Kim Brouwer
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Pharmacology
Two people can take the same pill and get very different results, partly because of how their livers move drugs in and out of cells. Transport proteins in the liver act as gates.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology
- Topics
hepatic drug transport
drug transporters
OSTα/β
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Identify drugs that change how hepatic transporters move within liver cells or alter their phosphorylation sites, and test how these changes affect transporter function, using an optimized in vitro liver cell system.
- Optimize transporter expression, location and function in 3D liver organoids and liver-on-a-chip systems, and use these models to improve computer predictions of drug disposition and drug interactions.
- Define how transporters in cholangiocytes, the cells lining the bile ducts, and their interplay with hepatocytes (the main liver cells) contribute to drug handling and transporter-mediated drug interactions.
- Test hepatocyte-derived exosomes and endogenous biomarkers as noninvasive readouts of liver transporter function, and build physiologically-based pharmacokinetic and quantitative systems pharmacology models from the resulting data.
More about the research
They control how much drug enters liver cells and how much is pumped into bile, the fluid the liver releases into the gut. Many factors change how well these transporters work, including disease, genetics and other drugs. Understanding these effects could make medicines safer and more effective.
Why it matters
Liver transporters help determine whether a drug works or causes toxicity, and they vary from person to person. Better ways to detect drug interactions, measure each patient's transporter function, and predict drug levels with computer models could help drug developers and clinicians choose safer doses. They could also help avoid harmful combinations of medicines.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Shijie Cao
University of Washington, WA·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Engineer synthetic microbiome mimics: polymer nanoparticles that release bacterial metabolites and are coated with outer membrane vesicles from chosen bacterial strains, with core and shell varied independently to separate structural from metabolic signals.
Na Li
University of Connecticut, CT·Pharmacology
Measure the particle drifting effect, where tiny drug particles aid absorption, in vitro and in vivo, and build mass transport and PBPK models to predict drug absorption from amorphous solid dispersions.
Ravikumar Majeti
University of Alabama, AL·Pharmacology
Synthesize polyesters with controlled topologies and use them to probe transcytosis, the ferrying of particles through cells, at the gut-blood barrier across in vitro, in vivo, and in silico experiments in preclinical species.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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