Kim L. R. Brouwer, PharmD, PhD George H. Cocolas Distinguished Professor Division Chair Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics

Research Interests

Mechanisms of hepatic uptake, translocation and biliary excretion; drug transport; aberrant gastrointestinal drug absorption phenomena; pharmacokinetics.

It was almost three decades ago, but Kim Brouwer, PharmD, PhD, still remembers a young patient she met as a pharmacy resident at University of Kentucky’s Albert B. Chandler Medical Center .

“There was a little boy who came in with Reye’s Syndrome, a rare condition characterized by swelling in the liver and the brain that can affect children recovering from a viral infection, which is often triggered by aspirin,” Brouwer says. “You should never give aspirin to children, but thirty years ago they didn’t know that.

“This little boy ended up dying because his liver just shut down. I remember thinking what a shame it was that we didn’t have a better understanding of what caused drug-associated liver injury, and why we couldn’t have done a better job predicting who would be susceptible to that sort of reaction.

“This incident certainly caught my attention with respect to drug disposition and the liver. I was interested in pharmacokinetics, so how the liver handled drugs was a natural fit. I developed a strong interest in this area because of many experiences as a pharmacy resident.”

During graduate school, Brouwer studied pharmacokinetics and liver metabolism/disposition of drugs. She later completed her postdoctoral training with a professor who was internationally recognized for her research in liver impairment associated with pregnancy and drug therapy.

“During my training, I realized that there was a career’s worth of work to be done in understanding how the liver handles drugs, and why some drugs cause liver damage,” says Brouwer, chair of the School’s Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics.

She has indeed made a career out of studying drugs and the liver, and her knowledge on the subject is something of a rare commodity.

“Very few labs in the United States have focused on these important research questions,” she says. “Worldwide there are just a handful of investigators that have expertise in this area.”

Click the links below to read about Brouwer's work.