Sanja Jelic

Sanja Jelic is Professor of Medicine (Herbert Irving Professor) in Columbia's Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine and Director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Columbia University. She received her MD from the University of Zagreb and trained in internal medicine at Albert Einstein and in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Columbia. Her laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction in obstructive sleep apnea and sleep deprivation, using freshly harvested venous endothelial cells from patients; it discovered reduced endothelial protection against complement (CD59 internalization) under intermittent hypoxia and has shown that statins, but not necessarily CPAP, restore that protection, with papers in Circulation, JAMA, Science Translational Medicine, Circulation Research and EBioMedicine. Her work is funded by NHLBI R01s (HL106041 on vascular endothelial dysfunction in sleep apnea and HL137234, MPI with Daniel Gottlieb, on OSA and subclinical lung injury), the American Heart Association Go Red for Women Strategically Focused Research Network, ATS and AASM; she serves on the ATS Respiratory Neurobiology and Sleep and Research Advocacy committees and its sleep mentorship program, is a standing member of the NHLBI Mentored Transition to Independence study section and the AASM Research Program Committee, and sits on the editorial board of JAHA.