| Meet the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Sara McCoy Professor of Medicine |
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Research area Seeking to define how Sjӧgren’s disease and dryness develop, with the ultimate goal of improving diagnostics and treatment options for patients with the disease. Research focuses on defining minor salivary gland mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) immunobiology. Through an understanding of how MSC immunobiology differs in Sjӧgren’s disease and dryness, Dr. McCoy hopes to identify new targets for therapeutic intervention. Dr. McCoy emphasizes a bench-to-bedside approach and is actively working to translate MSC work into therapeutic MSC trials, as well as identifying novel diagnostic antibodies in Sjӧgren’s disease.
What excites you about your work?
“The effects of Sjӧgren’s disease are highly variable from individual to individual, so personalized medicine is very important. We’re always thinking about the next step in research and where we can take our findings to improve targeted medicine. For example, many Sjӧgren’s disease patients have severe dry mouth with no effective therapies, so we’re exploring deploying cell therapies to treat this manifestation of Sjӧgren’s disease. We have begun with a small number of patients; however, we hope for increased funding to be able to study the effect of cell therapy on this patient subset.”
What do you hope to achieve?
“There are a limited range of options for treating Sjӧgren’s disease, and it feels empowering to leverage my skill set to move the needle forward and make a difference in patients’ lives. One of our goals is to develop a diagnostic test that could circumvent the need for lip biopsies. We’ve been working on this new diagnostic test since 2015, and we think our work will result in a solution for a subset of patients. I’m excited to take one burden away from patients who suffer from so much. That’s what lights my fire, when you can make someone’s life better.”
Sara’s dual role as a clinician and researcher drives her passion to find solutions she and her patients need. The news of her research on a diagnostic has already resulted in patients reaching out to WARF asking when it will be available.
– Jennifer Gottwald, WARF, Director of Licensing
Want to learn more?
Jennifer Gottwald, [email protected], 608.960.9854