Featured Researchers

John R. Yates, PharmD, BCPS

Title:  Opioid Administration and the Effects on Clostridioides Difficile Infection

Our research looks at the impact of gastrointestinal side effects of pain medications and whether they can cause worsening of colon infections caused by a bacteria known as Clostridioides difficile.

Jennifer Ferris, MSHS, CCRC

Title:  Enhancing Clinical Research: The Role of the Office of Research Support

Clinical research studies performed at the University of Tennessee Medical Center evaluate new ways to diagnose and treat patients, which can improve patient care. The Office of Research Support provides invaluable resources to assist with all aspects of clinical research to ensures success.

Jonathan Wall, PhD/Emily Martin, PhD

Title:  Solving an Insoluble Problem: Developing Diagnostics and Therapeutics for Amyloidosis

Amyloidosis was recently called “Alzheimer’s of the Heart” because clumps of protein deposit in the heart muscle, resulting in a type of heart failure that is hard to accurately diagnose and difficult to treat.  Our research focuses on understanding how these proteins deposit in the heart and why the body does not clear them in addition to developing new ways to diagnose and treat the disease. 

Jill Maples, PhD

Title: Improving the health of women and infants in Tennessee by understanding the impacts of physical activity and metabolism. 

Studying the metabolic capacity of a patient to functionally adapt to stressors, such as medications, a high-fat meal, or a single exercise session, can provide a deeper understanding of overall health and potentially predict future disease risk. Additionally, any physical inactivity is a modifiable risk factor for a wide variety of diseases, which is why it is critically important to study the impact of physical activity and metabolism as it relates to health.

Michael Karlstad, PhD

Title:  Shock, Inflammation, Nutrition, and Diabetes Research

The research program is focused on inflammation, burns, sepsis, wound healing, as well as insulin production in diabetes, metabolic trauma, and nutrition as they relate to critical illness.  Investigating the mechanisms underlying these important clinical problems may lead to directed therapies that can improve the outcome of the diabetic or critically ill patient.

James McLoughlin, MD, FACS

Title: Tennessee Preoperative Assessment Tool (TPAT) – predicting individuals at high risk for complications.

Predicting complications from surgery is challenging.  Our validated questionnaire is a tool that can potentially predict individuals at high risk for surgical complications.  If predicted prior to surgery, these individuals can be enrolled in pre-habilitation to improve their health status and reduce the chance of a complication.

Christopher Brett, MD

Title:  Developing novel imaging agents to address unmet needs in patients with cancer

Many lung cancer patients are too frail to undergo a lung biopsy, and so are treated with targeted radiation based on lung imaging with suspicious nodules. In Tennessee many lung nodules are in fact caused by exposure to benign fungal spores in the air. We are developing PET tracers to identify these benign lesions to reduce unnecessary treatment as well as other clinical problems faced by patients with cancer.

Shaunta Chamberlin, PharmD

Title: Fostering Health & Knowledge to Improve Patient Care and Well Being: Updates in Family Medicine Research.  

The UT Department of Family Medicine Knoxville research program focuses on exploring innovative ways to enhance patient access and improve outcomes through a holistic approach that integrates enhanced education into patient care.  By combining progressive research with compassionate practice and improved patient understanding of their care, we strive to empower patients, improve health literacy and ultimately achieve better outcomes for all.

Joseph Jackson, MD

Title: Circumventing Barriers in Effective Virotherapy of Brain Tumors

The goal of the cancer therapeutics research group within the UT Graduate School of Medicine is to inspire the body’s immune system to recognize and kill brain tumors. To this end, we have engineered viral therapeutic agents designed to enhance patient outcomes that can locate and kill tumor cells while simultaneously activating the immune system.

Deidra Mountain, PhD/Connor West, BS/Caroline Moses, BS

Title: Vascular Research and the Development of New Nanoparticle Therapies

The Vascular Research Laboratory is dedicated to the study of peripheral vascular disease and its prevention.  Our primary interest lies in the research and discovery of lipid nanoparticle therapeutics that can be used for targeted vascular drug delivery to improve surgical outcomes following balloon angioplasty, vascular stenting, and vascular bypass graft surgery. 

Deidra Mountain, PhD

Title: The Women in Science Initiative at the Graduate School of Medicine

The Women in Science (WIS) initiative aims to foster the development of our junior and mid-level female faculty into leaders in academic medicine and biomedical sciences. This initiative was borne out of a desire to increase the retention of our brightest female faculty at the GSM, by supporting the women who lead our groundbreaking medical research programs. This program provides support for female faculty to pursue scholarly research activities that enhances their standing in the academic community and draws attention to the talent at the GSM. 

 

Deidra Mountain, PhD

Title: Advancing Access to Careers in Medicine Scholars Program (AACMSP) – A Educational Program at the GSM for UTK Students

The engagement of students from underrepresented and underserved groups in the STEM disciplines and medicine continues to be a challenge. Efforts to encourage and support students from various backgrounds to pursue a career in medicine not only benefits students but also the future patients they will care for. The AACMSP was established to provide UTK undergraduate students from historically underserved backgrounds a mentored biomedical research experience and professional development mentoring opportunities to encourage and support their pursuit of careers in medicine and/or translational sciences.

Greg Low, MD

Title:  Prognostic Value of Circulating Tumor DNA for Rectal Cancer

Circulating tumor DNA arises from cancers with the body and can be identified in patients' blood streams. We are looking to correlate the levels of patients' circulating tumor DNA to predict response to neoadjuvant/preoperative radiation and chemotherapy and select patients for surgery or non-operative therapy.

Rajiv Dhand, MD, FCCP, FACP, FAARC, FRSM

Title: Chronic Respiratory Diseases (Asthma and COPD) and their links to COVID-19 and Long COVID

Our team is interested in studying new inhaled therapies for management of asthma and COPD, especially among patients in the hospital with acute exacerbations of their illness. We are also investigating how pre-existing asthma and COPD influence the severity of COVID-19 and the development of Long COVID after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Jillian Lloyd, MD/Patricia Roberson

Title: Conquering Pain Together: A non-pharmacological pain intervention for breast cancer patients and their family.

The opioid crisis has been devastating our East Tennessee communities and we seek to mitigate this crisis by cutting it off at the pass through reducing patient pain experience. Our program, Conquering Pain Together, teaching breast cancer patients and their family member pain coping techniques they can do together in a way the reduces the stress that increases pain while harnessing the family support that decreases pain.

Jonathan DeLong, MD

Title:  Applied Uses for Artificial Intelligence and Machine-Learning Models in Complex Liver and Pancreas Surgery to Enhance Pre, Intra, and Postoperative Workflows

Machine-learning is a form of artificial intelligence that uses statistical models, algorithms, and large datasets to draw inferences from patterns in the data without explicit instructions. Computer vision applies this technique to images or video. Recent advances in computational power and hardware have lead to an explosion in AI use cases with the power to transform how we evaluate, prepare for, and perform complex surgical oncology operations.

Ashton Brooks, MBBS

Title: Post-Operative Narcotic Use - Overprescribing For All Breast Surgery Types

The aim of this study is to evaluate current prescribing practices for our breast surgeons and subsequent utilization of these medications for patients with breast disease undergoing surgical intervention with the goal of developing a standardized protocol.  Our study showed that the average narcotics prescribed is significantly higher than the average narcotics used regardless of surgery type, suggesting over prescription of opioids in the post operative setting for all patients undergoing breast surgery.

Tom Masi, PhD/Stacy Stephenson, MD

Title: Abdominal Fat: Worthless or Medically Useful?

Our research focuses on using stem cells from abdominal fat to grow new tissues to heal patient injuries due to accidents and cancer. Our goal is to heal a patient’s injuries and restore function such that they can return to normal daily activities.

John Bell, MD, FACS/Eric Heidel/Gulsah Onar

Title:  Reaching and Serving Underserved Rural East Tennessee: TARGET: healTh Assessment pRoGram via mobilE ouTreach

Data from the TARGET Grant Project funded by the Cancer Research Endowment identified significant barriers to accessing certain health screenings and care in rural East Tennessee, notably in Scott and Union Counties.  In response, with the aim of gauging changes in knowledge and awareness through 30 and 90-day follow-up surveys to evaluate program success, a Modified Needs Assessment Survey was developed to investigate knowledge and service gaps in existing community resources, while concurrently distributing a customized Community Education and Resource Guide to women undergoing breast cancer screenings on the Mobile Mammogram Unit in these distressed counties.

Stephanie Vanterpool, MD, MBA

Title: Transitioning our focus in the management of opioid use: from pain to function

The opioid epidemic has stemmed, in part, from using opioids to treat pain without understanding the cause of pain, or fully evaluating the impact of pain on function, or quality of life. We have developed a novel functional assessment tool, the Tennessee Functional Status Questionnaire (TFSQ) that quantifies functional status and the devastating impact of pain. We will use the TFSQ, with other objective clinical data, as part of our innovative Transitional Pain Program (TPP) to construct a personalized pain treatment and opioid weaning plan for each patient to achieve a meaningful change in opioid use while optimizing pain management and improving the quality of life of our patients.

John Griepentrog, MD

Title:  Healing With Light: Treating Pneumonia with Blue Light

High intensity light can harness circadian biology to reduce organ injury and is currently being trialed as a novel therapy in patients with sepsis.