Dr. Amit Bery attended medical school at Washington University School of Medicine during which time he worked in Dr. Susan Mackinnon’s lab focused on peripheral nerve injury. His work included performing microsurgery to inject rat tibial nerves with local anesthetics and perform assessments of muscle strength. This work led to his first basic science publication. Dr. Bery completed Internal Medicine residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine where he participated in the Clinician-Scientist Training and Research program and received intramural grant funding from the Mentors in Medicine program to craft a clinical research project. During this period, he developed a significant interest in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and executed a project evaluating outcomes after surgical lung biopsy in patients with interstitial lung disease at Veterans Affairs hospitals.
He was subsequently selected to be a Chief Medical Resident and spent 6 months at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and 6 months at the John Cochran VA Medical Center during which time he advanced his skills in leadership, public speaking, teaching, and hospital administration. During this year, Dr. Bery was a co-author on a publication evaluating predictors of treatment failure after de-escalation of antibiotics in culture negative nosocomial pneumonia. In addition, he attended the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation annual meeting where he presented 2 posters of clinical cases in lung transplantation. Dr. Bery matched at Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University School of Medicine for Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship. During this time, he solidified my interests in lung transplantation. He presented a case on donor specific antibodies in lung transplantation at the American Society of Transplantation Cutting Edge of Transplantation meeting. In addition, he gave a mini-oral presentation on airway complications after lung transplantation at the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation annual meeting.
Dr. Bery also published a first author clinical review on the topic of antibody mediated rejection after lung transplantation. During his fellowship training, he became interested in pursuing a career as a physician-scientist and elected to transition to the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine T32 training grant and joined Dr. Daniel Kreisel’s lab where his work has focused on innate and adaptive immune responses after lung transplantation. Dr. Bery’s ultimate career goal is to become an independent physician-scientist studying alloimmune responses after lung transplantation.