Project Title: Fetal exposure to cannabinoids: exposure, methylation, and neurodevelopmental effects
Stefanie Kennon-McGill, Ph.D., is an instructor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the UAMS College of Public Health. The KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award will support her efforts to evaluate the neurodevelopmental effects and epigenetic changes in children who were exposed to cannabinoids during the gestational period.
Cannabis and cannabis-derived phytochemicals known as cannabinoids, particularly the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and the non-psychoactive component cannabidiol (CBD), have become increasingly popular and widely available for use in the United States due to recent changes in state legislation. While there is a growing effort to evaluate the health effects of cannabinoids, especially during pregnancy, there is still relatively little known about the long term neurodevelopmental outcomes in children born to mothers who used any sort of cannabinoid during pregnancy.
Additionally, the mechanisms behind possible neurodevelopmental changes in children exposed to cannabis prenatally have not been thoroughly explored, particularly in humans. It has been suggested that epigenetic modifications may play an important role in “reprogramming” the developing fetal brain following prenatal exposure to cannabis. Yet, few studies have evaluated this quantitatively in humans. Dr. Kennon-McGill aims to fill these gaps in knowledge by using state-of-the-art analytical methods to quantify THC, CBD, and metabolites in mother/infant pairs where mother reports use of THC or CBD in the final trimester of pregnancy. Her study will also entail neurodevelopmental assessments in the infants at 6 and 12 months of age. The role of DNA methylation as a possible mechanism of importance in neural development will be examined as well.
Dr. Kennon-McGill joined the UAMS College of Public Health in 2017. Prior to her time at UAMS, she received her doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of Kansas Medical Center in 2014 and then completed a two year postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis.
Mentors:
Laura James, M.D., Associate Vice Chancellor, Clinical and Translational Research; Professor, Department of Pediatrics; Director, Translational Research Institute, UAMS College of Medicine
Shuk-Mei Ho, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor of Research; Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, UAMS College of Medicine
John Constantino, M.D., Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics Washington University, Saint Louis, MO
Ricky Leung, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, UAMS College of Medicine
Jeff Moran, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, UAMS College of Medicine

Implementation and Quantification of the General Movement Assessment for Early Detection of Neurodevelopmental Disabilities in Infants

Tara Johnson, M.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics/Division of Pediatric Neurology in the UAMS College of Medicine. She is the Founding Director of the Arkansas Children’s Biomedical Innovations Program. Prior to joining the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute and UAMS faculty in 2018, Dr. Johnson was at Kennedy Krieger Institute and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, where she completed her training in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. Dr. Johnson’s research work is focused on the early identification of infants at high risk for the development of cerebral palsy and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Her KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award project will transform current clinical practice at Arkansas Children’s Hospital by implementing the General Movement Assessment, a low-cost diagnostic tool, to identify Neurodevelopmental Disabilities at an earlier age in high-risk infants. By further enhancing qualitative assessments with quantitative engineering methods, she will advance the technical capability of the General Movement Assessment on a larger scale. She will transform the General Movement Assessment into a quantitative algorithm through her novel artificial-intelligence based analysis of the general movements in healthy and high-risk infants. This work will promote the initiation of proven therapies at a younger age, leading to improved outcomes in children with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities.
Successful completion of her work will bring novel approaches to the “bedside” for early identification and treatment of children with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. She is poised to further develop her knowledge in engineering and clinical research to further benefit individuals from her translational study. Through her translational research, she will transform the standard of care for high-risk infants by incorporating the General Movement Assessment into day-to-day clinical care for these infants at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. The translational impact of the concurrent quantification of the general movements will outperform qualitative analyses and ultimately reach beyond ACH and can be adopted worldwide.
Mentors:
Alan Tackett, Ph.D., Scharlau Family Endowed Chair for Cancer Research; Associate Director for Basic Research, Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute; Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UAMS College of Medicine
Kenneth Knecht, M.D., Associate Professor, Pediatrics, UAMS College of Medicine
Gresham Richter, M.D., President, Physician Hospital Organization, Children’s Health Care System Inc.; Vice Chairman and Professor, Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, UAMS College of Medicine