Biologist Hopes to Bridge Gap Between Research, Clinic

from The Children's Hospital (TCH) News, June 2005

Lee Niswander, PhD, one of just
eight Howard Hughes Medical
Institute (HHMI) investigators in
Colorado , is currently
investigating how fetuses
develop in utero, how and why
birth defects occur and possible
treatments or therapies to prevent
them, and the genetic basis of
asthma.

The Children’s Hospital is one of just a handful of children’s hospitals in the nation with a developmental biology division – and its very own Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator.

Lee Niswander, PhD, who started work at Children’s in July of 2004, was recruited from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York to head The Children’s Hospital’s division of Developmental Biology. She is one of just eight HHMI investigators in Colorado .

The department of Pediatrics at Children’s and the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center was looking to incorporate Developmental Biology into Pediatrics and to establish a new section, and that’s when they found Dr. Niswander.

Dr. Niswander focuses primarily on research using mouse models. She is currently investigating how fetuses develop in utero, how and why birth defects occur and preventative treatments or therapies, as well as the genetic basis of asthma. Some of the research she is working on includes understanding more about developmental processes involved in lung biology, formation of the limbs, and closing of the neural tube, one of the most common birth defects.

“Children’s cares deeply about birth defects and has put a lot of effort into researching them,” she said.

The purpose of her research, Dr. Niswander said, is to understand childhood diseases and birth defects.

“To understand these things, you have to understand how the baby develops,” she said.

She also works collaboratively with other clinical investigators at Children’s researching related childhood disorders and has presented her lab’s findings to Children’s Research Institute Board.

Dr. Niswander received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Colorado in Boulder and her PhD from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland , Ohio . She did her post-doctoral training at the University of California , San Francisco (UCSF).

“I hope to collaborate with Children’s clinical and basic research scientists to bridge the gap between the research bench and the clinic,” she said.