Expert Consultation Panel

Sam Pleasure, MD, PhD is the Glenn W. Johnson, Jr. Memorial Endowed Chair in Neurology at UCSF. Dr. Pleasure is a neurologist who specializes in caring for patients with multiple sclerosis. He also has expertise in caring for patients with epilepsy as well as years of experience in managing a variety of neurological conditions in both clinic and hospital settings. Dr. Pleasure has two main areas of inquiry for his research. He studies processes that regulate early brain development in both normal and diseased situations. He also studies autoimmune forms of meningoencephalitis, where inflammation in specific brain areas causes severe neurologic dysfunction. Pleasure received his medical degree and a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. He was chief resident during his neurology residency at UCSF, where he then completed a research fellowship in neuroscience Pleasure is a fellow of the American Neurological Association and a member of the American Academy of Neurology, American Epilepsy Society, Society for Neuroscience, Society for Developmental Biology and Cajal Club. He has won numerous awards for his research and has received research funding from a wide variety of private, state and federal sources. He has served in leadership roles in national organizations and in the UCSF Department of Neurology.

Dr. Lewis is a physician-scientist with a clinical interest in the diagnosis and treatment of children and adults with inborn errors of immune function, including immunodeficiency with or without accompanying immunedysregulation. His research in human immunology has mainly focused on defining developmental and genetic limitations/acquired perturbations in human adaptive immune responses, particularly mediated by alpha/beta T cells immunity that compromise host defense and/or that predispose to autoimmune disease. As part of this research, he is currently working with Dr. Jennifer Frankovich on defining the circulating phenotype and function of T cells and other leukocyte populations in patients with acute and chronic PANS (pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome) to test the idea that PANS is, at least in part, an autoimmune disorder. Other research has included studies of certain monogenic disorders that include T-cell immunodeficiency, such as Schimke immune-osseous dysplasia (SIOD). This research has contributed to a major improvement in treatment of children with SIOD using sequential haplo transplantation with hematopoietic stem cells and kidney (Bertaina et al., N Engl J Med 2022; 386:2295-2302). His lab has also pursued the development of novel approaches for the prevention and treatment of severe respiratory viruses, particularly influenza and coronavirus infections, that should be effective in all individuals regardless of their baseline immune function, including the very young and those with immunodeficiency. They are actively working on developing non-viral delivery CRISPR systems to provide a broad prophylaxis or treatment platform for viruses that enter the human body via the upper respiratory tract (Abbott et al., Cell. 2020; 181:865–876.e12).

Mark Pasternack, MD, specializes in Pediatric Service, Infectious Disease Unit, and Chief, Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit, at Massachusetts General Hospital. Educated at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Pasternack completed his residency and clinical infectious disease fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and a research fellowship at the Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Author of numerous papers and articles for prestigious medical journals, Dr. Pasternack is an officer of the Massachusetts Infectious Diseases Society and a member of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society as well as the Infectious Diseases Society of America. His broad clinical interests include Infectious Disease and Pediatric Infectious Disease. Dr. Pasternack has provided clinical care to PANS/PANDAS patients for over a decade and has participated in the PANS/ PANDAS Research Consortium to develop clinical guidelines for the management of these patients.

Jennifer Frankovich, MD is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology at Stanford University, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Dr. Frankovich’s clinical expertise is in systemic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases that co-occur with psychiatric symptoms. She completed her training in pediatrics, pediatric rheumatology, and clinical epidemiology at Stanford University.
She directs the Stanford PANS Program that began in 2012. She and her collaborators have created a longitudinal clinical database and large biorepository of patient and control biospecimens. In addition to generating clinical data to better understand the PANS illness, she is collaborating with 10 basic science labs who aim to understand the immunological underpinnings of the illness.

Dr. Lachman is a physician-scientist who is clinically trained in internal medicine and
hematology but does basic research on the molecular and genetic basis of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. He is the director of the Program of Behavioral Genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Lachman was one of the first investigators to use induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to study neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Dr. Lachman has written more than one-hundred papers and book chapters, and is the author of a book called, “Battle of the Genomes: The struggle for survival in a microbial world.” He is actively involved in teaching medical students, graduate students, and physicians in the Clinical Research Training Program, and has won several teaching awards.

Dr. Frye is a Child Neurologist with expertise in neurodevelopmental and neurometabolic disorders. He received an MD and PhD in Physiology and Biophysics from Georgetown University.  He completed a residency in Pediatrics at the University of Miami, Residency in Child Neurology and Fellowship in Behavioral Neurology and Learning Disabilities at Harvard University/Children’s Hospital Boston and Fellowship in Psychology at Boston University.  He also received a Masters in Biomedical Science and Biostatistics from Drexel University. He holds board certifications in Pediatrics, and in Neurology with Special Competence in Child Neurology.  He has authored over 300 publications and book chapters and serves on several editorial boards and is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the Section on Mechanisms of Diseases of the Journal of Personalized Medicine.

Dr. Frye is a national leader in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research. He has led several clinical studies on children with ASD, including studies focusing on defining the clinical, behavioral, cognitive, genetic and metabolic characteristics of children with ASD and mitochondrial disease. Dr. Frye has also led several clinical trials demonstrating the efficacy of safe and novel treatments that target underlying physiological abnormalities in children with ASD, including open-label studies on tetrahydrobiopterin, cobalamin and leucovorin, and a recent double-blind placebo controlled trial on leucovorin. His ongoing research efforts focus on defining metabolic endophenotypes of children with ASD and developing targeted treatments. He is Director of Research and Neurologist at the Rossignol Medical Center in Phoenix AZ.