Nancy Berliner, MD Professor of Medicine and Genetics WWW 428a Phone: 203-785-4144 Fax: 203-785-7232 e-mail: nancy.berliner@yale.edu

M.D., Yale Medical School, 1979
B.A., Yale College, 1975
Fellowship: Harvard Medical School

Research Activities

The main focus of the research in my laboratory has been on the dissection of the molecular pathways involved in differentiation of granulocytes. Evidence from study of both normal and leukemic cells suggests that a crucial step in neutrophil maturation occurs in the transition from the promyelocyte to the myelocyte stage. This transition is marked by a change in the granule content of the developing granulocyte. The transition to the myelocyte stage is associated with the acquisition of secondary ("specific") granules. Secondary granules are a unique marker of commitment to terminal neutrophil maturation. We have confirmed stage and tissue specific expression of the secondary granule proteins, which appear to be coordinately regulated at the level of mRNA transcription. We are currently examining the basis for their tissue and stage-specific expression during the maturation of the pluripotent stem cell into neutrophils. We are also studying the molecular pathways of early myeloid gene expression in normal and leukemic cells.

Selected Recent Publications

1. Lawson, N., Khanna-Gupta, A., and Berliner, N. (1998). Isolation and characterization of the cDNA encoding mouse neutrophil collagenase: Demonstration of shared negative regulation of neutrophil secondary granule protein gene expression. Blood 91:2517-2524.
2. Berliner, N. (1998). Molecular biology of neutrophil differentiation. Current Opinion in Hematology 5:49-53.
3. Lawson, N. and Berliner, N. (1998). Representational difference analysis of a committed myeloid progenitor cell line reveals evidence for bilineage potential. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 95:10129-10133.