Hi,
My name is Roxanna Irani and I’m in my sixth year in the program. I’ve completed the first 3 years of medical school and now I’m into my 3rd year in the lab. Choosing a lab wasn’t an easy process, but I’m really happy with my decision.

A little about myself: I graduated from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (about an hour away from Toronto) with a BS in Biology. UW is known in Canada for its "co-op" program, where students alternate between 4-month school semesters and 4-month co-op work terms. During a couple of my co-op terms I was fortunate enough to work in a lab at MD Anderson. I was successful in the lab, loved working at MD Anderson and made some great friends here – some of the many reasons I came back to Houston.

After graduating from UW, I worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center/Cornell in Manhattan. Working in that lab solidified my interest in developmental biology, which I thought would be the focus of my PhD. However now that I’ve completed my first 3 clinical years, I’ve become very interested in reproductive technology. I would like to do an Ob/Gyn residency followed by an REI (Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility) fellowship, but I could also see myself doing Internal Medicine, followed by an Endo fellowship with a focus on infertility. I’ve still got some time to decide… too many options…

The short version of my PhD project: We study the autoimmune component implicated in pathogenesis of preeclampsia (a life-threatening disorder of late pregnancy). It has been shown that an agonistic autoantibody to the angiotensin II type I receptor can be isolated from the sera of women with preeclampsia. We can show that this activating autoantibody contributes to the disease features and can be specifically blocked. My project is ideal for an MD/PhD student as it’s truly translational – I work with patient samples and do plently of basic science benchwork.

If you have any questions about the program, my project, picking a lab, or even just about Houston, feel free to email me: Roxanna.A.Irani@uth.tmc.edu.

Selected Publications
Irani RA, Xia Y. The Functional Role of the Renin-Angiotensin System in Pregnancy and Preeclampsia. Placenta. Epub 2008 Aug 5.
Zhou CC, Zhang Y, Irani RA, Zhang H, Mi T, Popek EJ, Hicks MJ, Ramin SM, Kellems RE, Xia Y. Angiotensin receptor agonistic autoantibodies induce pre-eclampsia in pregnant mice. Nat Med. 2008 Aug;14(8):855-62. Epub 2008 Jul 27.

Du M, Irani RA, Stivers DN, Lee SJ, Travis EL. H2-Ea deficiency is a risk factor for bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis in mice. Cancer Res. 2004 Oct 1;64(19):6835-9

Stathopulos PB, Rumfeldt JA, Scholz GA, Irani RA, Frey HE, Hallewell RA, Lepock JR, Meiering EM. Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase mutants associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis show enhanced formation of aggregates in vitro. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Jun 10;100(12):7021-6.

Haston CK, Zhou X, Gumbiner-Russo L, Irani R, Dejournett R, Gu X, Weil M, Amos CI, Travis EL. Universal and radiation-specific loci influence murine susceptibility to radiation-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Cancer Res. 2002 Jul 1;62(13):3782-8.