Stella Kourembanas's Biography

Stella Kourembanas, Chief, Division of Newborn Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital; Clement A. Smith Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

I am the Chief of Newborn Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Academic Chair of the Harvard Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Program. I am actively involved in basic/translational research on lung biology and have a longstanding record and commitment to the training of physicians and PhD scientists on lung biology and neonatal diseases for over 20 years, many of whom hold positions as independent investigators and program leaders. The overall goal of my research is to investigate the molecular and cellular basis of lung inflammation and the epigenetic pathways controlling lung injury, pulmonary hypertension (PH), and tissue remodeling in the developing lung. Toward this goal, my laboratory has significant expertise on the biology of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) and their microvesicles/exosomes as a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of lung diseases including PH and bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). As a PI on several previous and current NIH-funded grants including a SCOR program, I have led several collaborative basic and translational studies, as well as a clinical trial of inhaled nitric oxide for neonates with respiratory failure that have contributed new knowledge to this field. We have demonstrated that inflammation plays a critical role in the development of PH, an area that has recently received wide interest and has become a major focus of study by lung biologists investigating both, mechanisms of disease, as well as therapeutic strategies targeting lung inflammation to treat lung diseases. Most notably, we were first to demonstrate the paracrine effect of MSCs on preventing and reversing neonatal hyperoxic lung injury in experimental models, paving the way for future cell-free regenerative approaches for the treatment of not only PH and BPD, but also other important diseases of the newborn infant resulting from oxidant stress, inflammation, cell death, and dysregulated tissue repair. I have the leadership skills, mentoring track record, and strong commitment to providing a rich scientific/clinical/educational environment for the successful training of physician scientists as future leaders in newborn medicine.