STELLA NOWICKI
Professor Dr. Stella Nowicki is a graduate of Gdansk University Medical Academy (Subfacultas Stomatologica), Gdansk, Poland 1983. She is the founder and CEO of STAR(Standing Together Against Relapse) Addiction and Wellness Clinic in Franklin, Tennessee, USA and a retired Endowed Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN), at Meharry Medical College (MMC) in Nashville, TN.
Dr. Stella Nowicki, the daughter of Wiktor Szpakowski, a polish veteran of World War II was born in 1957 in Slupsk, Poland. After medical school she completed three postdoctoral fellowships; the first in oral biology at Helsinki University in Helsinki, Finland, followed by molecular microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas (TX) and the last in human immunology at the Veterans Administration Hospital affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. Dr. Stella Nowicki has held multiple leadership positions in academics and enterprise such as: Research Laboratory Director in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at The University of Texas Medical Brunch (UTMB) in Galveston, TX, USA; Honorary Faculty member at The Sealy Center for Vaccine Development, UTMB, and Honorary Faculty Member of UTMB Graduate School. She was the President of The Women’s Faculty Association at UTMB and Co-organizer of the International Pathogenic Neisseria Conference in the year 2000.
From 2005, she served as the first Scientific Director of the Women’s Health Research Center at Meharry Medical College in alliance with Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN. Her efforts were largely financially supported by multiple grants that she was awarded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). In 2005 she was also awarded Tenure and Endowment as a Full Professor in the Departments of OB/GYN and Microbiology and Immunology, MMC in Nashville, TN. She continued on from 2009 to 2016 as the Director for Collaborations and Partnerships for the Meharry Clinical and Translational Research Center (MeTRC) also supported by the NIH. She simultaneously held a seat on the Scientific Review Committee for the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR).
Dr. Stella Nowicki is recognized as a world-leading translational research scientist, holds 2 US patents, and has served as President of The Nowicki Institute for Women’s Health Research since 2016. Her primary research interests included microbial virulence of N. Gonorrhoeae and the pathogenesis of infections in pregnancy and preterm labor. She publishes extensively in top peer-reviewed journals with over 200 publications, multiple book chapters, and international presentations, lectures, and excels in large-scale funding for translational research, institutional programs, and infrastructure focused on developing a young cadre of clinical scientists with a total grant value of more than $38M, not including her 22 individually awarded grants.
Among her many awards and recognitions, Professor Nowicki has been recognized for her outstanding research contributions in Immunology, Microbiology, and Women’s Health and elected as the first female faculty member of the James W. McLaughlin Fellowship for Excellence in Immunology Committee, UTMB, 1999, and was also elected as an Honorary Member of the Polish American Medical Society in Chicago, USA, 2014. Additionally she was one of only twelve women featured as the most Distinguished Female Professionals of 2017.
She has served on international and national research committees such as: The International Pathogenic Neisseria Society, The International Infectious Disease Society for Ob/Gyn, 1993- 2008; The International Women’s Leadership Association; and national associations such as the NIH, American Society for Microbiology, since1991, American Association for the Advancement of Science,1993–20023, The Association of Professors of OB/GYN, since1997, and The Infectious Disease Society for OB/GYN, since 1998.
In addition to her wildly successful research career, Dr. Stella Nowicki is a beloved mentor, leader, published poet, abstract painter, ballroom dancer, loving and supportive wife, and dedicated mother of three. She has been a member of the National Authors Registry (American Literature) since1998, Kosciuszko Foundation (Polish Literature) 1995-2002, and The Polish American Medical Society (PAMS) from 2015-present. In 2015 Dr. Nowicki published a book of poetry by the title of “Confidance”, which was subsequently awarded “The Gold Seal of Literary Excellence”.
Dr. Nowicki is also an ATTC Certified Counselor, and has provided opioid addiction counseling since 2015. Currently she works at STAR Addiction and Wellness Clinic, the first addiction center in Spring Hill, TN, established by Drs. Stella and Bogdan Nowicki in 2018. At her clinic, Dr. Stella Nowicki uses her award-winning book of poems and inspirational quotes as a therapeutic approach to inspire healing thoughts and positively impact patients’ recoveries from chronic opioid addiction.
Research Contributions: One of the major problems in human health is morbidity and mortality due to chronic or recurrent infections. Over three decades, Dr. Stella Nowicki’s laboratory in collaboration with Dr. Bogdan Nowicki’s laboratory has uncovered significant, perhaps fundamental, mechanisms of steroid hormone regulated immune responses that control host risk for immune injury and/or infection. Our observations have changed paradigms across broad biomedical fields crucial for understanding pathogenesis, diagnosis, and therapeutic strategies for reducing human morbidity and mortality.
Dr. Stella Nowicki discovered an exclusively human factor that is used by N. Gonorrhoae to cause pelvic inflammatory diseased (PID) and bacteremia, and subsequently published the first animal model to study gonococcal infection in vivo. She pioneered new diagnostic methods to identify a new gonococcal virulence factor, and provided the evidence that a novel bacterial protein has the potential to serve as the first gonococcal PID vaccine. Dr. Nowicki was among the first to show that vitamin D3 deficiency dramatically effects the human immune system by controlling the expression of significant molecules like CD55 and TLR4, and could be responsible for many diseases like preterm birth, preeclampsia, infertility, and heart disease; and applied these discoveries to racial disparities and inequities amongst people of color. She also identified a new bacterial antigen as a potential candidate for an Alzheimer vaccine, found that E. coli bearing Dr adhesin recognizes renal interstitial receptors to establish persistent intracellular infection leading to subclinical renal injury and chronic renal infections, and was an instrumental part of the team that first cloned E. coli ligand Dr adhesin and show that CD55 (DAF), a molecule that protects our tissues from immune injury, is a tissue receptor for E. coli (NEJM, 1988). She has proposed that hormonal adaptations of pregnancy are the unique time during which this process is hazardous to the fetal-maternal unit, uncovered that steroid hormones and two host factors, nitric oxide and TLR4 , responses increase maternal-fetal risk for infectious complications. She also developed the first atomic model of CD55 and Dr adhesin. Dr. Nowicki’s translational research expanded our understanding of CD55’s role in infertility, endometrial carcinoma, renal transplant, preterm labor (AJRI 2009, JAMA 2000), and the mechanisms of septicemia. Current studies explore CD55 as a therapeutic target for steroid hormones including Vitamin D3 in the context of chronic inflammation, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases. Building off of her work in chronic inflammatory pathologies, she has expanded her research to focus on chronic opioid addiction, fighting one of the greatest health threats of our generation. Through a retrospective analysis of risk factors for opioid addiction, Dr. Nowicki and her team are delving into clinical translational work that explores these risk factors among patient populations affected by analgesic opioid treatment, with a particular emphasis on the potential predictive factor of surgery as a predecessor to opioid addiction (manuscript in preparation).
Dr. Stella Nowicki, DDS
Founder and CEO, STAR Wellness Clinic
101 Forrest Crossing Blvd #105b, Franklin, TN 37064
Mob No: 615-440-9836
E-Mail: stellanowicki18@gmail.com