Q&A with Wesam Ismail: Assessing the Safety of Kidney Transplant Medications in Children
September 12, 2024Wesam Ismail, a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa, is using real-world data to evaluate the impact on pediatric transplant patients of different types of drugs that help prevent the body from rejecting a new kidney.
About 800 children undergo a kidney transplant each year in the U.S., and almost all of them are given drugs that help prevent the body from rejecting the new organ. However, these drugs work by weakening the immune system, and there is little information about how these drugs affect infection risk in children with kidney transplants.
Wesam Ismail, MS, a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa, received a 2024 PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in Value Assessment and Health Outcomes Research for his work using real-world data to evaluate the impact of different types of these drugs on pediatric patients.
Ismail will use data from children who had kidney transplants at different transplant centers across the U.S. between 2000-2019 to assess which medications may work better for which types of patients.
Watch this video to learn about Ismail and his research.
Learn more about the PhRMA Foundation’s fellowship and grant opportunities. Check out more researcher stories on our blog.
