Dr. Jeffrey Koenitzer was born in Minot, North Dakota. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied the anti-inflammatory activity of reactive lipid species in the context of cardiovascular disease and developed an early clinical interest in Pulmonary medicine. He subsequently completed his Residency and Fellowship training in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Washington University. For post-doctoral training he joined the lab of Dr. Benjamin Humphreys, where he sought to apply single cell sequencing technologies to the study of lung injury and fibrosis. In this context, he developed a single nucleus RNASeq approach for lung tissue and identified fibroblast-specific genes upregulated during fibrosis, including those encoding microfibril-associated glycoproteins (Magps). He showed that global Magp knockout (loss of Magp1 and Magp2) is associated with accelerated fibrosis in mice and is now studying the role of these proteins in lung injury, repair, and remodeling. He has maintained an interest in next generation sequencing methods and his current work includes the development of multimodal single cell datasets (RNASeq, ATAC-Seq, and CITE-Seq) in human lung disease, including the application of these methods to biopsy samples. Clinically, Dr. Koenitzer has joined the faculty of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine as an Instructor of Medicine in January 2021 and sees patients in the Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic, as well as inpatients on the Pulmonary consult service. Some awards that Dr. Koenitzer has received include Magna Cum Laude, UPSOM Peer Teaching Award and Knowlton Incentive Excellence Award.
Dr. Jeffrey Koenitzer joins the Department of Medicine
