Posts classified under: Pediatrics

Biography

Dr. Stockton is a vascular biologist and specialist in endothelial cell signaling. She earned a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia. She was Assistant Adjunct Professor at University of California San Diego, and established a lab at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Dept of Pediatrics in 2012 as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics. She has extensive experience in the biology of vascular endothelial RhoGTPase signaling, conducting structure/function studies of in vitro and in vivo endothelial permeability and vascular barrier function, and assessing the basic mechanisms of vascular development and dysfunction in disease. Her work has been funded by NIH and the American Heart Association. She is a contributor to multiple groundbreaking studies defining aberrant endothelial signaling in Cerebral Cavernous Malformations (CCM) produced by mutations of the KRIT1, CCM2 and PDCD10 (CCM3) genes. As a junior faculty member at UC San Diego, her group reported the first endothelial expression and biological function regulating endothelial junctional stability of CCM gene product protein KRIT1. Ensuing collaborations with colleagues at University of Chicago and Duke University subsequently reported evidence for disrupted Rho/Rho-kinase signaling driving endothelial pathology producing brain lesions in this disease, identified a potential therapy, and reported in model mouse studies the first successful reduction of CCM brain lesion formation through a drug treatment. The Stockton Lab’s current studies focus on identifying additional protein signaling participants in multiple cerebrovascular pathologies.