Her life-changing experience in hospitals as a child is part of what led Jesse M. Levine, MD, PhD, to pursue a career in medical research. "I had a pacemaker implanted when I was two years old," Dr. Levine says. "As a kid, I thought it was so cool that someone had an interesting idea and they were able to invent a device that directly impacted my life. I always knew that I wanted to create something or innovate in a way that helped people."
While in college, Dr. Levine became fascinated with the brain, neurology, and neuroscience. "And then throughout my medical training, I found myself drawn to the neuroimmunology patients," she explains. "These patients can have psychiatric, cognitive, motor, and sensory effects, but there's still so much we don't know about how to diagnose and treat these issues. As someone interested in solving mysteries, I was drawn in and I translated my interest in medical innovation to neuroimmunology."
Dr. Levine did an away rotation at CHLA during medical school and worked with Jonathan D. Santoro, MD. This inspired her to later return to CHLA, where she now works as an attending physician and investigator in the Neuroimmunology Program within the Neurological Institute. "I'm interested in the underlying molecular mechanisms of rare pediatric neuroinflammatory diseases," Dr. Levine says. "I'm ultimately working towards the goal of more precise diagnostics and therapeutics for these conditions. To achieve that, we really need to have a solid understanding of fundamental immunology and how the immune system interacts with the nervous system in these conditions."
One of Dr. Levine's current projects aims to develop a multi-omics pipeline to evaluate the pathways of immune dysregulation in an autoimmune condition called neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, which affects the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. "We have identified a few patients with monogenic causes of their disease and the variants that these patients had implicated a particular immune signaling pathway called type 1 interferon, so I'm looking into that as a component of the pathogenesis of that disease," she explains.
Dr. Levine's longer term goal is to use the pipeline she is developing through this project to study a range of pediatric neuroinflammatory conditions and help guide treatment decisions. She is grateful to be at CHLA, where she feels she is able to achieve an ideal balance of clinical work and research as a physician scientist.
Beyond her work, Dr. Levine enjoys reading, exploring thrift stores, antique stores, and restaurants in L.A., and walking with her dog, Cooper.
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