The Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes offers a vibrant and growing research environment. Faculty and fellow research projects include both basic science and clinically-oriented projects aimed at understanding and treating endocrine disease. Particular areas of interest include the pathogenesis of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, the regulation of glucose metabolism, the regulation of bone growth and development, and the integrated response to hypoglycemia. These research projects receive funding from the NIH as well as from pharmaceutical sponsors.
Please see below to learn more about our investigators and their research efforts.
Kristie I. Aamodt, MD, PhD
Dr. Aamodt’s research focuses on the microenvironmental, molecular and genetic factors involved in development of the endocrine pancreas and diabetes pathophysiology with the goal of identifying new strategies to treat diabetes.
Click here to learn more about Dr. Aamodt's research.
Karishma Datye, MD, MSCI
Dr. Datye is the Medical Director of the Diabetes Program at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Her research focuses on barriers to care faced by adolescents with Type 1 diabetes, with a particular interest in developing interventions to improve self-management and glycemic outcomes. She has completed quality improvement training and applies these principles to advance care within the diabetes and endocrinology clinics. She would also like to update her clinic interest: Type 1 diabetes mellitus, Type 2 diabetes mellitus, Growth disorders, Disorders of puberty, Thyroid disorders, Pituitary disorders, Adrenal disorders.
Click here to learn more about Dr. Datye’s quality improvement work.
Daniel Moore, MD, PhD
Dr. Moore's research seeks to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern immune tolerance and to prevent and reverse Type 1 Diabetes. His research has contributed to our understanding of the role played by B lymphocytes in the development of autoimmune disease and transplant rejection and has broadly defined important aspects of the physiology of diabetes.
Click here to learn more about Dr. Moore’s research.
Bill Russell, MD
Dr. Russell studies ways to predict and to prevent type 1 diabetes. He is the Corresponding Investigator of the Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet Clinical Center at VUMC, an active member in the Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet consortium, an international collaboration of prominent centers involved in type 1 diabetes research. TrialNet is funded by the National Institutes of Health to discover treatments to prevent or delay type 1 diabetes in people who are at high risk to develop the disease and to find ways to preserve remaining insulin secretion in those who already have T1D. He led the international abatacept trial (TN18) to determine whether the immune system modulating drug, CTLA4-Ig, (abatacept) can prevent the development of T1D from a very early preclinical stage when blood glucose readings are still normal. He helped establish the Type 1 Diabetes Immunotherapy Clinic at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt to increase the accessibility of newly FDA-approved therapies to patients for the delay and prevention of T1D. The TrialNet Clinical Center at Vanderbilt was instrumental in demonstrating the effectiveness of Tzield (teplizumab), the first of such agents FDA-approved to delay the progression to advanced stages of type 1 diabetes in individuals at high risk.
Click here to learn more about Dr. Russell’s research.
Jill Simmons, MD
Dr. Simmons’ clinical and research interests include type 1 diabetes as well as pediatric metabolic bone disease such as hypophosphatasia, osteogenesis imperfecta, osteoporosis, hypophosphatemia, osteopetrosis and rickets. She has been a successful local principal investigator for multiple groundbreaking clinical trials in metabolic bone disease, including asfotase alpha in infants with severe hypophosphatasia, romozosumab and setrusumab in pediatric patients with osteogenesis imperfecta, and burosumab in pediatric patients with hypophosphatemic rickets. She is also an active investigator in several international longitudinal observational registries and multiple ongoing clinical trials.
Click here to learn more about Dr. Simmons’ research.
Jaclyn Tamaroff, MD, MSCI
Dr. Tamaroff’s research program focuses on the use of wearable technology and the intersection between glycemia, insulin sensitivity, and cardiac disease. She has evaluated the use of continuous glucose monitors and the relationship between dysglycemia and cardiomyopathy in individuals with Friedreich’s Ataxia. She is currently investigating similar questions in individuals with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Additionally, in individuals with DMD or pseudohypoparathyroidism, she is assessing the utility of remote monitoring during research studies to assess glycemia, activity, heart rate, and sleep.
Click here to learn more about Dr. Tamaroff’s research.
Christopher Wilson, PhD
Dr. Wilson's research investigates the role of protein glycosylation in regulating immune tolerance and the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes. His work has demonstrated that aberrant glycosylation on immune cells disrupts the balance between autoreactive and regulatory lymphocyte populations, offering new insight into how self-tolerance breaks down in autoimmune diabetes. He is also investigating the immunological responses of patients with type 1 diabetes to anti-CD3 therapy with teplizumab, with the goal of identifying glycosylation-based biomarkers and mechanisms underlying treatment response. Dr. Wilson co-directs the Aspire Path in Molecular Medicine, a unique training program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the Biomedical Sciences at Vanderbilt that integrates thesis research with clinical and disease-focused areas through didactic coursework, seminars, and mentored experiential training.