Jonghan Kim, PhD

BIOGRAPHY AND RESEARCH INTEREST

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Jonghan Kim is Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical & Nutritional Sciences at UMass Lowell. He obtained a PhD degree from Ohio State University, College of Pharmacy with a study focused on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of proteins. During his postdoc training in the Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases (now Department of Molecular Metabolism) at the Harvard School of Public Health, he investigated the transport mechanisms of metals, such as iron and manganese, through the olfactory mucosa and the brain in relation to genetic, nutritional, and environmental factors influencing metal transport and neurotoxicity. He has published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals including Science, Blood, Nat Commun, and PNAS. He continues to study the pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and toxicology of complex diseases, like iron disorders and metal toxicity. He has received several grants and fellowships, including multiple NIH R01, R21, K99/R00 grant awards, the American Heart Association Grant award, and the Yerby Fellowship from the Harvard. He is a member of several professional societies, including American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and Society for Neuroscience (SfN). His research provides the groundwork to assess the future risk of health effects due to metal absorption from environmental sources and genetic vulnerability and development of novel therapeutic strategies using small and large molecules

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RESEARCH INTERESTS

My research interests center around the characterization of absorption, distribution, and metabolism of drugs and metals, including essential metals (iron, zinc, copper and manganese) and toxic heavy metals (lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic), and metal-induced toxicity in the context of environmental exposure and genetic susceptibility (gene-environment interactions). My laboratory elucidates the relationships between metal/drug transport and hematological, cardiovascular, and neurological disorders in the areas of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, drug delivery, and toxicology. Using various models of iron-deficient anemia and iron-overload disorders, we further evaluate the physiological relevance of genes and molecules responsible for impaired iron transport and metal toxicity – important and current public health issues. We also develop novel therapeutic strategies using small molecules (molecular prosthetics) and large molecules (nanoparticles for gene and drug delivery) based on transport mechanisms that we identified. The very fundamental questions about metal pharmacology and toxicology, i.e., nutritional/genetic/environmental influence on metal transport and toxicity, have applications to both pathophysiology and therapeutics in hematological, cardiovascular, and neurological disorders.