The interest of Sarah Parker, MS, MD, is in understanding the molecular determinants of vascular pathology and using that knowledge to design new diagnostics and treatments for indolent vascular diseases such as aneurysms and atherosclerosis. The Parker lab uses advanced mass spectrometry-based techniques to profile vascular proteomes. The lab then employ various statistical and bioinformatics tools to convert these large datasets into new knowledge, with the goal to advance the translation of our basic discoveries into actionable new clinical tools. Large-scale omics projects produce many new hypotheses, and thus we are also engaged in and equipped for the in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo validation of novel hypotheses linking molecular events to relevant vascular physiology within cellular and animal models. While they have diverse collaborations, the focus of our current work is on the interplay between the extracellular matrix, vascular integrins, smooth muscle cell metabolism, and aneurysm progression. In another area of focus, they are defining the molecular architecture of normal human aortic and coronary artery vessels and then tracking how this architecture changes with fatty streak and fibrous plaque lesion progression. The end goal is to improve the detection, monitoring, and treatment of the diseases they study.

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• Undergraduate: University of Wisconsin, 2002
• Master's: University of Wisconsin, 2006
• Doctorate: The Medical College of Wisconsin, 2011
• Post Doctorate: Johns Hopkins University, 2015
• Post Doctorate: Cedars-Sinai, 2018

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• Cardiology
• Medicine

• American Heart Association, FGTB Young Investigator Manuscript Competition, Finalist, Nov-17
• Leon Fine Award in Translational Science, Aug-18
• Victor E McKusick National Marfan Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, 2013

Click here for a list of peer-reviewed publications.

• Parker SJ, Stotland A, MacFarlane E, Wilson N, Orosco A, Venkatraman V, Madrid K, Gottlieb RA, Dietz HC, Van Eyk JE. Proteomics Reveals Rictor as a Non-Canonical TGFB Signaling Target During Aneurysm Progression in Marfan Mice. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. 2018 Jul 13. [Epub ahead of print]
• Herrington DM*, Mao C, Parker S, Fu Z, Yu G, Chen L, Venkatraman V, Fu Y, Wang Y, Howard T, et al. Proteomic Architecture of Human Atherosclerosis. Circulation. 2018 Jun 19;137(25):2741-2756. *Equal contribution
• Parker SJ, Raedschelders K, Van Eyk J. Emerging proteomic technologies for elucidating context-dependent cellular signaling events: A big challenge of tiny proportions. Proteomics. 2015 May;15(9):1486-1502.