Dr. Andy An

Andy is currently a medical student at the University of British Columbia, after completing a PhD  in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Hancock through UBC's MD-PhD program. His research investigated how gene expression profiles of sepsis and COVID-19 patients change over time to better understand the dynamic waxing and waning of the immune response in these diseases. He defended his thesis in 2023 titled, "Dynamic analysis of gene expression trajectories in sepsis and COVID-19", where he found striking similarities of immune responses in severe COVID-19 and sepsis on a transcriptomic level, time-dependent pathway activation to inform targeted COVID-19 therapy, distinct mechanistic and prognostic endotypes based on long-COVID longitudinal gene expression changes, and gene expression biomarkers to predict neonatal sepsis at birth prior to onset of symptoms. He is now back in medical school, finishing his last two years of hospital rotations. Andy aims to become a clinician-scientist after he graduates, continuing to investigate immune system dysregulation in various diseases through a systems biology lens and helping patients in the hospital as an anesthesiologist or an internist.