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Meet our Members - Kristine DeLeon-Pennell

Kristine DeLeon-Pennell, PhD

Medical University of South Carolina and Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center

Kristine DeLeon-Pennell, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina and the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. She’s been an APS member since 2011.

APS members are doing amazing things. We asked Kristine DeLeon-Pennell, PhD—one of our esteemed member-researchers—to tell us about her research and its implications on our understanding of life and health. She also shares why she’s passionate about community outreach to the next generation of scientists.

What do you do?

I am an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina and at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center where I run a research lab that focuses on how to improve cardiac healing after a heart attack. Our goal is to understand how the inflammatory response is regulating healing and scar formation. Because cardiac muscle cells do not replicate, after a heart attack, the dead cells are replaced with a scar. This scar can result in heart failure, which effects over 6 million of our nation’s population.

Give it context.

We hope to be able to target the immune system therapeutically to improve the quality of the cardiac scar and limit development of heart failure. The immune system is necessary so we do not want to get rid of it completely but, rather, alter it to improve cardiac healing. If we can determine which aspects of the immune system are bad and which are good, we can tip the balance to improve the scar and cardiac function.

What would you be doing if not science?

For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in science and medicine. After having my children, my passion shifted to include community outreach. They have made me more acutely aware of my responsibility to perform community service to show the younger generations what they can achieve in a science career.