Brian Gastman, MD, comes to Cleveland Clinic from the University of Maryland, where he was Assistant Professor in the Departments of Surgery (Plastic Surgery) and Otolaryngology, with joint appointments in the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins and as a plastic surgeon in the Department of Surgery (and Head of the Section of Head and Neck Plastic Surgery) at the Baltimore VA. Dr. Gastman’s interest in research began during his undergraduate experience in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Today, he sees patients through the Department of Plastic Surgery in the Dermatology and Plastic Surgery Institute, while he conducts research in Lerner Research Institute’s Department of Immunology. Dr. Gastman is interested in what causes the destruction of T cells (a type of white blood cells responsible for maintaining our immune system) in the vicinity of tumors. Specifically, he aims to understand this process of how tumors evade the immune system and also how other proteins in our bodies can prevent this evasion. These studies will contribute to the development of new mechanisms to thwart cancer resistance to current treatments.
Michelle Longworth, PhD, has recently joined the Department of Molecular Genetics, coming here from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Charlestown. A native of Pittsburgh, her family relocated to northeast Ohio while she was still in high school, where she got her first taste of research – at Cleveland Clinic, shadowing a researcher for two months. She went on to complete her undergraduate education at Miami University in Oxford, OH, and then earned her PhD degree from Northwestern University in IL. Dr. Longworth’s research identifies genes, proteins, and processes of interest using a Drosophila (fruit fly) model, which is much simpler than other organisms. She then extrapolates the information to human systems for improved understanding of how things function. During her postdoctoral fellowship at MGH, Dr. Longworth discovered a protein interaction that is involved in a mechanism that contributes to genomic instability, which characterizes many tumors. Most recently, she has found that these same proteins play an important role in regulating the body’s response to infection. Dr. Longworth’s overall goal is to identify the genetic basis of cancer development and infection.