Alison Smith, MD, PhD
Director of Injury Research
Key Personnel:
Research Associates:
Jenna Dennis, Lead Research Associate
Farhana Rais, Research Associate
Olivia Warren, Research Associate (Past)
Research Residents:
Sophia Trinh (Current)
Paige Deville, MD (Past)
Key Medical Students:
Cameron Fontenot
Kaitlin Couvillion
Cara Ramos
Basic Science Collaborators:
Patricia Molina, MD, PhD (Physiology)
Jeff Hobden, PhD (Microbiology)
Smith Laboratory
The Smith laboratory focuses on wound healing and inflammation. Our projects include the extraction of adipose derived stem cells (ADSCs) from adipose tissue obtained from burn patients. The goal is to characterize the inflammatory profile of ADSCs from damaged adipose tissue compared to healthy donor fat. Patient co-morbid conditions and environmental factors such as alcohol use and smoking are also investigated. A mouse burn model is utilized to further study the role of adipose tissue in the wound healing process in order to develop novel solutions to improve healing and minimize damage from an uncontrolled immune response in an infected wound. The metabolism of these infected wounds is also investigated in order to develop targeted biomarkers to predict a patient’s clinical response to treatment. Other projects in the lab focus on the study of rare diseases such as pyoderma gangrenosum, pressure ulcers, the inflammatory response of the open abdomen, and the bone marrow response to amputation.
