Bridgette L. Jones, MD, MSCR
Marion Merrell Dow Endowed Chair in Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology; Assistant Dean, Student Affairs, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Education Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Kansas School of Medicine
Full BiographyKathryn E Pavia, MD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine
Full BiographyBridgette Jones, MD, MSCR, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, is continuing her work as a multiple principal investigator (MPI) on a National Career Development Program for Researchers in Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology award from National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Alongside Dr. Jones are MPIs Daniel Gonzalez, PhD, PharmD, Duke University; Daniel K. Benjamin, MD, MPH, PhD, Duke University; and Adriana H. Tremoulet, MD, MAS, University of California San Diego.
The National Career Development Program for Researchers in Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology is an NIH K12 program funded by the NICHD that trains and supports early-career faculty members pursuing research in pediatric clinical pharmacology.
Children’s Mercy is one of five institutions providing expertise to early-career junior researchers across the country. Each year a junior researcher specializing in pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamics and clinical trials, pharmacoepidemiology and data science or translational research receives funding for a mentored research study to help develop their investigative career. Junior researchers selected for the K12 program have abundant support, training and mentorship to help guide their career development and ensure their transition into independent pharmacologist researchers is highly informative.
Kathryn Pavia, MD, Critical Care Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, is one of the early-career faculty members receiving funding. For her project, “Determining and Modeling Sources of Pharmacokinetic Variability for Critically Ill Children Treated with Tri-Azole Antifungals,” Dr. Pavia received a one-year, $108,000 award that covers a project period of Aug. 1, 2025-July 31, 2026.
Critically ill children with invasive fungal infections experience up to a 50% mortality rate. It is essential for antifungal treatments to have enough medication exposure to kill organisms when treating invasive fungal infections. Current dosing recommendations for antifungal prescriptions are set for children who are in stable condition. However, critical illnesses can affect the way a patient’s body reacts to the medication. Additionally, current pediatric population pharmacokinetic models for antifungal medications only include children of stable conditions.
“Critically ill patients are probably the most different from the typical patients included in initial safety and efficacy studies,” said Dr. Pavia. “Critical illness can affect every organ system and every step of medication absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination.”
Dr. Pavia plans to learn more about precision dosing in critically ill children receiving treatments for invasive fungal infections to understand the medication behavior and to develop a model that shows how critically ill patients react to antifungal treatments. Dr. Pavia hypothesizes that antifungal medication exposure varies depending on the critically ill pediatric patient.
“It is vitally important that we study how to most effectively use medications for such high-risk children in order to support their care during their most vulnerable phase of illness,” said Dr. Pavia. “Patients with invasive fungal diseases are an incredibly high-risk population and learning more about how to optimize the medications to treat these infections is a critical step in supporting their recovery.”
Not only does this study help bridge the gap in knowledge in antifungal treatments for critically ill pediatric patients, but it also guides Dr. Pavia toward her career goal of finding ways to better care for children with critical illnesses. The program also allows Dr. Pavia to further develop her research skills through extensive training including workshops on population pharmacokinetic models.
Dr. Jones serves as a mentor and the contact at Children’s Mercy for the national program while Jennifer Goldman, MD, MSCR, and Steve Leeder, PharmD, PhD, serve as co-mentors on Dr. Pavia’s study. Additional support is being provided by Jon Wagner, DO, FAAP; Laura Ramsey, PhD; Paul Torren, PhD; Allison Scott, RN, BSN, CCRC; and the Analytic Core for Assay Development Support team.
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.