A Hunch in the Lab Leads Dr. Alexa Weingarden to BIRCWH Fellowship

The physician-scientist is exploring why food allergies affect women more often, and how those differences could point to new ways to protect patients.

When Alexa Weingarden, MD, PhD, noticed that males in her lab seemed to resist a food allergy that was afflicting the females, she wanted to understand why. This gender discrepancy became a central focus of the research that earned her a place in the University of Minnesota’s Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) program.

Dr. Weingarden is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology and a physician-scientist who divides her time between caring for patients and leading a research lab. She joined the faculty in 2024, returning to the University of Minnesota, where she earned her MD and PhD, after completing her training at Stanford University.

As a Twin Cities native, she had always considered the possibility of coming home.

“It was always on the radar as a possibility, but then the opportunity for it came up, and I wanted to go for it,” she says.

The BIRCWH program supports early-career faculty pursuing research in women’s health and sex differences. Scholars receive scientific mentorship, faculty career development and access to a national network of researchers. 

“I heard about the program first through my department chair, Dr. Betsy Seaquist, who really encouraged me to reach out and apply for it,” Dr. Weingarden says. “That turned out to have been a fantastic idea.”

She was selected in March as one of three scholars in the University of Minnesota’s cohort.

Dr. Weingarden’s research focuses on sex differences in food allergies, a condition that has become increasingly common. After adolescence, food allergies are diagnosed about twice as often in women as in men, she says. Her laboratory is working to understand what might account for that difference.

One possibility lies in the immune cells of the gut, particularly regulatory T cells, which help control inflammation. Dr. Weingarden is studying whether androgen signaling promotes the development of these cells and may help protect against food allergy. She is also exploring whether an oral, gut-targeted form of a potent androgen could eventually reduce food allergy while limiting side effects elsewhere in the body.

For much of modern medical history, sex differences received limited attention in research. Dr. Weingarden points to cardiovascular studies conducted largely in men, even though their findings did not always translate directly to women.

“Not all of those things are applicable to women,” she says.

Studying women’s health and sex differences can also reveal biological mechanisms that benefit everyone.

“It’s not as though research into something that’s focused on women’s health or sex differences is only relevant to women,” she says. “I think the goal is that ultimately you’re promoting all of human health.”

Her interest in these questions grew in part from her clinical work. Dr. Weingarden cares for patients with celiac disease and microscopic colitis, two conditions that are more common in women. Seeing that pattern in the clinic made her more likely to notice a similar one in the lab.

That movement between patient care and research is one of the things she values most about being a physician-scientist. Physicians often develop a broad view of disease, she says, while scientists examine a smaller area in much greater depth. Working in both settings allows a clinical observation to become the starting point for a focused scientific question.

“Sometimes something that’s floating around up on the shallow end trickles its way down into the deep, narrow focus, and then it becomes a very new and exciting direction to go in,” she says.