Mihir R. Atreya, MD, MPH

I am a physician-scientist who cares for critically ill and injured children in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). My drive to enhance care for critically ill children stems from my early experiences as a medical student in India. During that time, I often witnessed children suffering from preventable life-threatening complications of serious infections, which fueled my determination to meaningfully improve their outcomes. To pursue this goal, I sought additional clinical and research training in the United States. I was fortunate to be mentored by Dr. Hector Wong — a pioneer in precision critical care medicine — who influenced my approach at the bedside and in the laboratory.

My research on critical illnesses, including sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), is aimed at tackling unique challenges presented by these rapidly evolving conditions. One of the major obstacles is that our understanding of these 'syndromes' is significantly limited by biological heterogeneity at multiple levels, including the patient, organ system and cell. In direct support of the challenge is the repeated failures of sepsis trials, with care available for critically ill patients being limited to antibiotics and invasive organ support. My overarching research mission is focused on developing precision medicine strategies for critically ill children, with the intent of matching the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.

In my laboratory, we employ innovative translational approaches to unravel the role of human microvascular endothelial cells, an often overlooked yet crucial aspect of organ failure among the critically ill. We leverage transcriptomic signatures of circulating endothelial cells enriched from patients and human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) derived models of endothelial dysfunction to better understand sepsis heterogeneity and disease mechanisms. Armed with this knowledge, we seek to develop targeted therapeutics that can restore microvascular homeostasis, enhance organ function and ultimately improve patient outcomes. I have been fortunate to receive funding through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in support of my research. Specifically, these include efforts to leverage the unparalleled pediatric sepsis biorepository in the Division of Critical Care Medicine and multi-omics to enhance our understanding of sepsis heterogeneity. In addition, we are testing the utility of patient-specific hiPSCs as a novel mechanistic platform to unravel sepsis biology.