Lab Members

Dr. Bruscia received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics from the University of Tor Vergata in Rome (Italy) in 2002. Since she was an undergraduate, her research has been dedicated to Cystic Fibrosis. During her undergraduate studies, she began working in the exciting field of gene therapy. She spent two years in the laboratory of Dr. Dieter Gruenert at the University of Vermont (Burlington, VT), where she worked on non-viral gene therapy strategies. She started her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Diane Krause at Yale School of Medicine in 2002. Here, she explored the use of bone marrow-derived cells as a vehicle for gene therapy in the airway and intestinal epithelia in murine models for CF. In 2005, Dr. Bruscia was appointed as an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine and in 2010 promoted as an Assistant Professor in the same department. In 2016, she was promoted to Associate Professor. In the past ten years, her research interest has focused on the role of CFTR in the immune system, particularly in macrophages. The current focus of her lab is to explore emerging therapeutic strategies able to target several aspects of CF lung disease, while still proceeding with studies focused on understanding how the lack of CFTR is impairing macrophage function.

Ping-Xia Zhang, Associate Research Scientist, is a senior member of the Krause laboratory with wide research interests and extraordinary technical expertise. Dr. Zhang moved to the United States from China, where she was educated as an MD and then pursued a PhD in Immunology. She next performed postdoctoral studies in Immunology in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. She then joined the Krause laboratory, where she performed studies in collaboration with Dr. Emanuela Bruscia on cystic fibrosis. She currently divides her time between the laboratories of Drs. Krause and Bruscia, where she provides critical expertise to many ongoing studies and help students and postdocs to complete their projects in both laboratories.