Graduate and undergraduate thesis projects

Graduate thesis project

In my graduate work, I investigated the role of intestinal barrier function in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the laboratory of Jerrold Turner. I focused on the tight junction protein claudin-2, which creates paracellular pores carrying water and small cations across epithelia, and whose expression is upregulated in IBD.

Using a murine models of IBD, I have shown that claudin-2 upregulation is required for increased sodium and water flux into the intestinal lumen resulting in diarrhea, one of the IBD symptoms. For the first time, my project examined the potential therapeutic role of claudin-2 pore disruption through inhibition of Casein Kinase 2 (CK2), a molecule upstream of the pore regulation. I have shown that treatment of colitic mice with a CK2 inhibitor suppresses increased sodium flux and water into the intestinal lumen ameliorating the severe symptoms of IBD. The impact of this work has been acknowledged by the scientific community and was chosen for a basic science plenary presentation at the Digestive Disease Week Conference in 2014. Through this research I became interested in clinical pharmacology and the interplay of genetics and response to drug treatment.

Furthermore, during my doctoral training I contributed my expertise in experimental models of IBD and morphological analysis to two collaboration projects (1) exploring the role of cytoskeletal components in tight junction dysregulation, loss of barrier function, and colitis Su et al. 2013 Gastro; and (2) exploring the role of intestinal sterol regulatory element-binding protein 2 in upregulation of serum cholesterol Ma et al. 2014 PLoS ONE.

Undergraduate thesis project

Prior to graduate school, I worked in the laboratory of Larisa Nonn in the Pathology Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago studying the role of microRNAs in regulation of zinc homeostasis in normal and cancerous prostate tissue. By using human prostate cancer tissue samples and prostate cancer cell lines we have demonstrated that miR-183-96-182 cluster regulates prostate carcinogenesis via a zinc transporter, hZip1 Mihelich, Khramtsova, et al. 2011, J Biol Chem.