Michael Rutledge DeBaun, MD, MPH

DeBaun's research focuses on understanding cerebrovascular injury in children with sickle cell disease, and improving management of their care. His efforts also aim to better define the impact and biological mechanisms by which asthma increases sickle cell disease morbidity and mortality. He is now leading an international collaboration to develop the first longitudinal cohort of children with sickle cell anemia who have been evaluated with repeated pulmonary function tests and sleep studies. In addition, DeBaun is an expert in genetic cancer predisposition syndromes. His work in this area provides the basis of standard care for children with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome (BWS) and has become the international standard for management of this syndrome. DeBaun and his multidisciplinary team were the first to demonstrate the association between the genesis of BWS, congenital malformation syndromes and epigenetic modifications in children born after in vitro fertilization.