Growing as a Researcher at MHRI


One of the great things that happens at MedStar Health and MHRI is the growth of our associates.


At the end of February, Bonnie Carney defended her PhD dissertation entitled, “Hypopigmented Burn Hypertrophic Scar Contains Melanocytes that can be Signaled to Repigment by Alpha Melanocyte Stimulating Hormone”. This defense represented the culmination of her doctorate degree in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Georgetown University Medical Center. Bonnie’s thesis work was advised by Dr. Dean S. Rosenthal, an Associate Professor in the department, as well as by Dr. Jeffrey W. Shupp, the Director of the Burn Research Program at MedStar Health Research Institute, and an Associate Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry at Georgetown.





Bonnie’s thesis research was completed in the Firefighters’ Burn and Surgical Research Laboratory at MedStar Health Research Institute where she started as a volunteer in 2013. She was then hired as a full time Research Associate in 2014. She then began her doctoral program in 2015. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2014 with a degree in Chemistry and minor in Mathematics.


Her work, which studied dyschromia in post-burn related hypertrophic scarring, seeks to development mechanistic treatments for dyschromia, an aesthetic symptom of scar that can have lasting psychosocial effects on burn survivors. Dyschromia is difficult to predict, heterogeneous, shows little improvement over time, and is pervasive amongst certain patient populations. Bonnie studied treatment of hypo-pigmentation with synthetic alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone, which proved to be efficacious in in vitro modeling in scar-derived cells, as well as in in vivo modeling in animals. These treatments may be more efficacious, tissue sparing, and more widely applicable compared to the limited currently available techniques.


She would like to thank Drs. Rosenthal and Shupp for their support in this process. She would also like to thank Drs. Moffatt, Travis, Johnson, and Alkhalil for their mentorship. Finally, she would like to thank members of the FBSRL who have contributed to her research over the past few years. She hopes to make an academic career out of studying skin fibrosis in an effort to improve the lives of those affected by burn injury.

In addition to this great work, Bonnie is al the recipient of a student grant from the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery towards continuing her research.

Congratulations, Dr. Carney! Thank you for being a part of the MHRI family and to those who helped you along the way.

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