My clinical specialty is pediatric general and thoracic surgery. I'm particularly interested in congenital disorders, including diaphragmatic hernias, lung lesions, esophageal atresia, gastroschisis and omphalocele. I also specialize in fetal surgery. I became interested in fetal surgery during my surgical residency and research fellowship at UC Davis. I fell in love with the thought of being able to treat diseases before a child is even born.
During my research fellowship I worked under the guidance of international experts in fetal surgery, and was skillfully trained in fetal models of congenital disease. Working with both the fetal lamb model of myelomeningocele and gastroschisis, I designed studies, performed fetal surgery, and developed new outcome measures to assess treatment results. Furthermore, in our discussions with the FDA regarding an investigational new drug application for placental mesenchymal stem cell treatment of myelomeningocele, I have gained key insight in the development of a new therapeutic agent.
As a new faculty member, I am working to translate gene and cellular therapies to the fetal setting. Concurrent to the field of fetal therapy, advances in gene delivery and gene editing have ushered in the reality of repairing errors in the genetic code. As a handful of gene therapies have hit the market recently for children and adults, the available prenatal treatments remain extremely limited. The onset of pathology for genetic diseases such as lysosomal storage disorders, hemoglobinopathies and skeletal dysplasias begins prenatally with devastating consequences soon after birth. Fetal gene therapy holds an opportunity to prevent the progression of disease. Furthermore, administering therapy prenatally may help develop tolerance to postnatal therapies due to the developing fetal immune system. To intervene successfully before birth could result in saving the lifetime of these affected children.