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I have been in the Department
of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine since 1986, when I started as
a freshman, work-study student in the lab of Kathy Pryzwansky. I
received my B.S. in Medical
Technology from the University of North
Carolina in 1991. After a year and a half in Clinical Hematology
(UNC-Hospitals),
I returned as a technician to Kathy’s lab to work on the role of cGMP dependent
protein kinase in neutrophil secretion. In 1998, I moved to the labs
of Dr. Marjorie Read and
Dr.
Tim Nichols (Francis Owen Blood Research Lab), where I worked on developing
freeze-dried platelets and red blood cells as blood bank replacement products.
I entered the Molecular
and Cellular Pathology PhD program in the Fall of 2002 and now work
with Dr. Tim
Nichols and Dr.
Nadia Malouf on L-type voltage dependent calcium channels in platelets.
I am currently in the lab of Dr. Tim Nichols and working to develop and
characterize a pig model of hyperlipidemia and insulin resistance.
There is an unmet need for a large animal model to determine the mechanisms
that mediate coronary vascular disease (CVD) in insulin resistant patients.
We are interested in the individual and combined effects that hyperlipidemia
and insulin resistance have on CVD. Our preliminary studies suggest
that pigs with combined hyperlipidemia and insulin resistance develop more
severe and diffuse disease than insulin sensitive controls. This
model should be useful in elucidating the biochemical changes that occur
during the progression of CVD.
I grew up in a small eastern
North Carolina town (Eure) and after graduating from Carolina in 1991 I
decided to stay in Chapel Hill (my husband is a rare, native Chapel Hillian).
I have two sons who keep me extremely busy, Justin, 11 and Jeffrey, 15.
I am very active in their school and sports. We spend lots of time
with baseball, basketball, dirt-bike riding, four-wheeling, camping, and
fishing as well as wake-boarding, wake-skating, and wake-surfing.
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