Dr. Elizabeth Wright-Jin is a physician scientist with a background in developmental biology. She is currently a pediatric neurologist and research scientist at Nemours Children’s Health, Delaware Valley. Recently, Dr. Wright-Jin received supplemental funding through the NIH to fund her research.
Tell us a little about yourself, your research journey, and how you arrived where you are now.
“I am an MD/PhD physician scientist with a developmental biology background. I studied at Washington University School of Medicine, and my graduate studies were in retinoic acid signaling in enteric nervous system development. As I transitioned back to clinical work, I fell in love with pediatric neurology and ultimately completed residency in this specialty. During residency, I became fascinated with how the immune system affects the development of the brain and pursued a postdoctoral fellowship investigating the interaction of sex and genetics on microglia pathology in Neurofibromatosis. When I came to Nemours in 2020, I sought to develop an improved mouse model of neonatal HIE to facilitate ongoing research into this devastating brain injury.”
Tell us about your research. What is the area of focus, what are your research goals, and what is the significance of the research?
“My research focuses on neuroimmune mediators in neonatal brain injury. I am particularly interested in complex environmental, genetic, and stochastic contributors to human disease. Neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy is a complex disease that includes all of these interactions as potential contributors to outcome, with additional contribution from socioeconomic status to long term outcomes. We have developed a mouse model of HIE that allows investigation of maternal immune activation and placental effects in this disease, and this has given us insight into the mechanisms by which the fetal neuroimmune landscape is shifted by maternal factors. Our next goal is to validate these mechanisms in human samples and further define the modifiable factors in the pathophysiology of neonatal brain injury. Our ultimate goal is to identify infants at highest risk for poor long term neurological outcomes and identify novel treatment strategies for neonates who suffer from HIE.”
What does the NIH funding mean for your project? What are you able to pursue with this funding?
“NIH funding for this project means that we can validate the findings from our mouse model in human infants with HIE. If we successfully identify these early epigenetic changes in infants with HIE, we may ultimately be able to develop an identification strategy for high-risk infants. This may lead to earlier onset of therapies to improve long term outcomes for infants with HIE at high risk of neurodevelopmental disability.”
How has the ACCEL program helped with your project (grant writing, mentorship, help accessing funding, etc)?
“The ACCEL program has been providing statistical support for our research for several years, which has been extremely valuable as the complexity of analyses for this project is high.”
Have you faced any major obstacles with this project?
“Developing a new model of human disease is a long and arduous process with limited avenues for NIH funding due to the high risk of failure. There was opposition within the Nemours research community to developing this model in mice due to the difficulty of producing hypoxic brain injury in this species. However, given the diversity of genetic and molecular tools available only in mice, a reliable model of neonatal brain injury in mice is critical for progress in this field. This model was ultimately funded by NIH passthrough funding via the DE-INBRE program and Nemours sponsored funding.”
What do you hope to be the impact of this research, and what future directions do you see related research going?
“I hope that our study reveals early epigenetic changes in neonates with brain injury to allow the identification of infants at higher risk of developing cerebral palsy. This could stratify those infants needing a higher involvement of developmental therapies in early life or could identify infants for novel treatment strategies. I also hope that the epigenetic changes reveal clues to the underlying pathophysiology involved in the long-term functional disability in children with cerebral palsy, which may ultimately yield new treatment modalities.”
Is there anything else you would like to add regarding yourself, your research, or the ACCEL program?
“We are hoping to bring together the community of scientists and physicians who care for children with neonatal brain injury to learn from each other and from their caregivers. We are always looking to partner with these critical stakeholders and welcome their involvement in our ongoing research efforts via collaboration, presentations at our upcoming inaugural seminar on neonatal brain injury, or partnership for the Hustle for Hope run/walk.”