Dr. Cristina C. Clement

I am currently Research Assistant Professor assigned to the Radiation/Oncology Department of the Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) (started May 2019). I have a long and well-documented track record of accomplished and productive research projects in the field of mass spectrometry applied to "omics", particularly the peptidomics/proteomics and lipidomics profiling of many biological systems and chemical biology technologies applied to drug discovery and validation using biochemical/biophysical assays.  My technical expertise is owing to many years of specific training and hands-on experience received while conducting a wide range of research in biochemistry, bioorganic chemistry, molecular pharmacology and proteomics/peptidomics assay development and bioinformatics analysis. As a graduate in Biochemistry (PhD from CUNY, 2006), I conducted research focusing on the discovery of new peptidic inhibitors of coagulation factors like thrombin and Factor X/XI-a.  And as a postdoctoral fellow at Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI, NY) (2005-2007) I contributed to the discovery of novel pharmacological scaffolds for small molecules inhibitors of Hsp-70 and Hsp-90 and further studied their mechanisms of action for anti-cancer treatment by using computational tools, biophysics, and cell-based assays.   As a postdoctoral research associate at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM) (2007-2019) I expanded my research to include the development and optimization of mass spectrometric (MS) based assays, specifically, 1DEF nanoLC Orbitrap-ESI-MS/MS and two-dimensional fluorescence difference-in-gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE) nanoLC-ESI-MS/MS.   The MS assays I developed covered global and targeted peptidomics, lipidomics, and proteomics analysis of many biological fluids, including human lymph, plasma, synovial fluid. These MS assays also covered different cells systems, including human dendritic cells and cartilage, among others, while making valuable use of both qualitative and label-free or label-based quantitative (LFQ an SILAC, TMT, respectively) tools.  As a Research Assistant Professor who was named on several university and NIH-funded grants awarded to my AECOM PI, Dr. Laura Santambrogio, I helped lay the groundwork for the many research projects by developing effective redox proteomics assays that were coupled with high-throughput analysis of post-translational modifications aimed at revealing the molecular mechanisms related to the effects of "oxidative stress" in aging, and T2DM type of metabolic syndrome in the immune cells mediating antigen presentation, i.e. dendritic cells, a type of research  extremely relevant to the proposed research of this NIH grant application.  Recently, using molecular docking and in silico HTS screening of large databases of small organic compounds (such as ZINC, Mcule, MolPort, among others), I successfully discovered anti-inflammatory drug-like molecules, derivatives of 3-OH-kynurenamine.   Moreover, I have validated the novel discovered compounds using cell-based assays, such as cAMP production, pKA activation and regulation of phosphorylated STATs and NFKb signaling molecules, known to be part of the cellular pathways involved in the regulation of the inflammatory response in human primary dendritic cells.  In addition, I have successfully administered each of these projects, overseeing the staffing, the research training of postdoctoral fellows and students, and collaboration with other researchers. These efforts have resulted in several peer-reviewed publications.