Roles
Vice Chair, Microbiology and Immunology
Professor
-
Biography
Dr. Pilar Alcaide is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. cum laude in Molecular Biology and Immunology from the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain. As a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Alcaide trained in vascular biology in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She was subsequently appointed Instructor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, where she earned a prestigious NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) Award. Dr. Alcaide was later recruited to Tufts University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. Over her tenure at Tufts, she rose to the rank of Professor and held key leadership roles, including Director of the Immunology Graduate Program and Assistant Dean for Faculty Development. She recently joined the University of Miami to further her academic, research and leadership contributions.
Dr. Alcaide’s research focuses on understanding the role of T lymphocytes in heart inflammation and their contribution to the progression of heart failure, with the goal of identifying novel pathways that could be targeted for therapeutic intervention. She was among the first to propose that T lymphocytes contribute to the pathological structural remodeling of the failing heart in heart failure (HF), even in the absence of classical triggers of adaptive immunity such as infection, autoimmunity, or ischemic injury. Dr. Alcaide’s impactful work in the growing field of cardio-immunology has been published in prestigious journals such as Circulation, the Journal of Experimental Medicine, The Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Cardiovascular Research and resulted in continuously funded grants from the NIH and private foundations. Dr. Alcaide has received numerous awards, recognizing her research excellence and commitment to mentoring across all stages of her career. These include the American Society of Investigative Pathology (ASIP) 2018 Cotran Early Career Investigator, the 2021 International Society for Heart Research (ISHR) North American Section Mid Career Research and Scholarship Award, the 2024 FASEB Outstanding Mid Career Investigator Award, and the 2025 ASIP Outstanding Investigator Award. She was named Fellow of the American Heart Association (AHA) and the ISHR, and is currently serving as the Elected President of the ASIP. Only in the past few years, she has been invited to speak at more than 50 National and International Institutions and Scientific conferences.
Dr. Alcaide is committed to mentoring and training of the next generation scientists and has forged a reputation as a role model for Women in Science, serving in many review panels, and committees nationally. Dr. Alcaide serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology and the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, and is in the Editorial boards of the Journal of Clinical Investigation insight, Circulation Research, Circulation: Heart Failure and the FASEB Journal. In her current role as Vice Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Miami, Dr. Alcaide leads efforts to advance biomedical research excellence, with a focus on integrating immunology research within the broader research and clinical community across the university. She also provides guidance and support to faculty through mentoring and initiatives that promote career development. -
Education & Training
Education
-
Honors & Awards
No result found
-
Teaching Interests
I am highly devoted to mentoring trainees and well versed on Graduate Education, I have graduated several PhD students and currently mentor two. Remarkably, all my trainees, have received awards to attend national and international conferences, institutional research recognition awards, and fellowship support from the American Heart Association (AHA) and the NIH under my mentorship. Since my first faculty appointment as an Assistant Professor until now, I have been committed to teaching undergraduate, medical students and graduate students and contributed to both, lecture and research instruction. I enjoy interacting with students at all career levels, and presenting my research at conferences and academic institutions, including those that provide CME to attendees. Communicating the importance of rigorous research is central to educate the next generation and impact patient care. -
Research Interests
My laboratory’s ultimate goal is to investigate ways to prevent undesired organ inflammation in chronic inflammatory diseases, with a particular focus in the heart in the context of heart failure. The complex syndrome of heart failure was considered for decades a disease of the cardiac muscle dominated mainly by aberrant activation of the neurohormonal and sympathetic systems that impacted the heart. Although clinical observations suggested an association of heart failure with systemic inflammation, the specific role the immune system played remained enigmatic. My research contributes to a shift in our understanding of the complexity of heart failure, positioning T cell-mediated inflammation as a major novel player of this deadly syndrome. My research goal is to understand how T cells are activated in heart failure, the pathways they use to traffic to the heart, and to decipher how heart infiltrated T cells exert actions on cardiac resident cells that result in cardiac dysfunction and failure. Our landmark findings discovering that T cell immune responses drive cardiac pathology in heart failure also revealed that adaptive immune responses differ in different etiologies of heart failure. As a result, my laboratory investigates immune mechanisms of cardiac inflammation in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction, a Heart Failure etiology for which none of the current therapies are effective, as well as in chemotherapy associated cardiomyopathy, a condition suffered by cancer patients receiving long term chemotherapy. In the latter, we focus on understanding the molecular pathways that may be targeted in immune cells, cardiac stromal and vascular cells to mitigate chronic cardiac inflammation without impairing the anti-tumor efficacy of chemotherapy and the anti-tumor immune response. We investigate endothelial cell pathways that contribute to leukocyte extravasation in the setting of acute and chronic inflammation in several collaborative projects Nationwide. -
Publications
Disclaimer: The information presented in this section has been consolidated using AI and machine learning technologies. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, errors may occur. If you identify any inaccuracies, please use this link to inform our data team. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and helps us improve the quality of our content.
-
Professional Activities
No result found