Dr. Elena Ambrogini received her medical degree from the University of Pisa in Italy. She continued her training and received a Ph.D. in Endocrine and Metabolic Sciences from the same university. In addition, Dr. Ambrogini completed several internships, residencies, and fellowships, focusing on endocrinology, metabolic diseases, and internal medicine. She is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. Dr. Ambrogini is a member of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and the Endocrine Society. She has received the Thomas E. Andreoli Award for excellence in internal medicine as well as the ASBMR Felix Bronner Young Investigator Award for the top ranked abstract by a young investigator at the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. Dr. Ambrogini focuses much of her time on research. The main research interests of Dr. Ambrogini are in the field of endocrinology and particularly in bone and calcium homeostasis, and thyroid diseases. Her work is particularly focused on the pathophysiology of osteoporosis and metabolic bone diseases. These studies have been the object of oral presentations at International Meetings and publications.

UAMS Tobacco Funds and Translational Research Institute
239 G1-50893-01
PI
Atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, and innate immunity: a research career development plan
$150,000
01/2015–06/2018
2.4 calendar months


UAMS Tobacco Funds and Translational Research Institute
239-G1-53545-01
PI
Antibodies against oxidation specific epitopes affect glucose metabolism
$9,761
07/2018-06/2019
0.5 calendar months


Barton Endowment individual pilot study
271 G1-51451-99
PI
Antibodies against oxidation-specific epitopes have an anabolic effect in murine bone
$25,000
05/2016–12/2017
0.5 calendar months

asbmr
endocrine society

Dr, Joseph L Witztum

uams outpatient clinic
uams inpatient endocrine service
CAVHS outpatient endocrine clinic
CAVHS thyroid clinic
CAVHS inpatient endocrine service

I. University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

• Chair, Fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism Program Evaluation Committee (2016-present)

• Member of the Fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism Program Clinical Competency Committee (2020-present)

• Coordinator of the ENT- Radiology- Endocrine surgery-Endocrinology multidisciplinary joined conference

• Interviewer for Medical student applicants (2019-present)

• Interviewer for Internal Medicine residency program applicants (2015-present)

• Reviewer of applications and Interviewer for Endocrinology and Metabolism Fellowship Program applicants (2015-present)

• Poster judge at the Annual Medicine Research Symposium (2019-present)

• Creator and manager of the annual inpatient/call schedule for Clinical Faculty for the Division of Endocrinology (2015-present)

• Member of the Inclusion and Diversity Commitee (2021-present)


II. Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System

• Co-manager of the Thyroid ultrasound and biopsy program (2015-present)

• Creator and manager of the annual inpatient/call schedule for Clinical Faculty for the Division of Endocrinology (2015-present)

• Member of the IRB Committee (2020-present)




III. National
American Society for Bone and Mineral Research

• Annual meeting oral presentations moderator (2019-present)
• Member of the Annual meeting abstract reviewer committee (2020-present)

Dr. Ambrogini is fully committed to all aspects of academic medicine. In addition to research and clinical care, she is committed to teaching. As such, she is actively involved in educating fellows, residents, medical students and physician assistant students.
Dr. Ambrogini is a teaching clinical attending for the endocrinology fellows in both the outpatient and the inpatient services at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System (CAVHS). She provides core curriculum lectures for fellows (3 lectures/year) and mentors fellows during their clinical research activity. Dr. Ambrogini is the Chair of the Program Evaluation Committee for the fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism since 2016 and also a member of the Clinical Competence Committee for the fellowship program since 2020.
Dr. Ambrogini is the supervisor attending for internal medicine and radiology residents during their endocrinology inpatient rotation and supervised internal medicine residents as attending in the inpatient internal medicine ward service in 2015. She also supervises two internal medicine residents every academic year in her general endocrine clinic at UAMS as part of their outpatient curriculum. Dr. Ambrogini presents endocrine topics to the internal medicine residents during their yearly lecture series. She also interviews applicants for the residency in Internal Medicine and also serves as a Poster judge at the Annual Internal Medicine Research Symposium.
Dr. Ambrogini serves as clinical preceptor in the Practice of Medicine for first year medical student since 2019 and teaches medical student diabetes type 1 and 2 with a standard lecture and team base learning since 2020. Those lectures are part of the Endocrine/Reproduction Model. She is a mentor for first year medical students for his summer research as part of the Honors in Research Program. Dr. Ambrogini interviews applicants for medical school at UAMS.
Since 2014, Dr. Ambrogini serves as clinical preceptor for Physician Assistant Student at UAMS (1-2 students/semester). This activity includes reviewing the clinical history, the physical exam, the diagnostic assessment and the therapeutic plan with Dr. Ambrogini who guides them through the process.
Dr. Ambrogini has presented 9 between Grand rounds and Med-Path presentations at both UAMS and CAVHS
All the evaluation from fellows, internal medicine residents, medical students and physician assistant students have been overwhelmingly positive and she has been rated as excellent in all categories.

Dr. Ambrogini is a physician scientist with extensive training in clinical and basic science, and a special interest in the pathophysiology of bone diseases. During the first part of her training as a resident in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of Pisa, Italy, she performed clinical and translational research on primary hyperparathyroidism. She conducted one of the first randomized controlled clinical trials on asymptomatic primary hyperparathyroidism, demonstrating the benefits of the surgical approach on bone mass and quality of life. The results of these studies were published in one of the leading journals in Endocrinology, the “Journal of Endocrinology and Clinical Metabolism”. She was also involved in translational research investigating the relationship between somatic and germline mutations with clinical manifestation of primary hyperparathyroidism (sporadic and familiar) and parathyroid carcinoma. After completion of her first residency in Endocrinology and Metabolism, she entered a PhD program at the University of Pisa. To perform her PhD studies and to follow her interest in bone diseases, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Stavros C. Manolagas at UAMS as a post-doctoral research fellow. During the three and a half years of her training under the direct supervision of Dr. Maria Almeida, she acquired extensive skills on basic research including generation of new mice models and she was involved in several projects. Her main project demonstrated the role of the FoxO transcription factors in bone pathology, and this work led to a paper in Cell Metabolism. She was also involved in projects aimed at understanding the molecular mechanism of the estrogen deficiency-induced bone loss and the role of oxidative stress in the age related-bone loss. After the end of the PhD/Post-doc training, she repeated a clinical residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at UAMS and pursued the career as a physician scientist in the Unites States. During her clinical training, she continued basic research in the lab, which resulted in several publications in high-impact journals. During the last year of her clinical fellowship, she began investigating the role of lipid peroxidation products in bone homeostasis, in collaboration with Dr. Witztum at the University of California in San Diego. Those studies showed, for the first time in vivo, the role of oxidation specific epitopes and the natural antibodies that defend against them in bone metabolism under both physiologic and pathologic conditions, paving the way for a new anabolic therapy for osteoporosis. The results of this work were published in Nature Communications and journal of Bone and Mineral Research. Dr. Ambrogini is currently continuing to work on this project and she has found that blocking oxidation specific epitopes prevents age-related bone loss, fat accumulation and worsening glucose intolerance. In addition, she started a translational study to investigate if endogenous levels of antibodies against oxidation specific epitopes correlate with bone mineral density in humans. She is also working to establishing a tissue back for bone specimens at UAMS.
Her research has been supported by intramural and extramural funding. She received ~ $180.000 dollars in intramural funding. In 2018 she was a project leader in a COBRE grant (PI Dr. Charles O’Brien) and in 2019 she was awarded her independent funding with her first VA merit grant (RO1 equivalent).
Dr. Ambrogini is an author in 31 publications (3231 citations), her H-index is 20 and i10-index is 27. She has published 85 abstracts and she have given 13 oral presentations and 17 poster presentations as first or last author at national and international meetings. Four of her oral presentations received awards from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. In recognition of her research and clinical contribution, she received an award by the CAVHS leadership in 2019.

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