Research Trainee Spotlight: Hasmik Soloyan, MD
Hasmik Soloyan, MD, grew up in Armenia in a family of physicians. After graduating medical school, she decided to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps and become a pulmonologist. But in the midst of her residency, her career was interrupted: She moved to the U.S.
At first, she was determined to restart her career in medicine in her new country. But while she passed the U.S medical license exams, the opportunity to work in the GOFARR Lab at CHLA changed her plans yet again.
“I found it exciting to develop stem cell-based regenerative approaches that could potentially improve kidney function,” Dr. Soloyan explains. “I realized I had a profound passion for research, and I decided to give my full-time efforts to science.”
Today, she is a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Postdoctoral Fellow under Sargis Sedrakyan, PhD, in the GOFARR Lab. Specifically, she is studying how the glomerulus (the kidney’s main filtering unit) is damaged in Alport syndrome, a form of chronic kidney disease.
Her preliminary findings suggest that changes in the metabolism of lipids (compounds such as fatty acids) play a key role in that damage. She has also found that these changes can potentially be targeted with extracellular vesicles derived from amniotic fluid stem cells (which can be collected after birth without any harmful effects).
Outside of the lab, Dr. Soloyan loves spending time with her friends and her husband and two children. She also enjoys playing classical guitar and piano.
