Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
Showing 901-920 of 1,214 Results
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Christopher John Russell
Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Hospital Medicine)
BioDr. Russell is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Hospital Medicine and a board-certified academic pediatric hospitalist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. His clinical responsibilities include caring for children hospitalized for a variety of illnesses. His research focuses on developing evidence-based care for hospitalized children with medical complexity, including acute respiratory infections (such as pneumonia and bacterial tracheitis). His research efforts have been recognized through receipt of the University of Southern California’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award (2014-16), the Academic Pediatric Association’s Young Investigator Award (2015-16), the NIH Loan Repayment Program (2017-2021) and a large grant from the Gerber Foundation (2020-2022). In August 2021, he received a five-year R01 award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study bacterial respiratory infections in children with tracheostomy. Outside of his clinical and research responsibilities, Dr. Russell focuses on research mentorship of medical students, pediatric residents, and pediatric hospital medicine fellows as well as improving representation of underrepresented minorities in medicine throughout the continuum of physician training. Dr. Russell completed a term as the chair of the Academic Pediatric Association’s Membership, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee (2022-2025) and is on the Executive Committee for the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings research network. Dr. Russell is active in the AAP and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Hospital Pediatrics.
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Mirabela Rusu
Assistant Professor of Radiology (Integrative Biomedical Imaging Informatics) and, by courtesy, of Biomedical Data Science and of Urology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Mirabela Rusu focuses on developing analytic methods for biomedical data integration, with a particular interest in radiology-pathology fusion. Such integrative methods may be applied to create comprehensive multi-scale representations of biomedical processes and pathological conditions, thus enabling their in-depth characterization.
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Brian Rutt
Professor of Radiology (Radiological Sciences Lab), Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests center on MRI research, including high-field and high-resolution MRI technology development as well as applications of advanced MRI techniques to studying the brain, cardiovascular system and cancer.
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maura ruzhnikov
Member, Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
BioChild neurologist and medical geneticist focusing on the diagnosis and management of rare neurologic disorders. Specific interests are in genetic epilepsy syndromes, childhood neurodegenerative and neurometabolic diseases and undiagnosed suspected genetic conditions.
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Katherine Jane Ryan
Clinical Assistant Professor, Pediatrics - Hematology & Oncology
Clinical Assistant Professor (By courtesy), Adult NeurologyCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Katherine “Katie” Ryan is a pediatric neuro-oncologist whose research focuses on developing and translating cellular immunotherapies for children with malignant brain tumors. She leads the first-in-human trial of GPC2-directed CAR T cells for CNS Embryonal Tumors. As a member of Stanford Children’s world-renowned pediatric brain tumor team, she diagnoses and treats children with CNS tumors while advancing innovative trial design, intracerebroventricular delivery, and correlative science.
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Raya Saab
Lindhard Family Professor of Pediatric Cancer Biology
BioI am a pediatric oncologist, and I primarily treat children who are diagnosed with soft tissue sarcomas including rhabdomyosarcoma, and children diagnosed with the eye tumor retinoblastoma, as well as children with other solid tumors.
I have two very different areas of primary research interest, both of which I pursue with passion. One focuses on global oncology, including clinical and research resource capacity building towards effective treatment and improving outcomes of children with cancer worldwide. I work with collaborators across the globe towards a common goal of improving access to diagnostic and clinical care, training of multidisciplinary teams, and building clinical resources and research capacity to develop context-informed approaches to improving cancer care and achieving better outcomes for children diagnosed with cancer irrespective of where they happen to live.
My parallel research interest, which is the focus of my laboratory, is understanding oncogenic signaling in pediatric soft tissue sarcomas, in an effort to clarify the driving biology and determinants of metastatic disease, to uncover novel targets for more effective treatment. We use preclinical in vitro and in vivo models, including murine and human cell lines, and mouse models of cancer. We have recently uncovered a paracrine role for rhabdomyosarcoma-secreted exosomes in impacting biology of stromal cells. Rhabdomyosarcoma-derived exosomes carry specific miRNA cargo that imparts an invasive and migratory phenotype on normal recipient fibroblasts, and proteomic analysis revealed specific and unique pathways relevant to the two different molecular rhabdomyosarcoma subtypes that are driven by distinct oncogenic pathways. We identified that the driver oncogene in fusion-positive rhabdomyosarcoma, PAX3-FOXO1, modulates exosome cargo to promote invasion, migration, and angiogenic properties, and identified specific microRNA and protein cargo acting as effectors of PAX3-FOXO1 exosome-mediated signaling, including modulation of oxidative stress response and cell survival signaling. Our ongoing work is focused on interrogating specific paracrine signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms of metastatic disease progression in rhabdomyosarcoma, for potential therapeutic targeting. -
Debra Safer
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (General Psychiatry and Psychology-Adult)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPrimary research interests include the nature and treatment of eating disorders
(particularly bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder), the development and treatment of obesity, and the development and treatment of problematic eating patterns in patients following bariatric surgery. -
Julien Sage
Elaine and John Chambers Professor of Pediatric Cancer and Professor of Genetics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe investigate the mechanisms by which normal cells become tumor cells, and we combine genetics, genomics, and proteomics approaches to investigate the differences between the proliferative response in response to injury and the hyperproliferative phenotype of cancer cells and to identify novel therapeutic targets in cancer cells.
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Manish Saggar
Associate Professor (Research) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Interdisciplinary Brain Science Research)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe are a computational neuropsychiatry lab dedicated to developing computational methods to better understand brain’s overall dynamical organization in healthy and patient populations. We employ algorithms from a wide range of fields, including Applied Mathematics, Econometrics, Machine Learning, Biophysics, and Network Science.
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Neetu Saini
Postdoctoral Scholar, Stem Cell Transplantation
BioMy research interests focus on translational human T-cell immunology, with an emphasis on regulatory T cells (Tregs) and their therapeutic potential in restoring immune tolerance and tissue homeostasis. I am particularly interested in engineering FOXP3-programmed CD4⁺ T cells as a stable and functional alternative to conventional Tregs, especially in inflammatory settings where endogenous Tregs may be unstable or dysfunctional. My work integrates gene-editing approaches, immunophenotyping, and human organoid systems to study how these engineered cells interact with epithelial and stem cell compartments, with a focus on mechanisms of tissue repair and immune–epithelial crosstalk in barrier tissues such as the intestine. Moving forward, I aim to advance next-generation cell therapies by combining insights from T-cell biology, tissue biology, and disease modeling to develop durable and clinically relevant strategies for treating immune-mediated and epithelial barrier disorders.
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Kathleen M. Sakamoto
Shelagh Galligan Professor in the School of Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on the molecular pathways that regulate normal and aberrant blood cell development, including acute leukemia and bone marrow failure syndromes. We are also studying novel drugs for treatment of cancer.
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Lee M. Sanders, MD, MPH
Professor of Pediatrics (General Pediatrics), of Health Policy and, by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Population Health
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI conduct interdisciplinary research to understand literacy as potentially modifiable lens for addressing maternal and child health disparities from birth through early adulthood. Applying mixed methods approaches (health-services, epidemiology, ethnography), I have been principal investigator on extramurally-funded research projects (NIH, PCORI, FDA) that aim to examine "natural experiments" in policy and/or to design, implement and test novel system-level interventions.
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Meera N. Sankar
Clinical Professor, Pediatrics - Neonatology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPDA in preterm
Transcutaneous bilirubin use in the NICU
Digital health tools -
Kavita Sarin, MD, PhD
Professor of Dermatology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research encompasses two main areas: 1) Using next-generation RNA, whole genome, and exome sequencing, we are investigating the genetic alterations involved in skin cancer progression, response to therapy, and other clinical outcomes and 2) We are developing and implementing genome-wide genetic risk prediction assessments for skin cancer into clinical use and studying the impact of this information on patient care.
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Peter Sarnow
Burt and Marion Avery Professor of Immunology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur laboratory studies virus-host interactions with an emphasis microRNA-mediated gene regulation and on translational control. The mechanism by which a liver-specific microRNA regulates hepatitis C virus genome replication is under intense scrutiny. In addition, the mechanism of internal ribosome entry in certain cellular and viral mRNAs and its biological role in growth and development is being investigated.
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Clea Sarnquist, DrPH, MPH
Clinical Professor, Pediatrics - Infectious Diseases
Clinical Professor (By courtesy), Epidemiology and Population HealthBioDr. Sarnquist focuses on applied teaching and research on the development, implementation and evaluation of interventions to decrease gender-based violence, improve mental health, and prevent HIV infection, especially among adolescents and children. She is particularly interested in rights-based approaches that tackle the complex interplay of factors that lead to poor health for many children and families. All of her work is applied, with direct links health practice and policy, and usually performed in conjunction with non-governmental organization and government partners. She works both globally and in the U.S., with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. She is also a medical educator, directing the scholarly concentrations program of the pediatric residency at Stanford, co-directing the global health concentration for residents, and teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in global health with a focus on children and women’s health.
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Ansuman Satpathy, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Pathology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur lab works at the interface of immunology, cancer biology, and genomics to study cellular and molecular mechanisms of the immune response to cancer. In particular, we are leveraging high-throughput genomic technologies to understand the dynamics of the tumor-specific T cell response to cancer antigens and immunotherapies (checkpoint blockade, CAR-T cells, and others). We are also interested in understanding the impact of immuno-editing on the heterogeneity and clonal evolution of cancer.
