Associate and later Professor of Pediatrics, Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Hospital for Sick Children. There, she was the Director of Cardiovascular Research and held the Robert M. Freedom/Heart and Stroke Foundation Chair.
Dr. Rabinovitch has received numerous awards for her research and mentoring over the years, the most recent being in 2017 from the American Heart Association, the Distinguished Scientist Lecturer at the Scientific Sessions. In 2016, she was named the J. Burns Amberson Lecturer at the ATS International Conference in San Francisco. ATS also gave her the Robert F Grover Prize for the Assembly on Pulmonary Circulation. In 2015, she was presented with the Mentor Award for Excellence from the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2012, she received the Judtih Pool Award from the Northern California Chapter of the Association for Women in Science. In 2010, she received the Louis and Artur Lucian Award for Research in Circulatory Diseases from McGill University. Then, the American Thoracic Society Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishment in 2008. She is the recipient of the 2006 American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award, and in 2005 she was 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 (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). She has given numerous named lectureships in North America and served as a Visiting Professor in many countries in Europe, the UK, Australia and Asia. She has more than 185 peer-reviewed publications and 120+ invited reviews, articles, and book chapters.
Dr. Rabinovitch completed a five-year term in 2016 on the External Advisory Board of the NHLBI Lung Repair and Regeneration Consortium (LRRC), and also she completed a four-year term on the NIH/NHLBI Scientific Advisory Council in 2011. She is currently on the Executive Committee of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute and has served on the Executive Council of the American Pediatric Society and Scientific Advisory Boards of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, the MPI for Heart and Lung Research Board of the Max Planck Society, the Children’s Discovery Institute of Washington University, the Doris Duke and Burroughs Wellcome Foundations, and numerous NIH Training Grants. She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in addition to the Association of American Physicians, and has been Associate Editor of Circulation Research and the Annual Reviews of Physiology. The main focus of her research program is on uncovering molecular pathways that lead to developmental and inflammatory mechanisms of vascular pathobiology, particularly pulmonary hypertension.
Richard D. Bland, MD
Professor Emeritus, Pediatrics - Neonatal and Developmental Medicine
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.
Sarasa Isobe, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Sarasa Isobe received her MD degree from National Defense Medical College in Saitama, Japan, and her PhD from Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. She completed her medical training in internal medicine and cardiology, and is a Fellow of the Japanese Society of Internal Medicine (FJSIM), a board-certified member of the Japan Circulation Society and a Registered Instructor of Cardiac Rehabilitation (RICR). Dr. Isobe carried out her doctoral research in the pulmonary hypertension research group at the Graduate School of Medicine of Keio University under the mentorship of Dr. Keiichi Fukuda. She investigated how endothelial-mesenchymal transition (EndMT) is associated with pulmonary artery remodeling, and discovered that the CD44 splicing variant, which is important for the growth and metastasis of cancer cells, is involved in the development of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) via EndMT. Dr. Isobe joined the Rabinovitch Lab in 2018 as a postdoctoral fellow, where her research is focused on elucidating the genetic basis of unrepaired DNA damage and how this is linked to the pathogenesis of PAH. Her postdoctoral training was supported by the MSD Life Science Foundation Public Interest Incorporated Foundation Fellowship Program (Japan), a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association (AHA) and a Research Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Mir Adil, PharmD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Adil received his PharmD from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad, India and worked as a Clinical Pharmacologist and Medical Writer for three years before pursuing his PhD in Clinical & Experimental Therapeutics from University of Georgia, USA in the laboratory of Dr. Somansth Shenoy. During his PhD, he investigated the role of a tight junction gene 'CLDN17' in vascular permeability leading to lung and kidney injuries. Dr. Adil joined the Rabinovitch Laboratory in January 2022 as a Postdoctoral Scholar and his research focusses on uncovering the mechanism leading to the abnormal increase in the expression of human endogenous retroviruses in myeloid cells. He is specifically relating this sustained innate immune response to loss of BMPR2 mediated control of the lnc RNA Xist that is important in X chromosome inactivation. Dr. Adil is applying multi-omic approaches to the study of human monocytes and induced pluripotent stem cells differentiated to monocytes, monocyte derived dendritic cells and macrophages from patients with genetic causes of progressive pulmonary arterial hypertension as these cells are implicated in the chronic inflammatory response that causes progressive disease. Dr. Adil is also working on developing a biomarker assay (for a phase II clinical trial) to determine the efficacy of a recombinant endogenous neutrophil elastase inhibitor (elafin) in patients suffering from pulmonary arterial hypertension and in identifying interactors of elafin that suppress the abnormal formation of neutrophil extracellular traps.
Chongyang Zhang, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Zhang received her BS/MS in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Buffalo, New York, and her PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of Rochester, New York. During her PhD research in the laboratory of Dr. Chen Yan she investigated the role of a cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase 1C (PDE1C) in the phenotype change of smooth muscle cells and abdominal aortic aneurysm. She also studied the pharmacological effects of various PDE inhibitors in the regulation of aortic aneurysm progression. Dr. Zhang’s current research focuses on flow mediated regulation of ALDH3A1, and how this enzyme coordinates endothelial cell metabolism, chromatin remodeling and gene expression. A second project determines the role of SOX17 in causing severe pulmonary arterial hypertension when there is a congenital heart defect with high shear stress.
Xin Zhou, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Joint with Mike Snyder's Lab, Genetics
Dr. Zhou received his BS in Biological Science from Fudan University in Shanghai, China and his PhD in Genetics and Genome Sciences from the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Connecticut with. Xin’s early research focused on the utilization of herbal natural products of potential medically-related application and characterization of bioactive components from medicinal mushrooms. During his predoctoral training at Case Western and PhD thesis research at The Jackson Lab, Dr. Zhou participated in several projects focused on understanding the basics of the host immune response to virus, and developed a novel drug delivery system for viral infection, which could be applied to anti-viral small molecules. He also participated the Human Microbiome Project, where he specifically validated the interaction of microbes and IL17 producing cells and their relationship with insulin sensitivity. Dr. Zhou joined the Snyder and Rabinovitch labs at Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019, where he carries out bioinformatics/biostatistical analysis of host-microbiome interactions in diseases such as type 2 diabetes and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). In the Rabinovitch lab, he studies the monocyte and dendritic cell subsets in PAH and how the transcriptome and CYTOF can influence their interaction with vascular and other inflammatory cells.
Seo Woo Song, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor in Pediatrics, Joint with Mark Skylar-Scott's Lab, Basic Science & Engineering Initiative (BASE)
Dr. Song is Research Assistant Professor at Bio-MAX/N-Bio, Seoul National University, South Korea. Dr. Song received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Seoul National University, South Korea. His research involves multidisciplinary fields and applications with backgrounds in various multi-scale fabrication technologies and biotechnologies. In his doctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Sunghoon Kwon, Dr. Song focused on various multi-scale fabrication technologies to develop lab-chip-based high-throughput screening platforms and 3D/4D printing of polymeric materials. Dr. Song joined the Rabinovitch and Skylar-Scott laboratories in September 2021, and his collaborative project aims to develop a high throughput approach to producing fibrin scaffolds that support SMC alignment and growth and endothelial cells that sense flow, to study vascular disease in a more physiologically relevant model.
Mauro Lago-Docampo, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Lago-Docampo received his BS (Biology), MS (Biotechnology) and PhD from the University of Vigo in Spain in the laboratory of Dr. Diana Valverde. His PhD thesis focused on the functional characterization of mutations detected in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) patients, with a goal to improve genetic diagnosis and gain basic knowledge on PAH development. He studied the implication of mutations in the gene ABCC8 on exon processing, and conducted functional analyses of variants in untranslated and regulatory regions of the Endothelin-1 gene, finding a link between a common SNP in the 5'UTR and PPARG. He spent three months as a visiting PhD student in Dr. Morrell’s lab at Cambridge University, UK, where he performed functional analyses for the TBX4 variants reported in PAH. Dr. Lago-Docampo joined the Rabinovitch Laboratory in March 2022 as a Postdoctoral Scholar. His project aims to understand the impact of TBX4 variation on the interactome, DNA binding, epigenetic regulation, gene expression and function. He will use iPSCs to generate a variety of cell types to elucidate the impact of TBX4 mutants on lung development and disease, and, will study TBX4-mutant cells in high throughput shRNA, Perturb-Seq, small molecule, or drug screens to identify agents and pathways that can overcome the abnormal phenotype and can be harnessed therapeutically.
Jason Szafron, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Joint with Dr. Alison Marsden's Lab, Bioengineering
Dr. Szafron received his BS in biomedical engineering from Texas A&M University and his PhD in biomedical engineering from Yale University with Dr. Jay Humphrey. There he investigated explored tissue-engineered vascular graft design for the Fontan procedure using growth and remodeling simulations to modify scaffold microstructure and inflammatory response for optimization of outcomes. Dr. Szafron is working with our lab as a joint postdoctoral fellow to simulate wall shear stress in murine models of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and to understand its contribution to adverse remodeling and dysregulated cell function. He uses computational simulation to predict the time course of PAH development by coupling hemodynamic changes in the PA tree to compositional changes of the vessel walls that lead to progressive PAH. He is supported by the Parker B. Francis Fellowship for pulmonary and critical care research.
Lingli Wang, MD
Basic Life Research Scientist
Lab Manager
Dr. Lingli Wang joined Dr. Rabinovitch’s group in July 2003 as lab
manager, bringing over 10 years of experience in life science research to the
group. Dr. Wang manages the transgenic mouse lines produced and used in the
different research projects. With Dr. Cao, she trains new postdoctoral
fellows and laboratory staff, and manages the day to day operations of the lab.
In addition to managing the lab, Dr. Wang also investigates the cardiovascular
phenotype in mice with tissue specific deletion of BMPRII. She found that loss
of Bmpr2 in pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells (PASMC) causes congenital
heart diseases in mice. The penetrance is about 50%, and the survivors developed
pulmonary hypertension (PH) in a mouse model of reoxygenation after chronic
hypoxia. She found that loss of Bmpr2 in PASMC leads to reduced contractility
and heightened proliferation, caused by elevated SMAD2/3 and ARRB2 and
consequent increase in pAKT mediated activation of β-Catenin and reduction in
RHOA/RAC1.
Dr. Wang received her MD degree from the Fourth Army Medical University in Xi'an, China. She completed her postdoctoral studies at Stanford's Dept. of Pediatrics in 1997, where she investigated the mechanism of interferon resistance in rotavirus. Prior to Stanford, she worked at the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. Following her postdoctoral studies, Dr. Wang worked in Stanford's Dept. of Pediatrics Hematology and Oncology Division, investigating multi-drug resistance, and found a novel inhibitor of apoptosis, ARMER; and in the Dept. of Pathology, where she investigated markers for human kidney tumors using cDNA and tissue microarrays and computer-assisted data analysis.
Brenda Arroyo Rodriguez
Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator/Lab Researcher
Division of Pulmonary, Allergy & Critical Care Medicine
Brenda Arroyo Rodriguez joined the Rabinovitch lab in June 2021. She is a Clinical Research Coordinator for Dr. Zamanian at the Stanford Adult Pulmonary Hypertension Program, and a Lab Researcher supporting genotyping transgenic mice efforts with Dr. Lingli Wang in the Rabinovitch Lab. She also coordinates consent and harvest of blood for research studies related to the characterization of monocytes and dendritic cells in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Brenda earned a BS in Public Health from San Jose State University and an AS in Human Development Studies from Ohlone College. Prior to working with the Rabinovitch Lab, Brenda worked at the Stanford Biobank as a Biospecimen Assistant and focused on clinical specimen client requests. As an undergraduate, Brenda worked as a Student Lab Assistant for the California State Genetic Disease Department.
Katherine Guo, PhD
Computational Biologist, Genetics
(A collaboration with the Engreitz Laboratory)
Katherine is interested in applying statistical and deep learning methods to genetic data to study enhancers and noncoding DNA as well as their effects on human disease. Before joining the Engreitz lab, she obtained a BS in Computer Science at Caltech and worked for three years as a software engineer and data scientist at IBM Research. Her work in the Rabinovitch lab focuses on establishing bioinformatic approaches to integrate large datasets related to the flow based vascular remodeling.
Aiqin Cao, PhD
Life Science Research Professional 4
Dr. Cao joined the Rabinovitch Laboratory in April 2011, where she manages day to day operations in the lab with Dr. Lingli Wang, supervises new fellows and performs key experiments to finalize projects for publication. In addition to these duties, Dr. Cao investigates the mechanism of arterial and venous dysfunction in Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) obtained from both healthy individuals and from HLHS patients.
Dr. Aiqin Cao received her PhD degree in Biology from Purdue University. Her graduate research in the laboratory of Dr. K.G. Raghothama focused on the molecular mechanism of plant response to phosphate (Pi) stress. Dr. Cao showed that Phosphate differentially regulates 14-3-3 family members, and GRF9 plays a role in Pi-starvation induced responses in Arabidopsis thaliana, and that a protein phosphatase gene family from tomato (LePS2;1) and from Arabidopsis thaliana (AtPS2) are induced during phosphate starvation. The studies shed a light on the adaptive response of plants to Pi deficiency that could be altered in a genetically modified plant to allow it to adapt to natural Pi stress. For her postdoctoral studies, Dr. Cao joined Stanford’s Division of Endocrinology investigating 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 as a mechanism that increases LDLR protein in liver cells.
Patricia A. del Rosario, BSN, RN, PHN
Clinical Research Coordinator 2
Patricia Del Rosario joined the Rabinovitch lab in May 2009. is the clinical research coordinator for the Stanford Transplant Tissue Bank, formerly part of the Pulmonary Hypertension Breakthrough Initiative (PHBI) led by Drs. Zamanian and Rabinovitch, and a research nurse for PH clinical trial studies at Stanford’s Adult PH Program. With Dr. Roof, Ms. del Rosario played a key role in the coordination and oversight of the Phase 1 clinical trial “Safety and Tolerability of Escalating Doses of Subcutaneous Elafin (Tiprelestat) Injection in Healthy Normal Subjects”, including the development of the study protocol, eCRFs, sample collection kits, obtaining and maintaining regulatory approvals.
Patricia earned a BS in Biochemistry from San Francisco State University and a BS in Nursing from Dominican University of California. Prior to working at Stanford, she worked at Exelixis, Inc. as a research associate in combinatorial chemistry and, after pursuing her nursing education, in Marin General Hospital as a labor and delivery/NICU nurse.
Michal Bental Roof, PhD
Academic and Research Program Officer, Rabinovitch Lab and BASE
(650) 724-9589 — Office Phone
(650) 723-6700 — Fax
email Michal
Dr. Michal Bental Roof joined our group as an Academic and Research Program Officer in 2002. She oversees grant proposal development, manuscript preparation, regulatory compliance and reporting internally (IRB, APLAC, biosafety) and externally (FDA, NIH). She coordinates the translational program headed by Drs. Rabinovitch and Zamanian in collaboration with Proteo to develop Elafin as a PAH therapy, and with our Clinical Research Coordinator, oversees the activities of the Stanford Transplant Tissue Bank. Dr. Roof supports our BASE faculty in special projects and with internal and external regulatory issues.
Dr. Roof received her BSc in Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and MSc and PhD in the Life Sciences from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Her doctoral work studied the response of a unicellular alga to osmotic shock, developing a setup to follow living cells in real time using NMR spectroscopy. Following postdoctoral research with Dr. Carol Deutsch at the University of Pennsylvania, investigating T-cell activation using real time NMR spectroscopy, she was Scientific Development Administrator of Penn’s Institute for Medicine and Engineering, and completed a business management certificate program at the Wharton Business School. Previous Stanford responsibilities included coordinating the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Science Concentration and the MED223 class (from inception in 2005 to 2015), coordination of the Stanford K12 Program in "Omics of Lung Disease" and the CVI T32 training grant "Mechanisms and Innovation in Vascular Disease”.
Michelle Ameri, BA, RVT
BASE Operations Manager
(650) 723-8239 - Office Phone
(650) 723-6700 - Fax
email Michelle
Michelle joined the Rabinovitch-Bland Lab in 2004, and she oversees the day-to-day needs of the laboratory and staff. In addition to supporting Dr. Rabinovitch and her lab, she is the Operations Manager of the Basic Science and Engineering Initiative (BASE) of the Children's Heart Center. She really enjoys being part of a team. Her 20+ years in the veterinary field has made her proficient at working with doctors, students, and staff members. Her degree and background in the medical field are useful tools to bring to the table. She prides herself on being proactive, organized, and having a positive attitude.
Michelle received a BA in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Immediately after graduation, she entered the veterinary field as an assistant and thrived in the field, eventually receiving 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 ICU patient care to administering and monitoring anesthesia on 1000+ lb horses. She continues to be a part of their emergency surgery team and also works part-time at a small animal hospital in Menlo Park to keep up with her technical skills.
Rabinovitch Lab Recent Alumni
| Name/Position | Years in Lab | Prior Academic Degree(s), year, and Institution | Research Project | Current Position |
Vinicio de Jesus Perez Postdoctoral Fellow |
2005-2011 | MD, 2000 University of Puerto Rico |
Wnt signaling pathway and the role of ApoE in the development of pulmonary arterial hypertension | Associate Professor, Medicine/Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA |
Aiqin Cao Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2012 | PhD, 2007 Purdue University |
BMPR2 loss of function and ER stress | Research Associate, Rabinovitch Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA |
Akihito Sasaki Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2012 | MD, 1995 PhD, 2007 Tokyo Univ, Japan |
Elafin: A novel treatment for PH | Assistant Professor, Dept of Pediatrics and Developmental Biology, Tokyo Medical and Dental University |
Christopher Rhodes Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011- 2013 | PhD, 2011 Imperial College, London, UK |
RNAseq analysis of iPSC Derived versus Native PA Endothelial Cells in Patients with PAH vs. Controls | Junior Research Fellow, Imperial College, London |
Nils Nickel Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2014 | MD, 2010 Hannover Med School, Germany |
Innate immunity and DNA methylation changes in PAH | Critical Care Medicine Specialist, Univ. Medical Center of El Paso, TX |
Dan Shaked Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2013 | MD, 2007 Univ of Texas Health Science Ctr, San Antonio |
Regulation of smooth muscle cell elastase in pulmonary hypertension | Pediatrician (PICU) at Kaiser Hospital, Oakland |
Isabel Diebold Postdoctoral Fellow |
2013-2014 | MD, 2003 Wolfgang Goethe Univ, Germany |
Role of nitrated fatty acids in pulmonary vascular remodeling: a novel protective mechanism? | Pediatrician, Medical Genetics Center, Munich, Germany |
Rachel Hopper Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2014 | MD, 2007 University of Michigan |
The role of HMGA1 in pulmonary hypertension | Clinical Associate Professor (and Associate Director of the Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension Program based within the Children’s Heart Center), Stanford Univ. |
Nathaly Sweeney Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2015 | MD, 2004 Columbia University, NY |
DNA damage in pulmonary hypertension | Clinician, University of California San Diego |
Nancy Ferriera Tojais Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2016 | PhD, 2010 University of Bordeaux2, France |
Roles of TGFbeta and BMP4 in regulating elastin fiber assembly in the vessel wall; the harvest and analysis of lung tissue for patients with PAH | Regulatory Medical Writer, International Consulting Group, San Jose, CA |
Silin Sa Research Associate
|
2012-2016 | PhD, 2013 University of California, Merced |
Senior Scientist, Beckton-Dickinson, San Jose, CA | |
Jan Hennigs Postdoctoral Fellow |
2012-2016 |
MD, 2009 University of Hamburg, Germany
|
P53-PPARgamma interaction and immune dysregulation in pulmonary hypertension | Attending Physician and Research Group Lead in Pulmonary Medicine at Universitätsklinikum Hamburg, Germany |
Johanna Altmann Visiting Student Researcher |
2016 |
PhD candidate, 2017 Medical University of Vienna
|
Studies on B cells by CyTOF in patients with idiopathic and thromboembolic pulmonary arterial hypertension | Completed her PhD at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria |
Caiyun "Grace" Li Postdoctoral Fellow |
2011-2017 | PhD, 2010 University of Otago, New Zealand |
The Role of PPARgamma and the DNA damage repair mechanism and its relation to PAH
|
|
Kazuya Miyagawa Postdoctoral Fellow |
2014-2017 | MD, 2003 PhD, 2010 Kobe University School of Medicine |
Inflammation, metabolism, and mitochondrial function as they relate to pulmonary hypertension
|
Assistant Professor, Clinical Pharmacy, Kobe Pharmaceutical University, Kobe, Japan |
Pin-I Chen Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate |
2011-2017 | PhD, 2009 Washington University, St. Louis, MO |
Beta arrestins at the crossroads of BMPR2 signaling | Basic Life Science Research Associate, Department of Medicine - Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation, Stanford University School of Medicine |
Ajay Bhatia Clincial/Research Fellow |
2016 – 2017 |
MD, 2008 Washington University |
The impact of disturbed flow on pulmonary arterial endothelial cell function in patients with APAH and CHD. |
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Cardiac Intensive Care, Division of Pediatric Cardiology, Louisiana State University School of Medicine |
Diederik van der Feen Visiting Instructor |
2017 |
MD, 2014 University of Groningen, Netherlands |
Identification of vascular molecular profiles associated with the reversibility of flow-induced PAH |
Completed his PhD at University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands |
Shuai Mao Visiting Assistant Professor |
2017 – 2018 |
MD, 2014 Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine |
Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived vascular smooth muscle cells in pulmonary hypertension: differentiation and therapeutic potential |
Associate Professor of Medicine, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China |
Roger Thompson Visiting Postdoc |
2017 – 2018 | MRCP, 2005 Royal College of Physicians PhD, 2013 Univ of Sheffield |
The role of double-stranded RNA in pulmonary vascular remodeling | JG Graves Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow and Honorary Consultant in Respiratory Medicine, University of Sheffield, UK |
Yoonhong Chun Visiting Professor |
2017 – 2018 | MD, 2002 PhD, 2015 Catholic Univ of Korea |
Response of pulmonary arterial hypertension endothelial cells to laminar and disturbed flow | Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea |
James Chappell Postdoctoral Fellow |
2015 - 2018 | PhD, 2015 Univ of Georgia, Athens, GA |
Endothelial cell biology by generation and interpretation of multi-omic datasets | Director of Research & Development, MNG Labs, Atlanta, GA |
Toshie Saito, MD Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate |
2010-2019 | MD, 2000 Gunma Univ School of Med, Japan |
Elastin, Elastase and Autoimmunity in Pulmonary Hypertension | Basic Life Science Research Associate, Stanford University School of Medicine |
| Mingixa Gu, MD, PhD | 2015-2020 | MD, 2009 PhD, 2013 Health Science Center, Peking Univ/ Stanford Medical School |
Using Patient-Specific IPSC Derived Endothelial Cells to Gain New Insights into Pathobiology and Therapy of FPAH and IPAH | Assistant Professor, Cincinnati Children's Hospital |
| Yifei Miao, PhD |
2018-2020 | PhD, 2012 Department of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Peking University Health Science Center, Peking University Diabetes Center, Beijing CHINA |
Instructor, Cincinnati Children's Hospital | |
| Shoichiro Otsuki, MD, PhD | 2017-2020 | MD, 2004; PhD, 2015 Mie University, Japan |
The role of human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) in PAH PAEC | |
| Rebecca Harper, PhD |
2018-2020 | PhD, 2018 Univ of Adelaide, Australia |
Monocyte and macrophage biology in pulmonary hypertension | Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow, Cardiovascular Rengenerative Medicine, National Institutes of Health |
| Marcy Martin, PhD | 2019-2021 | PhD, 2019 UC, San Diego |
Using organoid technology to model pulmonary hypertension | Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| Dan Li, PhD | 2015-2021 | PhD, 2013 Peking University, Beijing, China |
Metabolite profiling regulates the smooth muscle cells dysfunction in PAH | Instructor, University of Texas at San Antonio, School of Medicine |
| Shalina Taylor, PhD | 2014-2021 | PhD, 2013 University of Illinois, Chicago |
The role of neutrophils and other inflammatory cells in PH, and the effect of elafin on neutrophil function | Senior Researcher, Abbvie |
| Tsutomu Shinohara, MD, PhD | 2018-2021 | PhD, 2015 MD, 2005 |
High sheer in PH and Jagged 1 in pulmonary artery obstruction | Clinical Professor, Japan |
| Jan-Renier Moonen, MD, PhD | 2016-2022 | Expression analysis of native and iPSC-derived vascular cells in pulmonary hypertension | Job search, Netherlands | |
| David Marciano, PhD | 2015-2022 | Profiling cellular metabolism and the molecular mechanisms underlying disease pathogenesis using multi-omics approaches | Assistant Professor, Dept. of Cellular Biology and Pharmacology, Florida International University (FIU) Center for Translational Science in Port Saint Lucie, Florida | |
Bland Lab Recent Alumni
| Post-doctoral Trainee | Postdoc Research Training Period | Prior Academic Degree(s), year, and Institution | Research Project | Current Position |
| Lucia Mokres | 2005-08 | DVM, UC Davis | Changes in gene expression and lung morphology following long-term mechanical ventilation in newborn mice | Chief Medical Officer, EpiBiome, Inc |
| Kakoli Parai | 2007-09 | PhD, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada | Changes in blood vessel expression following long-term mechanical ventilation in newborn mice | Research Scientist, New York |
| Anne Hilgendorff | 2008-10 | MD, University of Giessen, Germany | Changes in gene expression and lung morphology following long-term mechanical ventilation in transgenic and non-transgenic newborn mice | Professor and Program Leader, Comprehensive Pneumology Center, Munich, Germany |
| Mark Kaschwich | 2012-14 | MD, Christian-Albrechts University | Elafin to protect lung growth in mechanically ventilated newborns | General Surgery Specialist, Dept. of Cardiovascular Surgery, University Hospital, Kiel, Germany |
| Stefanie Preuss | 2012-14 | MD, Univ of Kiel, Germany | Combining elafin with apelin in preventing neonatal murine ventilator induced lung injury | Specialist Pediatrician – Intensive Care, Neonatology, Dept. of Pediatrics, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel, Germany |
| Miguel Alejandre-Alcazar | 2013-14 | MD/PhD Justus-Liebig, Univ. of Giessen, Germany | Early Origins of Adult Lung Disease: Unraveling the Mechanism of Adipose-Tissue-originated Cytokines in Metabolic Programming of the Lung | Pediatric Resident, Department of Pediatrics, University of Cologne, Germany |
| Sana Mujahid | 2013-2016 | PhD, Tufts University | Elafin as a treatment to protect against the adverse effects of mechanical ventilation on the formation of alveoli and microvessels in the developing lung | Job search |