Gissette Reyes-Soffer, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Research has established the relationship between lipid and lipoprotein metabolism and cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the leading cause of death in the United States. Gissette Reyes-Soffer, MD, has dedicated her career to developing novel methods to examine pathways that regulate lipid and lipoprotein metabolism using stable isotope tracers in humans.  She has a particular focus on the regulation and metabolism of Lipoprotein(a), an understudied risk factor for CVD. With funding from Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), NIH and industry sponsors, she has become a leader in her field. She is a member of the American Heart Association, ATVB council and co-chair of their Diversity Committee. She has been invited to present her research at National and International Scientific Meetings and currently reviews and forms part of editorial boards for various research journals.

Dr. Reyes-Soffer is a native of the Dominican Repulic and arrived in the United States at the age of 25. She took an unconventional path to clinical-translational research.  After obtaining her MD degree, she joined a T32 fellowship at CUIMC through the Department of Medicine, Division of Preventive Medicine and Nutrition. She completed training in clinical research and atherosclerosis. During this time, she found the Irving Institute as the perfect place to support her academic journey. "The Irving Institute has provided educational opportunities, facility resources, analytical expertise, and most of all the most comprehensive mentoring program a young faculty can desire," she says.

In 2015, she received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award that led to the funding of her first independent NIH R01 award in August of 2018. She was also the recipient of a 2018 Irving Institute/Clinical Trials Office pilot award, which is allowing her laboratory to validate novel research techniques that will be used for future NIH funding applications. Services provided by the Clinical Research Resource have also been key to facilitating her research: she uses their inpatient and outpatient clinical research units, along with nutrition services and nursing assistance.  The Biomarkers Core Laboratory has provided support as well as expertise and collaborations from its team. 

Dr. Reyes-Soffer's lab is currently expanding analytical methods to examine new lipid-altering targets/proteins that regulate cardiovascular risk.  They are also expanding their research to include analysis of the proteome. She is planning to expand her work to other proteins linked to cardiovascular disease and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) population by using preliminary data obtained from her pilot award.