Dr. Leonard Bacharier's research is focused on clinical research to help understand and improve the care of children with allergic and respiratory diseases, with a focus on asthma and food allergy. His clinical/translational research efforts are directed at the pathogenesis of allergies and asthma in early life and approaches to asthma management throughout childhood, including multi-center, federally funded clinical trials in asthma. He is actively studying novel treatment strategies for adolescents with severe asthma. Dr. Bacharier also collaborates with multiple investigators and research groups around the nation studying factors related to the development, prevention, and management of childhood asthma and food allergies. He also co-leads the Vanderbilt University Medical Center CoFAR Clinical Research Center, part of the NIAID CoFAR program studying novel approaches to the diagnosis and management of food allergies.

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Abnormalities of cardiac rhythm are a common and serious public health problem. However, the therapies used to treat arrhythmias are often ineffective, and can sometimes even exacerbate arrhythmias. Research in this laboratory is directed at elucidating mechanisms underlying abnormalities of cardiac rhythm and mechanisms underlying variable responses to antiarrhythmic drug treatments. Since antiarrhythmic drugs affect the function of cardiac ion channels, it is one working hypothesis in the laboratory that variable responses to drug therapy may reflect variable function or expression of genes encoding ion channels or proteins involved in drug disposition. Thus, a major focus of work in the laboratory is elucidation of factor(s) that determine ion channel gene expression in cardiac tissue. Approaches include identification of new genes, identification of DNA polymorphisms and characterization of their functional effects on disease and drug responses, and modulation of expression in cultured heart cells (e.g. by antisense) and gene knockout in mice.

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Dr. Patterson conducts translational research evaluating host-microbiome interactions during critical illness. She is investigating the gastrointestinal microbiome in patients with congenital heart disease and critical illness to establish ways microbiome changes impact patient nutritional and infectious disease outcomes. Her multidisciplinary team is working to establish a microbiome biorepository which will be foundational in the study of microbiome and metabolomic alterations during specific disease states and discovering treatments to optimize the gastrointestinal microbiome and improve patient outcomes.

Dr. Hipp is interested in the rigorous application of quality improvement and implementation science methodologies to improve the care of critically ill children with heart disease, particularly focused on sedation, delirium, and early mobilization.

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