People

Dr. Jiajia Zhang received her MD from Peking Union Medical University and MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Under the mentorship of Drs. Drew Pardoll and Kellie Smith at Hopkins, her research focuses on immunogenomic determinants of T cells in immunotherapy responsiveness. Her work provides important insights for overcoming resistance to PD-1 blockade and resulted in a co-inventor patent on novel targets for combination neoadjuvant immunotherapy.

Dr. Kevin Qian received his BS from Yale College and completed his MD and PhD at UCLA, where he studied lipid metabolism in the lab of Dr. Peter Tontonoz. During his PhD, he discovered a previously unknown gene that controls how lipid stores are organized in different types of fat cells. This work improved our fundamental understanding of adipocyte biology and implicated a new factor in the pathogenesis of metabolic syndrome.

Dr. Po wei “Billy” Kang received his BS from Johns Hopkins University and completed his MD and PhD at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focused on understanding how the cardiac potassium (KCNQ1) and sodium (Na_V1.5) channels function to facilitate synchronous contraction of the heart. His work uncovered novel regulatory mechanisms of cardiac ion channels, provided insights into arrhythmogenesis, and revealed new structural targets for anti-arrhythmic therapies. 

Dr. Lloyd Harvey completed his MD, PhD at the University of Pittsburgh-Carnegie Mellon University Medical Scientist Training Program under Dr. Stephen Y. Chan. His work leveraged large, multidimensional genomic and metabolomic datasets to define a role for lysosomal control of sterol metabolism at the endothelium in pulmonary arterial hypertension. His work led to the computational definition and synthesis of a novel agent targeting this pathway to reverse disease in vitro and in vivo.

Dr. Bradley Reinfeld completed his MD and PhD at Vanderbilt, under W. Kimryn Rathmell and Jeffrey Rathmell. During his PhD, he discovered that cell type intrinsic transcriptional and signaling programs dictate nutrient preferences in the tumor microenvironment. This work added increased our understanding of the metabolic complexity within cancer and provides new fundamental insight that can aid new imaging techniques for detection and therapeutic monitoring of malignancy. 

Dr. Errol J. Philip completed his PhD at Notre Dame and Yale and fellowship at MSKCC before undertaking medical training at UCSF. Dr. Philip has published widely on topics related to cancer survivorship, working under the guidance of Mina Sedrak, Laura Esserman and Jimmie Holland. His research focuses on the intersection of cancer and metabolism and whether novel agents, such as GLP-1 agonists, may improve outcomes. He resides in LA with his wife and three young children.

Dr. Amanda Collar completed her MD-PhD at the University of New Mexico. Under the mentorship of Dr. Kathryn Frietze, her research focused on understanding the natural antibody response toward Chlamydia trachomatis infection in women and leveraging this knowledge to engineer vaccines using a virus-like particle platform. Her work provided insight into novel chlamydia vaccine targets, new understanding of the role of antibodies in chlamydia infection, and together resulted in a co-inventor patent.

Dr. Nash completed his MD and PhD at the University of Colorado, with mentors Dr. Jacob Friedman and Dr. Stephanie Wesolowski. His PhD thesis focused on identifying the role of maternal diet in dysregulating offspring hematopoiesis, inflammation and development of steatotic liver disease. This work highlighted the profound impact of maternal diet as a driver of disease in the next generation and helped define a novel field of developmental programming of the immune system by diet.