CVRC Resident Member and Professor of Molecular Physiology & Biological Physics Swapnil Sonkusare, PhD, was named a 2025 Pinn Scholar. The award recognizes three faculty each year for their scientific expertise, mentoring, and service. “I’m excited to join the list of Pinn Scholars, who have done superb work at UVA,” says Sonkusare.
The Sonkusare lab specializes in connecting microscopic observations to conditions affecting the entire body. To understand illnesses like hypertension, atherosclerosis, and obesity, they study ion channels, proteins that transport charged ions across cellular barriers. The team specifically studies ion channels and calcium signaling in small blood vessels. Using advanced sample collection and microscopy methods, they isolate live arteries and veins from mice and human subjects and observe calcium signals from individual cells. Then, researchers use drugs or genetic knockouts to alter the calcium signaling. These changes are then correlated to changes in disease-relevant metrics, such as blood pressure, to understand how ion channel behavior contributes to vascular diseases.
The Pinn Scholar Award includes three years of funding for a new project in the recipient’s lab. Sonkusare will use this funding to investigate pulmonary veins. Typically, arteries carry oxygenated blood and veins carry deoxygenated blood. In the lungs, however, the dynamic flips: pulmonary arteries carry deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs and pulmonary veins bring freshly oxygenated blood from the lungs back to the heart to be circulated around the body. Sonkusare’s interest in pulmonary veins arose from a mistake in the lab. A student accidentally isolated and analyzed a pulmonary vein instead of a pulmonary artery, which showed the two have drastically different ion channel behaviors. “The amount of activity was crazy – I had never seen anything like it. I had spent eight years looking at the lungs and we had no idea what was going on in the veins,” Sonkusare remembers. Since then, the lab has developed a new hypothesis, that pulmonary veins are actively assisting in transporting blood from the lungs to the heart by rhythmically contracting, not unlike how the heart pumps to circulate blood. The lab will identify the roles of these unique blood vessels and their ion channels in a variety of disease conditions.
Beyond the Pinn Scholar Award’s recognition of his research success, Sonkusare is particularly pleased with its recognition of his work as a mentor for his students and postdocs. “I’ve been lucky to have trainees who want to grow as scientists,” he says, “and it’s amazing and gratifying to see their growth from their first days in the lab to their last.” In addition to publishing high-impact work, Sonkusare lab members have secured independent, competitive, extramural funding. Awards include an NIH K99/R00, American Heart Association Postdoctoral and Predoctoral Fellowships, and American Physiological Society Postdoctoral Fellowships.
Sonkusare is confident the funding provided by the Pinn Scholars Award will yield long term success through new publications and grant funding. He will present his research at upcoming Pinn Scholars Symposia. Those interested in the team’s progress should follow the Sonkusare lab website and social media.