Sarah A. Frommer

Year Entered: 2000

Degrees Received: 
B.S., Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2000
Ph.D, Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, 2008

Honors and Awards:
NIH Muscle Training Grant 2002-2004
NIH Musculoskeletal Training Grant 2004-2007
1st Place, Devices Category, Design of Medical Devices Conference, 2006

Thesis Advisors: Catherine Verfaillie and Paul Iaizzo, Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program

Thesis Research: 

Taking a "translational" approach to developing clinical therapies is a two step process that requires: 1) Basic science research on clinical diseases; and 2) application of knowledge gained or resultant therapeutics from that research to patient care. The collaboration of basic sciences and clinical sciences will result in greater advancement of knowledge within each field. There are many diseases that have no cure, even with the tools that modern medicine has to offer. A good example of this is Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Unfortunately, there is no cure and no effective long-term treatment to delay the progression of DMD; sadly, modern medicine can only ameliorate the symptoms and attempt to give the patient the best quality of life possible.

It may one day be possible to cure patients if even one of the many experimental therapies for DMD, aimed at restoring dystrophin in skeletal muscle and shown to improve muscle function in dystrophic animals, could be developed clinically. One such therapy is stem cell therapy. The stem cells used in my work were multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPC). MAPC were first discovered in the Verfaillie lab here at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities. It was traditionally believed that adult stem cells like hematopoietic stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells could not differentiate into cells outside the mesodermal lineage; however there are currently numerous reports that challenge this thought.

My thesis presented the application of a three-step translational approach toward development of stem cell therapy for treatment of DMD. The three steps were: 1) In vitro study of MAPC myogenic potential; 2) in vivo study of MAPC myogenic potential; and 3) development of a system to measure functional effects of therapies.

Publications:

Aranguren XL, McCue JD, Hendrickx B, Zhu XH, Du F, Chen E, Pelacho B, Peñuelas I, Abizanda G, Uriz M, Frommer SA, Ross JJ, Schroeder BA, Seaborn MS, Adney JR, Hagenbrock J, Harris NH, Zhang Y, Zhang X, Nelson-Holte MH, Jiang Y, Billiau AD, Chen W, Prósper F, Verfaillie CM, Luttun A. Multipotent adult progenitor cells sustain function of ischemic limbs in mice. J Clin Invest. 2008;118:505-14.

Serafini M, Dylla SJ, Oki M, Heremans Y, Tolar J, Jiang Y, Buckley SM, Pelacho B, Burns TC, Frommer S, Rossi DJ, Bryder D, Panoskaltsis-Mortari A, O'Shaughnessy MJ, Nelson-Holte M, Fine GC, Weissman IL, Blazar BR, Verfaillie CM. Hematopoietic reconstitution by multipotent adult progenitor cells: precursors to long-term hematopoietic stem cells. J Exp Med. 2007;204:129-139.

Publications Prior to Entering Program:

Haberstroh KM, Kaefer M, DePaola N, Frommer SA, Bizios R. A novel in-vitro system for the simultaneous exposure of bladder smooth muscle cells to mechanical strain and sustained hydrostatic pressure. J Biomech Eng. 2002;124:208-213.