Isabella Meerzaman
George Mason University
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Isabella is an undergaduate student majoring in biology at George Mason University who joined the Grant Lab in the summer of 2019. After graduation Isabella plans on attending medical school. She works as a periodontal assistant in Vienna, VA. She is a peer mentor in the Honors College and is on the executive board for Honors College Connects, a program that works with nonprofits.
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Isabella comes to the Grant Lab after two summers of internship at the NIH where she completed posters about “Breast Cancer Risk, Prevention, and Carcinogenesis” and “Examining the role of Ki-67 as a Biomarker in Breast Cancer treatment and analyzed prognostic outcomes”. She is currently working on characterizing the mesenchymal profile of fibroblasts exposed to nanoparticles carrying antifbrotics. Moving forward Isabella will explore the effect of these nanoparticles on the various proteins involved in the ER unfolded protein response (UPR). We hypothesize that a mechanism of fibroblast survival in IPF is an adaptive UPR that promotes the antiapototic phenotype. Isabella will be targetting this response directly to induced disease fibroblast specific apoptosis.
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