Addressing the Racial Disparity of Angiotensin Inhibitor Associated Reduction in HFrEF Hospitalizations: Distinguishing Between Race and Ancestry

Shana Littleton will be presenting on 9/25/2023 from 12-1:30pm in room 1544 NUB. A zoom link can be found on the following flier, we hope to see you there!

Shana Littleton earned her B.S. from the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign in Molecular and Cellular Biology in 2019. Following, she completed the Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) at Louisiana State University at New Orleans (LSU-NO) in the department of Pharmacology. Under her mentor Dr. Martin Ronis, she worked on an independent project studying the role of mitochondrial catalase enzymes in alcohol-induced osteoporosis. In 2020, Shana matriculated into the Clinical Pharmacy and Translational Sciences (CPTS) PhD program studying under Dr. Jasmine Luzum in the Precision Pharmacotherapy track. She is now a fourth year Ph.D. candidate. Shana’s research focuses on the pharmacogenomics of heart failure patients, and the title of her dissertation is “Addressing the Racial Disparity of Angiotensin Inhibitor Associated Reduction in HFrEF Hospitalizations: Distinguishing Social and Genomic Factors”. She was recently awarded an NIH F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award. In addition to the CPTS PhD program, Shana is an active member of the graduate community as President of Students of Color Of Rackham (SCOR) and was recently inducted to the Bouchet Honor Society.

Faculty Spotlight

David Frame is a Cell therapy and Immuno-Hematology pharmacy specialist at Michigan Medicine and Clinical Assistant Professor at University of Michigan College of Pharmacy. Dr. Frame earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from St Louis University as well as BS in Pharmacy and PharmD from Wayne State University. He completed an Oncology residency at the University of Illinois in Chicago and then practiced as an oncology, hematology and stem cell transplant specialist at Rush Medical Center in Chicago. While at Rush he also held a faculty appointment in Pharmacology in the Medical school. He developed several clinical services while there including anticoagulation, palliative care, rheumatology and was director of oncology pharmacy research. Dr. Frame joined the University of Michigan in 2005.

At Michigan Medicine Dr. Frame currently is active in caring for and optimizing therapy for stem cell transplant and Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapy patients where he has active research in developing therapies to both minimize toxicity and maximize response. A new line of research is in the development of a potentially new mechanism to treat certain types of graft versus host disease (GVHD), an often debilitating condition effecting both morbidity and mortality after allogeneic transplant. Dr. Frame describes one of his most challenging endeavors is in helping to define therapies for Immuno-Hematology patients, who generally have very rare immunologic disorders that have limited or no therapies available. He is also working with a biomedical engineering group at Michigan to help develop clinical uses for personalized medicine tool that was developed that can measure real time cytokine levels and is helping to adapt it to measure other important assays that are difficult to obtain, including certain types of drug levels. He is currently utilizing this approach to help develop more timely and appropriate therapies for children with Inflammatory Bowel Disorders and is developing protocols for evaluating the use in GVHD, in monitoring immune changes with Tacrolimus, in predicting graft failure with stem cell transplant, and for helping to treat multiple other inflammatory conditions such as hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and macrophage activation syndrome.

Dr. Frame has been active in many organizations including the Hematology Oncology Pharmacy Association where he had served as chair of the research committee, the International Supportive Care in Oncology Pharmacy Practice. He was the scientific chair of the International Foundation for CDKL5 Research for several years and is currently working on developing a pharmacy section of the newly developed North American Immuno-Hematology Education and Research (NICER) consortium.

Dr. Frame has taught in the Michigan College of Pharmacy immunology and oncology therapeutics sections for several years and has had over 200 students and residents on rotation. He has a firm commitment to challenge students to not just learn but to apply their knowledge and to utilize their knowledge from multiple disciplines at one time. As a result, he has helped to develop the pharmacology program and to integrate more clinical aspects of pharmaceutical sciences.

Some of his research publications include:

• Frame D, Scappaticci GB, Braun TM, et al. Defibrotide Therapy for SARS-CoV-2 ARDS. Chest. 2022 :S0012-3692(22)00593-1. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2022.03.046
• Weyand AC, Barbaro RP, Walkovich KJ, Frame DG. Adjustments to pharmacologic therapies for hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis while on extracorporeal support. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2021;68(6):e29007. doi: 10.1002/pbc.29007.
• Song Y, Ye Y, Su SH, et al. A digital protein microarray for COVID-19 cytokine storm monitoring. Lab Chip. 2021;21(2):331-343. doi: 10.1039/d0lc00678e
• Chang L, Frame D, Braun T, et al. Engraftment syndrome after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation predicts poor outcomes. Biol Blood Marrow Transplant. 2014;20(9):1407-17. doi: 10.1016/j.bbmt.2014.05.022.