Dr. Jasmine Luzum Earns AACP New Investigator Award
Jasmine Luzum (formerly Talameh), PharmD, PhD, BCPS, Assistant Professor of clinical pharmacy, has won a 2017-2018 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy New Investigator Award. Sponsored by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), the New Investigator Award provides start-up funding for the independent research programs of early-career pharmacy faculty. The $10,000 award will help fund Dr. Luzum’s research into racial disparity in heart failure outcomes.
“Heart failure is a major public health problem, but African-Americans are disproportionately burdened,” explains Dr. Luzum. “African-Americans are more likely to develop heart failure and have poorer outcomes. Beta-blockers are one of the few pharmacologic therapies that can help patients with heart failure live longer, but evidence suggests that African-Americans may not benefit from beta-blockers.”
Her proposed work, Addressing Racial Disparity in Heart Failure Outcomes and Beta-Blocker Response, aims to determine whether a novel regulatory polymorphism in the beta-1 adrenergic receptor, the primary target of beta-blockers, is associated with long-term survival in African-Americans with heart failure, and whether it affects their benefit from beta-blockers. Dr. Luzum also will assess whether the novel regulatory polymorphism interacts with previously identified non-synonymous genetic polymorphisms in the beta-1 adrenergic receptor.
“This research could affect treatment of African-Americans with heart failure because it can determine whether the regulatory polymorphism affects beta-blocker response in African-Americans with heart failure. If so, and if validated, African-Americans with heart failure carrying this genetic polymorphism may be targeted for additional or alternative therapies,” continues Dr. Luzum. “The funding from the AACP New Investigator Award will enabled me to get the necessary data, software, and supercomputer time.”
Dr. Luzum joined the Department of Clinical Pharmacy in the College of Pharmacy in July 2016. She received her PharmD summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008 and her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2013. She completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Ohio State University College of Medicine and Center for Pharmacogenomics in 2016. She became a Board-Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist by the Board of Pharmacy Specialties and an Applied Pharmacologist by the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology in 2015.
