Carolyn Sangokoya, MD, PhD

Carolyn Sangokoya, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist, board-certified pathologist, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Sangokoya's broader scientific mission is to discover and build molecular tools to re-engineer and re-wire cell fates for targeted plasticity and regenerative medicine. Dr. Sangokoya completed her medical and graduate training as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program at Duke University, where she discovered roles for microRNAs in oxidative stress and cellular iron homeostasis during her graduate studies with Jen-Tsan Ashley Chi in the Duke University Program in Genetics and Genomics. At UCSF, she completed her post-graduate training in Anatomic Pathology, Surgical Pathology, and Gastrointestinal/Hepatobiliary Pathology through the Department of Pathology Physician-Scientist Pathway, and postdoctoral studies in stem cell and regenerative biology with Robert Blelloch at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research, where she defined an axis of post-transcriptional control, endocytosis, and signal transduction essential for multiple aspects of stem cell biology. Dr. Sangokoya is a recipient of the K08 Career Development Award from the NIH/NICHD to decipher post-transcriptional regulation of cell fate in early mammalian development, as well as a recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists.

Dr. Sangokoya’s clinical interests are primarily in human liver pathobiology and diagnostics for precision-based medicine and regenerative therapies focused on steatotic liver disease and metabolic dysfunction associated steatohepatitis (MASH, formerly NASH), a leading cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and transplantation. As a stem cell biologist, her basic science research interests are in dissecting the molecular networks that fine-tune the wiring and re-wiring of cell fates in mammalian stem cell-based models, leveraging genome engineering, quantitative cell biology, RNA sequencing, imaging, and cytometry at single-cell resolution.