Betty S. Pace, MD
Professor of Pediatrics
Francis J. Tedesco Distinguished Chair Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Professor of Graduate Studies Director, Comprehensive Sickle Cell Program Telehealth
Center
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The Betty Pace Lab
Health Sciences Campus
GCC - M. Bert Storey Research Building
1410 Laney Walker Blvd., CN-4112
(706) 721-6895
Over the last three decades, the research focus in the Pace laboratory has been erythroid development as it relates to globin gene regulation and hemoglobin synthesis. As an NIH-funded physician-scientist, in the mid-1990s my laboratory pioneered in vivo drug treatment in the µLCRAγ transgenic mouse and later the human β-YAC mouse model. We were the first to demonstrate the ability to induce γ-globin expression using butyrate and 5-azacytidine in β-YAC mice; this model was later used to discover novel short-chain fatty acid derivatives that induce γ-globin. The 5-azacytidie analog, Decitabine is currently in clinical testing as a novel fetal hemoglobin inducer. A second drug Benserazide which is an L-Dopa inhibitor was shown to induce fetal hemoglobin and a phase 1 clinical trial is underway in thalassemia patients. More recently the work in the Pace laboratory was expanded to include microRNA (miRNA) work. We demonstrated a role of miR-34a in γ-globin regulation through silencing the repressor molecule, Stat3. We conducted a genome-wide miRNA screen using reticulocytes isolated from children with sickle cell disease and identified miR-144 and miR29 among others differentially expressed in children with low and high fetal hemoglobin levels. Both miRNA were subsequently shown to induce fetal hemoglobin in sickle erythroid progenitors.
Training Tomorrow's Researchers Today
In parallel with my research program, over the last 25 years I have personally trained over 80 individuals including master’s thesis and pre-doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty members to conduct basic and translational research. In 2006, I was awarded a National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) R25 grant to establish a Summer Institute Programs to Increase Diversity (SIPID), with subsequent renewals as the PRIDE-Functional and Translational Genomics of Blood Disorders Program. I serve as program director. The primary focus of PRIDE is technical skills enhancement, intense mentoring, and teaching grant writing skills to aide mentees in achieving extramural funding. We have trained 76 underrepresented junior faculty members under my leadership.
Sickle Cell Research for Pediatrics and Adults
I am fully engaged as a member of the Augusta University Sickle Cell Research Center where we provide medical services for over 600 children at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia in Augusta and five outreach clinics in rural South Georgia in partnership with the Georgia Department of Public Health. More recently we established a Sickle Cell TeleHealth Program to increase access to care for children in South Georgia and improve standard of care for hydroxyurea therapy and genetic education; I currently serve as Director. Also, we participate in clinical trials with pharmaceutical companies and conduct genetic studies to increase therapeutic options for individuals with sickle cell disease.
Transsulfuration pathway activation attenuates oxidative stress and ferroptosis in
sickle primary erythroblasts and transgenic mice.
Commun Biol. 2025 Jan 6;8(1):15. doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-07424-7.PMID: 39762627
