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Student Profile, Isha SrivastavaStudent Profile: Isha Srivastava

Johns Hopkins University graduate, Isha Srivastava, is pursuing her combined MD/PhD degrees because, she says, “I like the idea of seeing a medical issue in the clinic that patients are experiencing and then taking it to the lab to figure out what we can do to minimize their pain and discomfort.”

A native of India who grew up in both Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, and the San Francisco area, Srivastava’s parents are now both vaccine scientists in Connecticut. The third-year student spent the past three years in the lab of Peter Crino, MD PhD, a neurology professor and researcher who has dual appointments with the school of medicine and Shriners Hospitals Pediatric Research Center. Working with animals, she explored whether rapamycin, an immunosuppressant, could benefit children with cerebral palsy. 

“Dr. Crino gave me a lot of freedom to think about my work and explore other avenues we didn’t originally plan on pursuing,” says the former president of the school’s American Physician Scientists’ Association. The result? “I developed pretty strong pre-clinical evidence that rapamycin may be an effective neuro-protective therapy in a subset of children with cerebral palsy.”