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Richard Pierce, MD

Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Critical Care)
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Additional Titles

Associate Program Director for Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship, Pediatrics

Co-Director of the Mentored Clinical Experience, Medical Research Training Program

Contact Info

Pediatric Critical Care Medicine

333 Cedar Street, PO Box 208064

New Haven, CT 06520

United States

About

Titles

Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Critical Care)

Associate Program Director for Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship, Pediatrics; Co-Director of the Mentored Clinical Experience, Medical Research Training Program

Biography

Ric Pierce grew up in the midwest and completed his undergraduate studies at Oberlin College followed by a Master of Science degree in organic chemistry and Medical Doctorate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Following medical school he completed pediatric residency at Connecticut Children's Medical Center before coming to Yale New Haven Children's Hospital for pediatric critical care fellowship. He has continued at Yale University as faculty and is actively engaged in the care of critically ill children as well as several basic and translational vascular biology research projects and multiple educational endeavors with students, residents and fellows.

Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Pediatric Critical Care Fellowship
Yale University (2016)
Pediatric Residency
Connecticut Children's Medical Center (2013)
MD
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010)
MS
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Organic Chemistry (2008)

Research

Overview

My three professional passions are providing excellent patient care, educating trainees, and conducting clinically impactful vascular research. In the PICU, I strive to provide compassionate, high quality and timely care to all my patients. Teaching trainees is also a top priority, and I routinely give many formal lectures, short talks as well as create curriculums and educational materials. I invest time and energy in my lectures to make sure they are clinically relevant and are appropriate for all levels of trainees. Finally, I am passionate about my research, where I investigate blood vessel dysfunction and its consequences in critically ill children, with a keen focus on permeability changes. Ultimately, I would like to develop new therapies to target the blood vessels that improve the lives of critically ill children.

My laboratory focuses on several interrelated avenues of research. First, I investigate how EC junctional molecules are regulated in the setting of inflammation. These investigations occur in culture models of capillary endothelium and focus on small GTPases and their regulators, GAPs and GEFs, regulate permeability of EC monolayers and re-organization of tight junction molecules. I demonstrated the importance of the regulation of the small GTPase RhoB in a pediatric patient with systemic capillary leak syndrome caused by a single gene mutation in a GAP with previously unknown function, p190BRhoGAP. We are focused on understanding the GAP and GEF regulation of RhoB have branched to investigate other small GTPases in the Rap family.

A second major avenue of research is on the clinical mechanisms and consequences of EC dysfunction in critically ill children. I place great emphasis on maintaining direct clinical relevance in my research projects and have focused my efforts on human samples. To this end, I established a prospective study investigating the single-cell transcriptomic changes of EC isolated from critically ill children compared to healthy children. This project has identified a new small molecule mediators of blood vessel function in critical illness. This line of research has lead to new investigations into how blood vessels break down and medications that may restore barrier function.

Another focus of my lab is investigating consequences of vascular dyfunction in critically ill children, namely pulmonary capillary dysfunction in pediatric acute lung injury. We leverage cutting edge multi-omic techniques on patient samples to survey immune cells isolated from the lungs of critically ill children with acute lung injury. Finally, I am active in Yale’s own Pediatric Genomic Discovery Program (PGDP) and am able to rapidly investigate the effects of clinically impactful gene mutations on vascular function.


Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Acute Lung Injury; Blood Vessels; Capillary Leak Syndrome; Capillary Permeability; Cardiovascular System; COVID-19; Endothelium; Endothelium, Vascular; Genomics; Intensive Care Units, Pediatric; Microvessels; Pediatrics; Sepsis; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome; Translational Research, Biomedical

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Richard Pierce's published research.

Publications

2024

2023

2022

Clinical Trials

Current Trials

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • activity

    Society for Pediatric Research

  • activity

    Society for Critical Care Medicine

  • activity

    Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigator (PALISI) Network

  • activity

    Shock Society

  • activity

    North American Vascular Biology Organization

Clinical Care

Overview

Richard Pierce, MD, is a pediatric critical care specialist. He says the best part of his job is watching healthy children walk out of the hospital smiling and clutching a toy.

“Seeing a child, who came to us critically ill, leaving the hospital and doing a lot better is a great thing,” Dr. Pierce says.

Treating critically ill children is different than treating adults, he points out. “Children may have genetic diseases that adult doctors don’t encounter frequently, and they have different organ function parameters adult doctors may not be familiar with,” Dr. Pierce says. “It takes the specialized expertise of a pediatric critical care unit to understand the parameters around vital signs, organ function, and different diseases.”

Dr. Pierce’s research focuses on how blood vessels function in critically ill children. “Blood vessels carry blood, oxygen, and glucose that are needed to maintain organ function. In critically ill children, these processes can get disrupted,” Dr. Pierce says. “I look at a phenomenon called capillary leak, where the blood vessels aren't able to retain the fluid in the vessels and it leaks out. It can cause swelling of the face, or the hands and the feet, as well as low blood pressure, or even organ failure if it's not treated.”

Dr. Pierce is an assistant professor of pediatric critical care at Yale School of Medicine.

Clinical Specialties

Pediatrics; Pediatric Critical Care Medicine

Get In Touch

Contacts

Academic Office Number
Appointment Number
Mailing Address

Pediatric Critical Care Medicine

333 Cedar Street, PO Box 208064

New Haven, CT 06520

United States

Locations

  • Amistad Street Building

    Lab

    10 Amistad Street

    New Haven, CT 06519