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I am a MD/PhD trained investigator with an interest in conducting stakeholder-engaged clinical trials to advance the care of people living with diabetes and chronic kidney disease. My research path has spanned experiences in small molecule synthesis and drug development, molecular biology, animal models of disease, and most recently clinical trials. My early focus was on basic research, but I sought collaborative mentors who were interested in basic mechanisms involved in drug discovery that would ultimately impact human health. My early work resulted in six publications (three first author publications, including a cover article for鈥�Developmental Cell) and was funded by a Ruth L. Kirschstein Individual Predoctoral National Research Service Award (NIH NHLBI听F30 HL118932, PI: Klein, Mentor: Caron). More importantly, my basic science training brought unique understanding of听the drug development process and influenced my career goal to work in clinical trials, where I can bring bench research to the bedside.听

As an endocrinology fellow, I transitioned from basic science to diabetes clinical trials. During this transition, I have continued to publish successfully. I have been fortunate to work with pharmaceutical companies on both large and small clinical trials, but I have been consistently disappointed in the lack of representation in clinical research and the time it takes for effective therapies to reach patients at need. As a diabetes clinical trialist, I have become passionate about closing the 鈥渞esearch-to-practice-gap鈥� through the conduct of stakeholder-engaged clinical trials. I have also become increasingly interested in leveraging the electronic medical record to expand clinical trial reach and to encourage early use of state-of-the-art therapeutics. While I have gained important experience as an investigator on industry sponsored clinical trials, I require foundational training in stakeholder engagement, implementation science, and informatics in order to independently design, execute, and implement stakeholder-engaged clinical trials that are broadly representative of the disease population.

As a tenure-track junior faculty member (starting in July 2022) with 75% protected time guaranteed and a start-up package, I aim to conduct new research with potential to (1) improve reach and representativeness of the clinical trials conducted in the Endocrine Diabetes and Obesity Clinical Research Unit (EnDO CRU) and (2) hasten to acceptance of effective therapeutics. To do so, I will focus on to elucidating the setting-specific barriers and feasibility of enrolling patients from North Carolina community-based practices and develop a tool to facilitate identification and enrollment of eligible patients across North Carolina. This work has potential to enhance enrollment efficiency, increase trial participant representativeness, and deepen community practitioner buy-in, all essential factors in promoting post-trial adoption of effective therapies.

I have assembled a mentorship team that consists of leaders in stakeholder engagement and implementation science, clinical informatics, and diabetes and kidney disease clinical trials. Dr. Jenny Flythe (stakeholder engagement and implementation science) will serve as my primary mentor. Drs. Emily Pfaff (clinical informatics) and Buse (clinical trials, diabetes) will serve as co-mentors. Under their guidance, I will pursue coursework in implementation science that will ultimately help me to engage key stakeholders to design and implement studies that best serve the patient population and the providers who care for them. I will also pursue training in basic informatics to facilitate effective collaboration with data scientists to develop tools aimed at increasing study population diversity and encourage early use of approved therapies. My mentorship team is enthusiastic about my proposed work and has the expertise required to ensure success. Each is deeply committed to training me to become an independent investigator. Completion of these aims and training objectives will cement the pathway toward becoming an independent human subjects researcher capable of developing novel therapeutics that are quickly and broadly distributed to improve both diabetes and advanced kidney disease care.