Project Title: Investigation of the role of IGFBP-1 in a murine model of acute kidney injury
Joseph Hunter Holthoff M.D. Ph.D. will be joining the College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nephrology on July 1^st.  The KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award will support his efforts to identify novel therapeutic targets for acute kidney injury.
Acute kidney injury is defined as a rise in serum creatinine or a decrease in urine output.  It effects 10-20% of hospitalized patients and is associated with increased mortality.  Among patients that develop severe kidney injury and require renal replacement therapy, the mortality rate approaches 50%.  Despite decades of research and clinical trials, there are still no specific treatments for acute kidney injury.  The lack of therapies result from a poor understanding of the mechanisms of acute kidney injury.  Recently, specific molecular biomarkers of acute kidney injury have been identified and hold great promise for the discovery of novel therapeutic targets for acute kidney injury.  During his KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award, Dr. Holthoff will investigate the role of a protein,Insulin-Like Growth Factor Binding Protein 1 (IGFBP-1), which is significantly increased in the urine of patients that develop acute kidney injury following cardiothoracic surgery.  The goal of these studies is to reveal new therapeutic targets to treat acute kidney injury which can be translated from his animal model to clinical therapies.
Dr. Holthoff completed the combined M.D./Ph.D. program at UAMS in 2014.  He then completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency at UAMS in 2018.  He served as internal medicine chief resident from 2018-2019 and will finish his nephrology clinical fellowship in June 2021 at UAMS.  He will join the College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in the Division of Nephrology on July 1^st.
 
Mentors:
John Arthur M.D. Ph.D., Professor and Chief of Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, UAMS
Luis Juncos M.D. Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at UAMS and Director of Nephrology at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System
Rick Edmondson Ph.D., Associate Professor in the College of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Shree Sharma M.D., Nephropathologist and Laboratory Director, Arkana Laboratories

Project Title: A pilot study of developing T cell-based cancer immunotherapies for African American and Hispanic populations
Yong-Chen “William” Lu, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology in the UAMS College of Medicine and a Member in the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. The KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award will support his research in developing T cell-based cancer immunotherapies for African American and Hispanic populations.
In recent clinical trials, T cell-based cancer immunotherapies have shown strong clinical responses for patients with cancer. Patients who experience complete, durable responses are likely cancer free. One of the major requirements for this new type of treatment is that only patients with certain types of human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) are qualified. However, the majority of previous studies have been focused on common HLAs for the Caucasian population. As a result, cancer patients within the African American and Hispanic populations are far less likely to qualify for these treatments in the near future. To address this, he plans to focus on the development of new T cell-based immunotherapies specifically for the African American and Hispanic populations. These efforts will potentially bring new treatments for cancer patients from underserved populations. Furthermore, the knowledge and research tools obtained from this study can also apply to other types of immune-related treatments for the underserved populations, such as treatments for infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Lu joined the UAMS as a new faculty member in 2021. He received his Ph.D. training at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University of Toronto, Canada. After finishing his Ph.D. training in 2009, he became a postdoctoral visiting fellow at Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH). He was promoted to a research fellow position in 2014 and a staff scientist position in 2016, prior to joining the UAMS.
Mentors:
Mayumi Nakagawa, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Pathology, UAMS College of Medicine; Co-leader, Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences Program, Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute; Drs. Mae and Anderson Nettleship Endowed Chair in Oncologic Pathology.
Terry Harville, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Pathology, Laboratory Services and Internal Medicine, UAMS College of Medicine; Medical Director, Histocompatibility, Immunogenetics and Transplantation Laboratory.
Steven Post, Ph.D., Professor and Vice Chair for Research, Department of Pathology, UAMS College of Medicine; Director, UAMS Tissue Biorepository and Procurement Service; Director, UAMS Experimental Pathology Research Core.
Alan J. Tackett, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UAMS College of Medicine; Deputy Director, Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute; Scharlau Family Endowed Chair of Cancer Research; Director, Center for Translational Pediatric Research; Director, NIH IDeA National Resource for Proteomics.
 

Project Title: Quantifying Clinical Team Social Network Influences on Care of Medically Complex Patients Using an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
Tremaine Williams, Ed.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the UAMS College of Medicine and an Assistant Dean for the UAMS Graduate School.  As a formally-trained, organizational and training researcher, Dr. Williams’ research focuses on testing interventions addressing the organizational and behavioral determinants of clinical information quality to improve the design and usability of electronic health records through the application of social and behavioral science.
Dr. Williams’ KL2 project adds to the growing work expanding the focus on the primary care workforce and organizational factors that have been identified as influences on the outcomes of patients with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs). MCCs are associated with higher mortality rates, functional decline, and diminished quality of life when compared to those who have one or no chronic conditions. Nationally, 81% of Americans age 65 years and older and 50% of Americans age 45 to 65 have multiple chronic conditions. However, MCC prevalence in Arkansas has been ranked as the second highest of all 50 states among adults between the ages of 18 to 45. The state of MCCs not only poses a critical risk for individual health, but it is increasingly recognized as a risk to value-based care and population health due to the enormous care-related costs. With regard to spending, the top five percent of medically complex patients account for nearly 50 percent of the nation’s spending on health care. Dr. Williams’ project fuels intervention development by 1) determining how changes in the EMR information flow among primary care teams influence care outcomes of medically complex patients and 2) identifying residual EMR information flow needs of primary care teams in managing medically complex patients. Dr. Williams hopes to leverage the information gained from his project to improve the outcomes of medically complex patients and reduce the costs on the healthcare system.
Mentors: 
Kevin W. Sexton, M.D., Associate Director Healthcare Analytics, Institute for Digital Health & Innovation, UAMS; Associate Chief Clinical Informatics Officer for Innovation, Research, and Entrepreneurship, UAMS; Associate Chief Medical Officer, UAMS; Associate Professor, Department of Surgery; Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics; Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management
Thomas Powell, M.D., M.S., Assistant Professor & Director, Clinical Informatics Consultation, Department of Biomedical Informatics
Ahmad Baghal, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Director of AR-CDR, Department of Biomedical Informatics
Riley Lipschitz, M.D., Assistant Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine

Project Title: Innovative Solutions to Streamline Data Collection, Exchange, and Utilization in Translational Research
Maryam Y. Garza, PhD, MPH, MMCi, is an Instructor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the UAMS College of Medicine.  The KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award will support her efforts to evaluate the potential for standards-based solutions to streamline data collection, improve data quality, and reduce data collection time within the context of clinical registries and the optimization of clinical research.
As more federal regulations require reporting to clinical data registries, the role of registries in clinical practice, clinical research, and public health has never been more significant.  Registries provide a rich source of information that can be leveraged to improve patient and population health outcomes.  That said, registries often rely on manual medical record abstraction (MRA) to extract EHR data and can act as a primary data source for use in clinical research studies.  These manual approaches have had a negative impact on cost and data quality, primarily due to the complexities associated with MRA.  Standards-based solutions have the potential to address these issues by automating part or all of the data collection process, and rigorous assessment and comparison of performance on data quality, site burden, and cost outcomes is urgently needed.  Thus, this project will evaluate the Health Level Seven (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard in the context of three existing clinical data registries for which manual MRA is the prominent mechanism for data collection.  The results of this will inform other standards-based solutions for improving data collection by providing evidence to support the use of the HL7 FHIR standards for the direct extraction of EHR data in research.
Dr. Garza joined the Department of Biomedical Informatics in 2017 from the Duke Translational Research Institute, where she worked on and managed several HL7 data standards development projects in collaboration with the FDA.  She received her Master of Management in Clinical Informatics (MMCi) from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in 2013, and later completed an MPH (2018) and a PhD in Biomedical Informatics (2020) from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.  She draws upon nearly a decade of experience in clinical research informatics and data management to inform her evolving research, which seeks to challenge and shift current research practice by utilizing new standards and helping to assure that these new healthcare data standards support research.
Mentors:
Fred Prior, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine, UAMS; Professor of Radiology, College of Medicine, UAMS
Joseph Sanford, M.D., Associate Vice Chancellor – Chief Clinical Informatics Officer (CCIO), UAMS; Director, Institute for Digital Health and Innovation (IDHI), UAMS; Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesiology, College of Medicine, UAMS; Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine, UAMS
Kevin Sexton, M.D., Associate Chief Medical Officer, UAMS; Associate Chief Clinical Informatics Officer for Innovation, Research, and Entrepreneurship, UAMS; Associate Director, Institute for Digital Health and Innovation (IDHI), UAMS; Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, UAMS; Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine, UAMS; Associate Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Medicine, UAMS; Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Medicine, UAMS
Meredith Zozus, Ph.D., CCDM, Professor, Div. Chief and Director of Clinical Research Informatics, Department of Population Health Sciences, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio

Project Title: “Targeting Homologous Repair to Overcome Genotoxic Therapy Resistance in Pancreatic Cancer”
Adam Wolfe, M.D., Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). As a physician-scientist, he treats patients with gastrointestinal cancers at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute using state-of-the-art radiation therapy. His research focus is on discovering novel therapy strategies for the deadly disease of pancreatic cancer. In the lab, he utilizes genetic and proteomic approaches to address the fundamental mechanisms of genetic alterations in cancer cells which result in heightened DNA repair leading to radiation and chemotherapy resistance. Dr. Wolfe received a KL2 Mentored Career Development Award in 2021 to investigate the mechanism underlying the role of oncogenic KRAS in regulating the nuclear DNA repair enzyme RAD18, a major promoter of DNA repair in pancreatic cancer. The goals of this KL2 award are to propel the independent physician-scientist career of Dr. Wolfe, and to understand the mechanisms of efficient DNA repair in order to develop novel targeted therapies for more effective treatment strategies of pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Wolfe joined the UAMS faculty in 2021 after completing his residency in Radiation Oncology at the Ohio State University (OSU) where he completed a Holman fellowship researching DNA repair mechanisms of resistance in pancreatic and thyroid cancers.  He was awarded research funding from both the Radiation Oncology Institute (ROI) and Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) during his fellowship at OSU. He received his dual M.D. and Ph.D degrees from the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at The University of Texas McGovern Medical School and MD Anderson Cancer Center Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 2016.
Mentors:
Fen Xia, M.D., Ph.D. Professor, Chair, Department of Radiation Oncology
Alan Tackett, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Kevin Raney, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Marjan Boerma, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Justin Leung, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Radiation and Cancer Biology