Our Science – Turner Website

Maria L. Turner, M.D.

Dermatology Branch Senior Clinician Building 10, Room 12N238 NCI-Bethesda Bethesda, MD 20892 Phone:   301-496-7737 Fax:   301-402-2943 E-Mail:   mlturner@mail.nih.gov

Biography

Dr. Turner is a board-certified dermatologist who came to the NIH 15 years ago, having spent the previous 13 years as professor of dermatology at George Washington University Medical School. She received her M.D. from the University of the Philippines and trained in dermatology at Yale University. Her major interests are the characterization, pathogenesis, and treatment of the cutaneous manifestations of systemic diseases, cancer syndromes involving skin, cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, and teaching. She is the recipient of the NIH Clinical Center Teacher of the Year award in 1995.

Research

Dr. Turner's activities can be grouped into three major categories: (1) Service-responsibility for the organization and delivery of the clinical services/consultations offered by our branch as well as providing institutional memory as clinical fellows rotate every 4 to 6 months. (2) Education/supervision of the clinical fellow on consult rotation and making arrangements for biweekly clinical grand rounds. Grand rounds, attended by around 70 physicians and residents from all the local training programs as well as community dermatologists, are a resource for second opinions on problem cases and serve as a conduit for an active interchange between our branch and the community. The type of cases seen by the Consult Service and the one-on-one interchange between fellow and attending make for an intense learning experience. The American Board of Dermatology credits us for 1 year of training. (3) Research activities consist of formal protocols in which Dr. Turner is either the principal investigator or a coinvestigator. With Dr. Edward Cowen, she is a co-mentor for the branch's clinical research fellow (clinical trials). Current projects include evaluation and characterization of adverse cutaneous reactions from novel therapeutic agents such as those that work against various tyrosine kinases. We are actively studying the molecular changes associated with doxycycline phototoxicity and the relationship between the pharmacogenetics of voriconazole and the phototoxicity that it sometimes induces. The characterization of the cutaneous manifestations of GVHD with special emphasis on evaluation and treatment of vulvovaginal GVHD is a relatively new focus. We continue to be active in studying various aspects of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma including the development of parameters to measure response to therapy as well as initiating therapy for early stage CTCL. We continue our collaborations with NCI groups looking at hereditary cancer syndromes such as the Birt-Hogg-Dube and HLRCC syndromes as we characterize their cutaneous manifestations. Continuing collaborations include those with groups that study Job's syndrome, juvenile dermatomyositis, periodic fevers, and sjogren's syndrome.

Formal Collaborators that are non-Dermatology Branch members include Steven Holland (NIAID), W. Marston Linehan, Stephen Pavletic, Pamela Stratton (Gynecology),Raphaela Golbach-Mansky (NIAMS), Lisa Rider (NIEHS), John Janik, and Susan Bates.

This page was last updated on 7/15/2008.