February 5, 2024
UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy fellow, Miramar Kardouh, Pharm.D., was selected as a recipient of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT) 2024 Presidential Trainee Award and the 2024 David J. Goldstein Trainee Award.
The Presidential Trainee Award is given by the scientific program committee who selects the top scoring abstracts by clinical pharmacologists and translational scientists in training. The David J. Goldstein Trainee Award is given to the highest scoring trainee abstract in honor of the longtime ASCPT member, who was committed to trainees and the future of the discipline of clinical pharmacology.
“I’m ecstatic to get this recognition by ASCPT,” said Kardouh. “It’s great that ASCPT acknowledges trainees and encourages us to continue contributing to the field.”
Both awards are in recognition of Kardouh’s abstract focused on developing a model for predicting maternal and fetal exposure to monoclonal antibodies during pregnancy. Monoclonal antibodies are given as a treatment for pregnant women with autoimmune and inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis.
“It’s an important topic because expectant mothers with these diseases usually need to continue their therapy during pregnancy to prevent flares, which consequently can result in pregnancy complications,” said Kardouh. “Although many of these therapies have not shown alarming toxicities for the fetus or infant based on current data, it’s still important to quantify how much is being transferred and determine the factors involved in this transfer to understand any complications associated with these biologics.”
Her abstract describes a mathematical model to predict how much of the monoclonal antibodies make it to the fetus. The model is in the initial stages, but her goal is for this framework to be developed further in the future as more data emerges to ultimately support clinical decisions to inform dosing and treatment timeline and strategies.
Kardouh’s UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and Certara Pharmacokinetics/Pharmacodynamics Fellowship will be completed at the end of June. She plans to go into the industry space focused on clinical pharmacology and pharmacometrics. She shared that she enjoys the hybrid approach of modeling and clinical pharmacology to understand processes mathematically and then applying that knowledge clinically to personalize drug therapy. Teaching and mentoring are also passions of hers, and she hopes to one day be back in academia.
As a current fellow, her faculty mentors include Yanguang (Carter) Cao, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics (DPET) and Jacqueline Tiley, Ph.D., assistant professor in DPET. She is also mentored by Kim Brouwer, Pharm.D., Ph.D., William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor in DPET and associate dean for research and graduate education, Daniel Crona, Pharm.D., Ph.D., associate professor in DPET, and by Mark Shelton, Pharm.D., and Felix Boakye-Agyeman, M.D., Ph.D., at Certara. Kardouh will attend the ASCPT 2024 Annual Meeting in March in Colorado to present her study and be recognized in the opening session.
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