Wayne State University Assistant Professor of Physiology Dragana Komnenov, Ph.D., will receive the Dean Franklin Young Investigator Award at the American Physiological Society’s annual meeting, to be held April 24-27 in Baltimore, Md.

She said she is ecstatic to receive the award while establishing her own independent laboratory, where she investigates neuro-cardiovascular mechanisms of diet- and stress-induced hypertension. 

“I had applied for several other awards that were going in the same cycle, and had begun to receive the typical response emails that were starting with ‘We regret to inform you … the competition was fierce … .’ I am very well-versed in receiving those types of email, and I’m sure my colleagues who submit any competitive application would agree. It is the good news ones that we have to pinch ourselves for repeatedly, and they are the ones that make it all worth it.”

After graduating with a doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, she joined the School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Professor of Physiology Jason Mateika, Ph.D., in 2014, then became a research assistant from 2017 to 2023 under the mentorship of Professor of Physiology and of Internal Medicine Noreen Rossi, M.D.

“At the end of 2023, I interviewed for one of the tenure-track positions that opened in the Department of Physiology and have been in this position since, truly living the dream,” Dr. Komnenov said.

The APS award includes reimbursement to attend the meeting and a Harvard BioScience Data Science International instrumentation starter kit valued at approximately $70,000.

“(The kit) will allow me to obtain blood pressure and renal sympathetic nerve activity recordings using state-of-the-art equipment. This is imperative for obtaining good quality data that will decipher mechanisms of cardiovascular and renal diseases in males and females in the context of chronic stress and depression,” she said.

Dr. Komnenov seeks to understand how lifestyle factors such as diet and psychological stress contribute to the development of high blood pressure, investigating how the fructose (i.e., high fructose corn syrup) component of sugar causes cardiovascular derangement and salt sensitivity of blood pressure.

“Additionally, these pathophysiological mechanisms are further complicated by psychological stress, which is a common human condition that is typically accompanied with sugar-centric diet,” she added.

Dr. Komnenov will present her abstract, “Differences in neurocardiovascular derangement between male and female chronic mild stress model: the role for renal afferent sympathetic nerves,” at the meeting.

The work was supported by a 2023-2024 University Research Grant.

“I was one of the awardees for that cycle and would strongly encourage junior faculty and research faculty to apply. The rest of the support came from my start-up funds,” she said.

Dr. Komnenov also is director of the medical student second-year Nephrology block.