Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Research

The faculty of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles perform basic, translational, and clinical research in areas ranging from detection and exploration of emerging mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance to the identification of genes responsible for the development of pediatric solid tumors. Our faculty are working every day to help create hope and build healthier futures for children and their families. All faculty members have academic appointments in the Department of Pathology in the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

Neurologic Disease/Neuropathology

Jennifer Cotter, MD – Human fetal neurodevelopment; perinatal brain injury, including germinal matrix hemorrhage
Debra Hawes, MD – Pediatric CNS diseases
Alexander Judkins, MD, FCAP, FRCP (Edin) – Diagnosis of molecular genetics and genomic characterization of pediatric brain tumors

Cancer Biology/Anatomic Pathology

Nick Shillingford, MD – General pediatric surgical pathology, gastrointestinal and liver pathology, solid tumors.
Larry Wang, MD, PhD – Soft tissue tumors, renal tumors, neuroblastomas,  liver diseases.
Mikako Warren, MD – General pediatric pathology, cancer genetics, transplant pathology, renal pathology, ultrastructural pathology.
Shengmei Zhou, MD – Hepatoblastoma, pediatric hepatocellular carcinoma.

Genomic/Genetic Medicine

Jaclyn Biegel, PhD, FACMG – Identification of genes responsible for the development of pediatric solid tumors, rhabdoid tumors, role of SMARCB1 in disease risk.
Xiaowu Gai, PhD – Genetics/genomics of mitochondrial disease, copy number variation, molecular genetics of eye disease, next generation sequencing (NGS), genotyping data analysis, functional and pathway analysis.
Jianling Ji, MD, MS, FACMG – Next-Generation Sequencing for patients with rare mendelian disorders, cancer genomics.
Gordana Raca, MD, PhD, FACMG – Molecular and cytogenetic mechanisms of genetic disorders and hematologic malignancies.
Ryan Schmidt, MD, PhD – Molecular pathology clinical innovation through novel assay and software development, identification of genetic variants causing ocular disease though advanced molecular diagnostic approaches, identification of genetic variants causing cleft lip and/or cleft palate though advanced molecular diagnostic approaches.
Timothy Triche, MD, PhD – Pediatric sarcomas, molecular genetic/genomic diagnostics.

Clinical Immunology/Immunogenetics

Lee Ann Baxter-Lowe, PhD, dABHI – Allogeneic transplantation, chimerism/microchimerism, histocompatibility, HLA antibodies, HLA polymorphism.
Maurice O’Gorman, PhD, MSc, D(ABMLI), MBA – Immunopathogenesis of immune system-related disorders, investigation of immune mechanisms of immune suppression withdrawal in liver transplant patients, development of novel immune-related diagnostic laboratory tests.

Blood Disease/Hematopathology

Le Aye, DO – Pediatric large B-cell lymphoma, CNS involvement of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Clinical Microbiology

Jennifer Dien Bard, PhD, FCCM, D(ABMM) – Development of novel, non-culture based methods to improve detection of microbiological agents; detection and exploration of emerging mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance, development of improved susceptibility testing for bacterial and fungal agents, implementation of MALDI-TOF in the clinical microbiology laboratory, development of molecular microbiology assays