Our research explores the neurovascular mechanisms that drive neurological diseases, with a particular focus on neonatal brain injury. In the injured brain, vascular damage allows blood components to leak into the nervous system, triggering inflammation and disrupting normal brain development and repair. Our goal is to develop innovative therapies that target neurovascular dysfunction and harmful blood-brain interactions to protect the brain and promote nervous system repair.

As members of the UCSF Newborn Brain Research Institute and California Preterm Birth Initiative, we collaborate with a diverse group of colleagues and take a multidisciplinary approach to our research. This includes stem cell studies to understand brain and vascular development at the cellular and molecular levels, animal models to investigate disease mechanisms and test treatments, and clinical studies that analyze human tissues and blood biomarkers to connect our findings to real-world patient outcomes and therapies. Through this comprehensive approach, we aim to uncover therapeutic targets at the maternal-fetal and blood-brain interfaces to improve long-term outcomes, particularly for inflammatory diseases and newborn brain injuries.