Academic Leadership

Office: BEB 101C

Dr. DeLeon-Pennell was trained in cardiovascular sciences at Baylor University, University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, and the University of Mississippi Medical Center.  She has >10 years’ experience with all aspects of the inflammatory and fibrotic components of cardiac remodeling following a heart attack. Her current research projects focus on the role of the adaptive immune system and how it interplay with the innate immune system to regulate cardiac wound healing. This includes evaluating how existing confounding variables such as gender or aging changes these processes.

Research Profile

The DeLeon-Pennell Lab focuses on all aspects of the inflammatory and fibrotic components of cardiac remodeling following a heart attack (myocardial infarction; MI). This includes evaluating how existing variables such as gender or aging changes these processes. Our major research focus is on the role of the adaptive immune system and the interplay with the innate immune system to regulate cardiac wound healing. These changes include cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, which both affect and react to processes involved in tissue repair.

Overall our goal is to:

1. Develop multidimensional approaches to examine the mechanisms whereby the innate and adaptive immune system influences cardiovascular remodeling
2. Understand the dynamics and function of bio-molecules involved in cardiac remodeling
3. Improve current therapeutic strategies to prevent, slow, or reverse the progression to heart failure

Recently our lab has identified new mechanisms implicating CD8+ T-cells as regulators of the post-MI wound healing process. Our data indicated without functional CD8+ T-cells there was a decrease in left ventricular dilation and improved mortality post MI. In addition CD8+ T-cells were found to facilitate removal of necrotic tissue and the development of the fibrotic scar. The DeLeon-Pennell laboratory has been supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the American Heart Association, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Nancy Klauber-DeMore, M.D. is the Director, Medical Scientist Training Program; Co-Leader Developmental Cancer Therapeutics, Hollings Cancer Center and the BMW Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Klauber-DeMore has extensive research experience in developing new therapies for breast cancer that have led to clinical advances in patient care, particularly for those with metastatic disease. She has been a principal or co-investigator on more than 30 active and completed clinical trials and has contributed to five patents or patents pending. She is also developing novel surgical devices to aid in breast surgery.

Dr. DeMore is also a physician-scientist with extensive research experience in developing new therapies for breast cancer. For more than 25 years, she has investigated tumor angiogenesis. Her lab focuses on discovering novel factors that stimulate the growth of new capillary blood vessels that provide tumors with oxygen and nutrients with a goal of developing new drugs to block these factors, therefore inhibiting tumor growth.

Dr. DeMore received her medical degree from the University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School. She then completed General Surgery Residency at Boston University, followed by a surgical research fellowship at Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and a Surgical Oncology Fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.