Staff Archives - Sanford Burnham Prebys

Faculty Type: Staff

Dr. Brenner was named president and chief executive officer of Sanford Burnham Prebys in September 2022 after serving as vice chancellor for health sciences at UC San Diego and dean of its school of medicine for an unprecedented 15 years, during which he oversaw the launch and expansion of numerous multidisciplinary efforts, including the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, the Institute for Genomic Medicine, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, the UC San Diego Sanford Clinical Stem Cell Program, and the C3 Cancer Center Consortium (comprising UC San Diego, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Sanford Burnham Prebys). 

Previously, he served as chair of the Department of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief of New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University and, before that, as Chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As a distinguished physician-scientist, Brenner is a recognized leader in the field of gastroenterology research, with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, two patents and ranking among Highly Cited Researchers by Web of Science and Clarivate Analytics.

He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine; past president of the Association of American Physicians and former editor of the journal Gastroenterology (2001 to 2006).

He is currently deputy editor of the journal PNAS Nexus.

 

Education and Training

1988: Fellowship, Gastroenterology, UC San Diego
1986: Fellowship, Genetics & Biochemistry, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD
1985: Intern & Residency, Internal Medicine, Yale University
1979: MD, Medicine, Yale University
1975: BS, Biology, Yale University

Awards, Honors and Recognition

2005: Fellow (FACP), American College of Physicians
1986: Bomedical Scholar, Pew Foundation

Other Appointments and Memberships

Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation
American Society for Clinical Investigation
Association of American Physicians
American College of Physicians
American Gastroenterological Association
American Clinical and Climatological Association

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The Origin and Fate of Liver Myofibroblasts.

Kim HY, Sakane S, Eguileor A, Carvalho Gontijo Weber R, Lee W, Liu X, Lam K, Ishizuka K, Rosenthal SB, Diggle K, Brenner DA, Kisseleva T

Cell Mol Gastroenterol Hepatol 2024 ;17(1):93-106
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Dr. Piña-Crespo earned a PhD in Pharmacology from University College London (UCL), England under the supervision of Profs. Alasdair Gibb & David Colquhoun FRS. He completed postdoctoral training as a Pew Fellow/Research Associate with Prof. Steve Heinemann in the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory at The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California. Dr. Piña-Crespo has held faculty positions as Instructor and Assistant Professor at Universidad Centroccidental, Venezuela and as Lecturer in the Biology Department at the University of San Diego, California.

Education and Training

  • Postdoctoral training (Pew Fellow/Research Associate) The Salk Institute, California
  • PhD in Pharmacology University College London (University of London), England
  • Veterinarian (D.V.M.) Universidad Centroccidental Lisandro Alvarado, Venezuela

Honors and Recognition

Pew Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences

Neuroscience Discovery Research

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Targeted protein S-nitrosylation of ACE2 inhibits SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Oh CK, Nakamura T, Beutler N, Zhang X, Piña-Crespo J, Talantova M, Ghatak S, Trudler D, Carnevale LN, McKercher SR, Bakowski MA, Diedrich JK, Roberts AJ, Woods AK, Chi V, Gupta AK, Rosenfeld MA, Kearns FL, Casalino L, Shaabani N, Liu H, Wilson IA, Amaro RE, Burton DR, Yates JR 3rd, Becker C, Rogers TF, Chatterjee AK, Lipton SA

Nat Chem Biol 2023 Mar ;19(3):275-283
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Previously, he was a postdoc and project scientist at UC San Diego, where he also received his PhD

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Prior to joining Sanford Burnham Prebys Eduard Sergienko was at Triad Therapeutics Inc., a company pioneering NMR- and enzymology-guided fragment-based drug discovery approaches. Starting in 2001, Eduard served as Enzymology group leader and member of several drug discovery project teams. The work of his group was instrumental in identification, optimization and characterization of a preclinical candidate acquired by Novartis Pharma AG (Switzerland) for advancing into clinical trials.

Eduard has over 20 years of experience in the field of biochemistry, with an emphasis on assay design and mechanistic enzymology. He graduated and received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Lomonosov Moscow University (Russia), where his doctoral thesis focused on the role of posttranslational modifications in the regulation of glycolytic enzymes. He furthered his expertise through training as a post-doctoral fellow at Henry Poincare University, France, and Rutgers University, New Jersey focusing on mechanistic enzymology, enzyme kinetics and assay design and development.

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Dr. Susanne Heynen-Genel has over 20 years of experience in image-based screening systems, including automated microscopy instrumentation, image analysis, algorithm development, and HCS assay design. She has been directing development and execution of image-based high-content assays for high-throughput screening (primary screens of large chemical and RNAi libraries) and small scale screening (secondary assays, focused libraries assays for validation of basic research findings) for ten years at the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics. 

Prior to joining Sanford Burnham Prebys, Susanne was a staff systems scientist at Beckman Coulter, where her responsibilities included system design and integration of high-content screening systems and applications. Previous to that she was an applications scientist for high-throughput microscopy systems at Q3DM until its acquisition by Beckman Coulter. She spent a year as postdoctoral researcher at the University of California in San Diego where she also received her PhD in Bioengineering in 2002. Her graduate student research focused on optimizing fluorometric performance of high-throughput microscopy systems to yield more accurate quantification. This work was incorporated in an image-based HCS platform commercialized first by Q3DM Inc. and then by Beckman Coulter. The accompanying image and single cell data analysis and classification work, initially aimed at detection of cancer cells for cytodiagnostics and presented at conferences, was on the forefront of high-throughput imaging analysis at the time and similar analyses algorithms have more recently been incorporated in commercial HCS image analysis software packages.

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Andrey A. Bobkov, Director, Protein Production and Analysis, leads the Prebys Center effort on recombinant protein production and biophysical characterization. He has received an MS in Biochemistry from Moscow State University (Russia) and a PhD in Biochemistry from the Bach Institute of Biochemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences. Andrey did his postdoctoral training at  UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry Department. Andrey has more than 20 years of experience and over 40 publications in the field of Biophysical Analysis. He teaches the Protein Analysis and Biophysics portion of the Structural Biology in Cell Signaling and Drug Discovery Course to Sanford Burnham Prebys graduate students.

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Dr. Anne Bang is an experienced cell biologist and stem cell expert who leads efforts at the Prebys Center to develop patient cell specific and human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-based disease models for drug screening and target identification. Dr. Bang has over 20 years of experience in the fields of developmental and stem cell biology. She obtained a BS degree from Stanford University, a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of California, San Diego, and did postdoctoral training in the Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences where her studies focused on nervous system development. 

Anne’s experience in stem cell biology began in 2005 when she joined ViaCyte, Inc. where she served as Director of Stem Cell Research and managed an interdisciplinary group working to develop human embryonic stem cells as a replenishable source of pancreatic cells for the treatment of diabetes. Her efforts focused on optimization of the differentiation process, and then on advancing the cell therapy product into development, scaled manufacturing, product characterization, and safety assessment. Anne is a co-inventor on multiple ViaCyte patents, and her team’s contributions played a key role in securing a $20 MM California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Award. 

In June of 2010, Sanford Burnham Prebys recruited Anne as Director of Cell Biology to lead efforts in stem cell-based disease modeling at the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics. Her role includes leading internal research projects, as well as external collaborations with academic and industry partners.  Anne’s research program is primarily focused on neurological and neuromuscular disease, with the aim of designing human cell-based models and assays that recapitulate disease phenotypes, yet have the throughput and reproducibility required for drug discovery. Towards this goal her group has worked to develop a suite of foundational high throughput assays to monitor neuronal morphology, mitochondrial function, and electrophysiology, using high content screening, and multi-electrode array formats. They have conducted high-throughput drug screens on muscular dystrophy patient cells, hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, and hiPSC-derived neurons, including from Alzheimer’s patient specific hiPSC. Anne is a principal investigator for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) National Cooperative Reprogrammed Cell Research Groups consortium and has also received research support from rare disease foundations and pharma sponsored collaborations. She also serves on advisory boards for multiple biotechnology companies.

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For the past 20 years, Dr. Ian Pass has worked in basic research and drug discovery within several major pharmaceutical companies. Throughout this practical experience and formal education, he has acquired detailed knowledge and practical expertise in high-throughput screening, biochemical and cell-based assay development, liquid handling, assay miniaturization, laboratory automation and robotics, compound management. He also routinely leads discovery programs within the Prebys Center, leveraging his expertise in biochemistry, to drive molecules through advanced drug discovery phases.

Ian received his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Dundee, UK.  Ian completed his postdoc at Sanford Burnham Preys in cancer research, and later joined the Prebys Center as a Chemical Biology Team Lead. He also directs the HTS and Compound Management group at the center.

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Yoav Altman received his B.A. degree in Integrative Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. He started working with flow cytometry in 2001 at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology and joined Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in 2002 as Manager of the Flow Cytometry Shared Resource and was promoted to Director in 2009. Yoav has over 18 years of experience sorting and analyzing a variety of cell lines and primary cells, including IPSCs, hESCs, immune cells, disaggregated tumors and solid tissues, such as cardiomyocytes, hepatocytes, intestinal epithelium, brain tissue, and skeletal muscle. His expertise includes a variety of single-cell assays including side population, cell cycle, apoptosis determination, immunophenotyping, calcium flux, mitochondrial membrane potential, ROS, fluorescent proteins, and FRET. Yoav is available to assist with reagent selection, experiment design, data analysis, protocol development, grant preparation, instrument training and operation and writing methods sections for publications. Yoav’s current interests include developing new imaging flow cytometry methods as well as single-particle analysis of submicron biological particles.