Jennifer L. Goldman, MD
Associate Program Director, Clinical Pharmacology; Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Kansas School of Medicine
Full Biography
Jennifer Goldman, MD, Clinical Pharmacology, Infectious Diseases, along with a research team that includes Whitney Nolte, PhD, and Bob Tessman, PhD, received a $2,109,345 R35 program grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant is for their study “An integrative approach to identify biomarkers and investigate mechanisms of adverse drug reactions” and it covers a project period of May 5, 2025-February 28, 2030 (Award No. 1R35GM156410-01).
Idiosyncratic adverse drug reactions (IADRs) pose serious health and economic burdens, Dr. Goldman explains. We don’t fully understand why some people have unusual or bad reactions to certain medicines. That’s because we don’t have enough detailed models to explain how these reactions happen, and the way people react can be very different and hard to predict.
For this study, Dr. Goldman and her team will bring together information about how drugs are broken down in the body, how their byproducts might cause problems, and how a person’s immune system and genes react to them.
When certain drugs are broken down in the body, they can create byproducts that stick to proteins. This can be a sign that the drug might cause a harmful reaction in some people. These byproducts can also trigger the immune system, but scientists haven’t studied much about how these drug byproducts and the immune system interact.
Dr. Goldman and her team will focus on trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX), a commonly used antibiotic, more widely known as Bactrim. TMP-SMX is associated with unpredictable, life-threatening IADRs including severe skin, liver, and lung injury. It’s also been associated with lung failure, of which Dr. Goldman and Dr. Jenna Miller have been studying.
“This will help us understand why some people have bad reactions to certain drugs, such as TMP-SMX, and find warning signs doctors can use to prevent those reactions in the future,” explains Dr. Goldman. “The overall goal is the safer use of drugs.”
Co-investigators on the study include Dr. Nolte, Dr. Tessman, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Priscilla Flores-Ascencio, Clinical Pharmacology. Collaborators include Elin Grundberg, PhD, Genomic Medicine Center, and Elizabeth Phillips, MD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.