Shajila Siricilla, PhD

Shajila Siricilla, PhD

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Neonatology
Delivery Address
Doctors' Office Tower
2200 Children's Way
Room / Suite
11111
Nashville
Tennessee
37232-9544

Specialty
Neonatology
Ph.D.
University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, 2017
Fellowship
Postdoctoral Fellowship - Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, 2022

Research Information

Dr. Siricilla's research is focused on identifying novel therapeutic agents to manage infection-induced preterm birth and protecting the fetus against in-utero inflammation. The approaches include a large-scale screening of a customized library of molecules targeting the druggable transcriptome associated with infection-induced inflammation leading to preterm birth.

Dr. Siricilla's doctoral work focused on the discovery of novel antibacterial molecules with molecular targets against problematic pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant nosocomial pathogens. She joined the Herington Lab in 2017 as a postdoctoral fellow where Dr. Siricilla worked on projects entailing a phenotypic high-throughput screen of large compound libraries to identify novel small molecules and molecular targets that regulate uterine myometrial contractions with high selectivity. She has developed a combination high-throughput assay to identify synergistic drug combinations to improve their tocolytic efficacy and therapeutic index. She has identified a natural product, mundulone, and FDA-approved drugs with tocolytic efficacy in mono- and combination therapy with current tocolytics.