Faculty snapshots: Major support for early career-scientists
Early career Pitt Med scientists are earning major support for their promising research.
Pitt’s Abby Overacre, a PhD assistant professor of immunology and a member of the Tumor Microenvironment Center at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, has received a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases New Innovator Award totaling $1.5 million over five years.
She’ll use the funding to study how gut bacteria drive the development of tertiary lymphoid structures. These organized immune cell structures often form at sites of inflammation, including tumors. Their presence can predict a patient’s response to immunotherapy and prognosis, so understanding how they develop could pave the way for new therapies to improve cancer outcomes.
Nathan Lord, a PhD assistant professor of computational and systems biology, earned a five-year, $1.5 million National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award to study the chemical signals that stem cells use to communicate and form spatial patterns in embryos, allowing them to develop into the cells that make up a functional organism.
By better understanding these spatial patterns, Lord hopes to learn how to direct the growth of the new tissue at will, which could transform the field of regenerative medicine. “If we want to understand, manipulate or use these cells to make things that are useful to us, like replacement organs or tissue, we need to learn how to read and write this spatial language,” Lord says.
Marco Capogrosso, a PhD assistant professor of neurological surgery and director of Pitt’s Spinal Cord Stimulation Laboratory, has received a 2023 Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience. The award, funded by Sumitomo Pharma America, recognizes outstanding achievements and contributions by early career neuroscientists.
His research has given new hope to patients dealing with paralysis after stroke. Working with collaborators at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University, Capogrosso used spinal cord stimulators to temporarily restore patients’ hand and arm function. He is the first scientist from Pitt to win a Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, which counts a Nobel laureate as a past recipient.
