Carol E Schrader

Carol E Schrader is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology at UMass Chan Medical School and serves as a faculty member in the Immunology and Microbiology Program (IMP) within the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She also holds a position in the Millennium MD/PhD Program and has served as Vice Chair of the Institutional Biosafety Committee since 2017.

Dr. Schrader earned her BA in Biochemistry from Wesleyan University and her PhD in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2015, she has directed the Flow Cytometry Research Core Facility at UMass Chan Medical School, providing technical expertise and resources to researchers across the institution.

Her research focuses on DNA repair mechanisms involved in antibody class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation (SHM), critical processes for antibody diversification. She has made seminal discoveries regarding the roles of AP endonucleases APE1 and APE2 in these processes, demonstrating how differential expression of these enzymes promotes error-prone repair in germinal center B cells. Her work shows that APE2 promotes SHM while APE1 suppresses it, revealing how the balance between accurate and error-prone DNA repair pathways enables antibody diversity while maintaining genomic stability.

Analysis of her publication record reveals consistent contributions to understanding DNA break formation during CSR, with particular focus on mismatch repair proteins, APE endonucleases, and the regulation of DNA damage responses in B cells. Her most cited work examines the mechanism and regulation of class switch recombination, with significant contributions to understanding how APE1/APE2 expression dynamics influence mutation patterns.

Dr. Schrader has mentored researchers including Klaus Pechhold (now at BioSpyder Technologies) and Travis Williams (Research Associate in Microbiology at UMass Chan). Her laboratory maintains active research collaborations, particularly with Dr. Janet Stavnezer, and has secured substantial research funding supporting investigations into DNA repair mechanisms in B cell biology.