About Me
In his former role as Director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic Innovation and Associate Chair-Research, Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Mercy, Dr. Leeder led a program consisting of multidisciplinary teams of researchers with expertise in analytical chemistry, drug biotransformation, gene regulation, pharmacogenomics, and pharmacokinetics to investigate variability in medication response in children. An important component of the program was to provide an environment in which trainees and early career faculty members from diverse backgrounds could develop as independent investigators in their areas of research interest. These research interests generally are closely aligned with their clinical expertise with the goal of implementing precision therapeutics in their clinical subspecialties to benefit the patients they serve.The Pediatric Precision Therapeutics Area of Interest in the Children’s Research Institute complements the Clinical Pharmacology program at Children’s Mercy, the largest in North America. The Precision Therapeutics program extends the Clinical Pharmacology emphasis on developing individuals to a more institutional level by providing support to pediatric subspecialties interested in adding precision therapeutics to their portfolio of research programs. In this way the program serves as a model of integrated research that will extend throughout the Children’s Research Institute. Dr. Leeder’s research focuses on characterization of the relative contributions of ontogeny, genetic variation and disease to observed variability in drug disposition and response in children. Over the years, these research activities have coalesced into the GOLDILOKs initiative: Genomic- and Ontogeny-Linked Dose Individualization and cLinical Optimization for Kids with current funding as one of four Specialized Centers for Research in Pediatric Developmental Pharmacology supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.