For most of her life, Tara Sakraida Parker lived illness to illness, from chronic tonsillitis as a child to a serious virus that attacked her central nervous system a few years ago. Doctors couldn’t pinpoint what ailed her, until she met Johns Hopkins immunologist Antoine Azar in 2016.
“He spent three hours with me, taking my medical history, my family’s medical history, asking me details about things no doctor had ever asked about before,” she recalls. “It turns out that I have a severe deficiency of natural killer cells. I have what is known as adult primary immunodeficiency,” a group of disorders that affect one or more parts of the immune system.
Impressed with Azar’s keen medical acumen and caring bedside manner, Sakraida Parker and her husband made a multiyear gift to make Azar a scholar in the Center for Innovative Medicine (CIM), funding that is allowing Azar to treat other patients with adult primary immunodeficiency.
Sakraida Parker and her husband are two among several generous donors who have supported faculty scholars in the CIM over the past decade. CIM Director David Hellman likens the funding to the prestigious MacArthur Fellowships, or “genius grants,” which reward those who have shown “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuit,” according to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As CIM faculty scholars, young faculty have support to pursue innovative research that may not be funded by traditional means.
“Most of the greatest biomedical breakthroughs have come from young scientists,” Hellmann says. “We should be supporting faculty members at this stage precisely when they are thinking and working most creatively.”
Learn about the work of other CIM faculty scholars in this article from Breakthrough magazine.
Topics: Friends of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Fuel Discovery, Promote and Protect Health