Member Biography

The primary focus of my fellowship research was on developing a foundation for conducting clinical and translational research aimed at optimizing use of anticancer chemotherapy in children. I am particularly interested in ways to improve treatment of children with cancer in Africa. To that end, after being asked by Dr. Pat Loehrer (director of the IU Simon Cancer Center) to serve as interim co-director of the AMPATH Oncology Institute in Eldoret, Kenya, I focused my personalized medicine research efforts on a project at Moi University Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. Given my background and interest in personalized medicine, I took the opportunity to launch a pilot feasibility project that formed the basis for my vincristine research that is currently underway. My project builds on the body of work conducted by my mentor, Dr. Jamie Renbarger, which demonstrated that pharmacogenetic polymorphisms are associated with carefully defined measures of vincristine toxicity, pharmacokinetics, and efficacy. Conducting research in Kenya capitalizes on the great human genetic diversity in Africa to evaluate pharmacogenetic variables as a potential source of interindividual differences in drug disposition and toxicity in the treatment of childhood cancer in the developing world. It is my hope that the proposed project will allow us to develop an understanding of the impact of specific germline genetic polymorphisms on toxicity and efficacy in Kenyan children. The long-range goal of the prosposed project is to optimize vincristine use in pediatric patients with cancer in Kenya and other developing countries. My short-term goal is to publish the findings from the pilot pharmacogenetic/pharmacodynamic work I have done in Kenya to date and to further develop myself as a competitive candidate for submission of a K award during the 2013-2014 academic year. My specific area of interest is the pharmacogenetics of anticancer drugs in Kenyan children. This involves the investigation of tumor response in children receiving specific chemotherapeutic agents and the sensitivity of these individuals to the toxic side effects of the drugs. My goal is to study the clinical relevance and the relationships between genotype and phenotype of important drug metabolizing enzymes, drug transporters, and drug receptors expressed in germline DNA. My long-term objective is to develop into an extramurally funded physician-scientist in the field of pediatric oncology with an emphasis on pharmacogenetics of anti-cancer drugs in children. In doing so, I intend to apply the knowledge of clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenetics to pediatric oncology in order to improve the lives and outcomes of children with cancer.

M.S. - Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN 2010-2013

M.D. - Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN 2001-2005