Carmen Argmann, PhD

About Me

Dr. Argmann has a doctorate from the faculty of Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada where she showed that PPARγ and LXR activation could dramatically reduce macrophage foam cell formation, a key event in atherosclerosis. During her postdoctoral studies at the Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire in Strasbourg, France she contributed to the development of high-throughput mouse metabolic phenotyping protocols and demonstrated that resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, improves mitochondrial function and protects against metabolic disease in vivo.

As a research scientist in Dr Schadt’s genetics group at Rosetta Inpharmatics she contributed to the designing of large-scale genetic mouse crosses to address novel facets of metabolic disease. She was involved in integrating DNA variation, gene expression, and clinical data collected, in order to uncover core networks associated with metabolic disease processes, which in turn were used to identify novel therapeutic targets for the Diabetes and Obesity franchise.

In 2010, during her time in Dr. Aerts’s lab at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam, she developed further into an integrative biologist. Her main focus has become applying novel integrative systems biology approaches to understand the hallmarks and key drivers of various human diseases.

Since 2013, she has been an assistant professor at Mount Sinai in the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and is actively applying her integrative biology approaches in various large scale collaborations associated with: generating network models in inflammatory bowel disease; finding novel human beta cell regeneration strategies for Type 2 Diabetes and uncovering genetic modifiers of screenable inborn errors of metabolism. She is also a faculty member of the Icahn Genomics Institute.

Figure: Example schema of the integrative approaches applied to understanding disease processes.

Currently we have one postdoctoral position available. Please contact me at carmen.argmann@mssm.edu

Language

English

Position

ASSOCIATE CLINICAL PROFESSOR | Genetics and Genomic Sciences

Multi-Disciplinary Training Areas

Genetics and Genomic Sciences [GGS]

Video

Education

PhD, University of Western Ontario

Research

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) involves chronic inflammation of all or part of your digestive tract and primarily includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. IBD can be debilitating with severe diarrhea, pain, fatigue and weight loss and is sometimes associated with life-threatening complications. Currently there is an unmet therapeutic need with many patients either non-responsive or refractory to current treatment options. MSSM from the clinic, to preclinical models to computational modelers have extensive expertise in IBD. Because of this expertise Janssen pharmaceuticals in 2013 entered into a multi-million dollar collaboration with MSSM clinicians, preclinical scientists and computational biologists to generate new patient information, understand preclinical IBD mouse models and computational interpret all the data as predictive networks of IBD.

Hypothesis: The underlying hypothesis we are testing is that the through multi-scale modeling of IBD patient derived molecular insights that we can better understand the disease pathology and predict candidate novel genes and biology for potential therapeutic development. I have been involved in various aspects of this collaboration using my integrative biologist skill set to help generate data for and interpret the networks.

Impact: Data driven models have proven effective in understanding other complex diseases (Diabetes, obesity CVD) thus the application of these models to IBD is a much needed complementary approach to interpreting a very complex disease process.

For a complete list of Dr. Argmann's publications http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=argmann+C

Publications

Publications:99

Selected Publications

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Industry Relationships

Physicians and scientists on the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai often interact with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology companies, and other outside entities to improve patient care, develop new therapies and achieve scientific breakthroughs. In order to promote an ethical and transparent environment for conducting research, providing clinical care and teaching, Mount Sinai requires that salaried faculty inform the School of their outside financial relationships.

Dr. Argmann has not yet completed reporting of industry relationships or has no industry relationships to report.

Mount Sinai’s faculty policies relating to faculty collaboration with industry are posted on our website. Patients may wish to ask their physician about the activities they perform for companies.