New Faculty

Dr. Vered Gazit joins the Department of Medicine

Vered Gazit, PhD

Dr. Vered Gazit joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology as an Instructor in January, 2021.

Dr. Vered Gazit completed her Doctorate Degree in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Department of Pharmacology under the supervision of Dr. Yeshayahu S. Kats. Following her doctorate training, Dr. Gazit spent three years as Instructor and laboratory manager of the Pain and neuronal Research laboratory at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. In 2002, she began the first of two post-doctorate training at Washington University School of Medicine with investigators Dr. Kelvin A. Yamada and Professor Mike M. Mueckler. Prior to her current position, she served as a staff scientist at WUSM and gained ample experience and expertise in state-of-the-art molecular and cell biology techniques and led several research projects that yielded peer reviewed publications in high impact scientific journals. Dr. Gazit joined the Gastroenterology Division in December 2017 as a staff scientist in the laboratory of Dr. Deborah Rubin where she has continued to hone her research focus and teaching interests.

Dr. Gazit’s research interests and work are closely aligned with that of Dr. Deborah Rubin, focusing on studying the mechanisms that regulate patient-specific adaptive responses after small bowel resection, and elucidating the molecular mechanisms that regulate intestinal stem cell niche and crypt epithelial cell proliferation and expansion in response to small bowel resection in SBS, using human biopsies, intestinal stem cells and subepithelial intestinal myofibroblasts.

Recently, Dr. Gazit has embarked on investigating the molecular mechanisms and roles of mesenchymal cells in stem cell proliferation and understands the functional role of stromal myofibroblast markers in the regulation and adaptation of stem cells niche in short bowel syndrome via Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling.