ASCI / Young Physician-Scientist Awards, 2020

Ciara M. Shaver, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine. She received her BA from Rice University and then her MD and PhD in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. After moving to Vanderbilt, she completed Internal Medicine residency, a chief residency, and fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. She joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2015. Her growing basic and translational research program centers on mechanisms of acute lung injury with an emphasis on inflammation during critical illness and after lung transplantation. Several years ago, she and others discovered that elevated levels of cell-free hemoglobin were present in the airspace during ARDS and in the circulation prior to lung transplantation. Early research in her laboratory identified a subpopulation of macrophages in the airspace that engulf hemoglobin and are no longer able to respond to inflammatory stimuli, representing a potential approach to limit acute lung injury. A second focus of her research is the mechanisms of primary graft dysfunction after lung transplantation. They recently discovered that circulating levels of cell-free hemoglobin prior to lung transplant are independently associated with increased risk of primary graft dysfunction. Using an ex vivo human lung perfusion model, they demonstrated that hemoglobin directly injures the lung endothelium and identified a potential therapy that may mitigate hemoglobin-mediated lung injury. In the future, her laboratory will continue to use murine and human lung model systems to comprehensively explore the underlying mechanisms of ARDS and primary graft dysfunction. In addition, She manages a biorepository including explanted human lungs, declined human donor lungs, and serial bronchoalveolar lavage, blood, and biopsy samples from lung transplant recipients to facilitate detailed basic and translational studies in a variety of acute and chronic lung illnesses.

@CShaver_MD