Profiles

Hrishikesh S. Kulkarni, MD, MSCI is a physician-scientist at UCLA in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, and a member of the Immunology, Inflammation, Infection, and Transplantation (I3T) Research Theme. The overarching goal of his program is to determine how locally active innate immune proteins can be harnessed to mitigate ALI risk in various settings such as infection and lung transplantation, to ultimately reduce the burden of end-stage lung disease. A major focus of their work involves distinguishing locally-derived complement proteins in the lung from those present in the blood, and how they modulate ALI. His laboratory has established in vitro and in vivo models to dissect tissue-specific sources of complement proteins that can be harnessed as therapeutics to mitigate ALI. Additionally, they leverage a robust biorepository of lung tissue, bronchial fluid and DNA from patients to guide and validate their research.