Translational Osteoimmunology Lab

Lab Director – Sarah Little-Letsinger, MS, PhD

Dr. Little is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Translational Osteoimmunology Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a BS in Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise at Virginia Tech in 2015 and a MS (2017) and PhD (2020) in Exercise Physiology from Texas A&M University. Her doctoral research focused on inflammatory bone loss caused by space radiation and diet-induced obesity. She completed her first postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine in Endocrinology and Metabolism (2020-2021). Her research at UNC focused on mechanisms linking bone marrow adiposity (including cell fate decisions in mesenchymal stem cells) with bone mass and strength. In this work, she became very interested in the bone marrow microenvironment, particularly in how the immune system regulates bone. Around this time, she learned that modern humans demonstrate skeletal gracilization (thinning of bones) relative to our ancestors. Temporal associations between a substantial rise in infectious disease burden (Neolithic transition) and skeletal gracilization deeply sparked her interest. She then completed a second postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University in Evolutionary Anthropology (2021-2025) to gain a new understanding of bone structure and strength in humans and to gain new perspectives in evolutionary theory and environmental physiology.

In her free time, Dr. Little loves to be physically active outdoors – whether it’s hiking, walking her two dogs, playing soccer, snowboarding, or just running around with her son and husband. She is also an avid reader, especially on philosophy. Some of her favorite authors include Dostoevsky, Hesse, Camus, Kundera, Pirsig, and de Beauvoir.