John Kim, MD, MS
John Kim, MD, an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, was awarded a five-year $3.2 million NIH grant to identify blood protein biomarkers that correlate with early stages of pulmonary fibrosis.
Pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic respiratory illness that can lead to respiratory failure and early death. Majority of pulmonary fibrosis clinical trials have tested therapies in patients who already have a significant burden of fibrosis in the lungs. To have a significant impact on attenuating disease progression, there is a need to identify novel and tolerable therapies for pulmonary fibrosis at all disease stages, from early to late stage. A major step forward to testing therapies that prevent pulmonary fibrosis is identifying individuals at higher risk of developing disease.
In this study, Dr. Kim and his collaborators will identify proteins biomarkers in the blood that predict both early development and disease progression in pulmonary fibrosis. Doing so will be a key step to develop tools that identify individuals at higher risk of developing pulmonary fibrosis and ensure clinical trial enrichment that aims to test preventative therapies.
The research will build on a recent publication by Dr. Kim and his colleagues in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Collaborators on the project include UVA’s Ani Manichaikul, PhD, Debamita Kundu, PhD, Imre Noth, MD, Shwu-Fan Ma, PhD, Yong Huang, MD, MS, Alan Ropp, MD, and Yun Michael Shim, MD. Read more about Dr. Kim’s recently published work in the UVA Health newsroom.
Filed Under: Research