Erin Rubin, MD Dr. Erin Rubin received her medical doctoral degree at Emory University School of Medicine in 1996. A residency in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology was obtained at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 2000. Dr. Rubin continued her training at Harvard as a Clinical Fellow in gastrointestinal and hepatic pathology and joined the Department of Surgery to work on tissue engineering of the liver with Dr. Joseph P. Vacanti. She moved to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine to become Assistant Professor of Pathology in 2002 and was later awarded an NIH Mentored Scientific Teaching Award (K08). She transferred her grant and professorship to the University of Pittsburgh September of 2004 where she currently in the division of Transplantation Pathology and is a member of the Starzl Transplantation Institute and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Rubin is a member of the Division of Transplantation Pathology. More information about this division is available here. Visit Dr. Rubin's personal web page Office Location: Division of Transplantation Pathology Department of Pathology UPMC-Montefiore, Room E-739 3459 5th Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Contact Information: Office Phone: (412) 647-7645 Fax: (412) 647-5237 Email Address: rubine@upmc.edu Research Interests: Liver senescence, regeneration and proliferation Telomerase controlled hepatic growth and regulation Growth factors and receptors in hepatocytes Liver-directed gene therapy has the potential to treat a variety of hepatic and systemic diseases. Both transposons and retroviral vectors are a promising tool for in vivo gene delivery because of the ability to stably express therapeutic genes as well as infect resting cells. Telomere shortening results in cellular senescence. Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) not only plays a role in maintaining telomere length, but also has been shown to promote proliferation of resting cells. Sleeping Beauty transposon and lentiviral vectors with an albumin promoter and an enhancer are promising tools for in vivo gene delivery restricted to hepatocytes. Overexpression of TERT in primary hepatocytes using these delivery vehicles may enhance proliferation and decrease cellular senescence in primary hepatocytes. Such transduced cells would then be useful for a variety of studies including hepatocyte transplantation, ex vivo therapy and tissue engineering. Selected Publications: Song JS, Kim HP, Rubin E. Development of a Sleeping Beauty-Based Telomerase Gene Delivery System for Hepatocytes. Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry. 75(2):227-31, 2011. Cruz RJ Jr, Costa G, Bond GJ, Soltys K, Rubin E, Humar A, Abu-Elmagd KM. Modified Multivisceral Transplantation With Spleen-Preserving Pancreaticoduodenectomy for Patients With Familial Adenomatous Polyposis "Gardner's Syndrome". Transplantation. 2011;91(12):1417-23. Lunz JG, Ruppert K, Cajaiba M, Isse K, Bentlejewski C, Minervini M, Nalesnik M, Randhawa P, Rubin E, Sasatomi E, DeVera M, Fontes P, Humar A, Zeevi A, Demetris A. Re-examination of the Lymphocytotoxic Crossmatch in Liver Transplantation: Can C4d Stains Help in Monitoring? Am J Transplant. 2012 Jan;12(1):171-82.