Dr. Marshall Lynn Summar, MD

Marshall L. Summar, MD, joins Children's National as the Division Chief of the Division of Genetics and Metabolism and the Margaret O’Malley Chair of Molecular Genetics. He comes from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he directed the Program in Translational Genetics, the DNA Core program, and started the inborn errors of metabolism program. Dr. Summar is an expert in translational studies taking basic molecular genetics research and developing direct clinical applications. His work has piloted treatments from the rare disease field to common conditions especially in the intensive care and emergency room setting. His work in the urea cycle has involved the development of treatment protocols, translational research, and basic molecular research into these rare defects in nitrogen metabolism. Currently this involves clinical trials working to improve the outcomes of patients with congenital heart defects, acute lung injury, asthma, and premature infants using …compounds from metabolic pathways he studies. Dr. Summar is board-certified in Pediatrics, Clinical Genetics, and Biochemical Genetics and has been listed with Best Doctor’s in America since 2004. He serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Pediatrics and is the president-elect for the Society of Inherited Metabolic Disease. He serves on the NIH study section for the CETT program, the National Human Genetic Research Institute Fellowship Training Program Board, and the NASA radiation research review panel. Currently, the focus of Dr. Summar's research is the study of the interactions between common genetic variation and the environment. This work involves research in heart disease, asthma, pulmonary hypertension, oxidant injury and aging, Down syndrome, and liver disease. Dr. Summar has also built a bioarchaeology laboratory program that works with the Vanderbilt Department of Anthropology and the Government of Peru to determine the genetic origins of people from the America’s.