Kate Kyler

Kate Kyler, M.D., MSc, FAAP is a pediatric hospitalist and KL2 Scholar at the Frontiers Clinical & Translational Science Institute, affiliated with the University of Kansas Medical Center and Children's Mercy Kansas City. She recently completed a clinical pharmacology fellowship at Children's Mercy Kansas City and is establishing her independent research program focused on drug dosing in pediatric populations.

Dr. Kyler's research centers on understanding how obesity impacts medication response in children with asthma. Her primary areas of investigation include:

• Clinical pharmacology of systemic corticosteroids
• Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in pediatric obesity
• Single-cell sequencing applications in inflammatory response
• Personalized drug dosing strategies for children with obesity
• Translational research bridging clinical observations with laboratory findings

As a KL2 Scholar, Dr. Kyler is conducting her project "Obesity's influence on systemic corticosteroid exposure and response in children with asthma" which investigates how obesity alters steroid processing and effectiveness in children experiencing asthma exacerbations. Her work involves comparing inflammatory blood cell responses and blood steroid concentrations between children with and without obesity.

Dr. Kyler's scientific awards include the prestigious KL2 Scholar designation. Her mentors are Bridgette Jones, M.D. and Elin Grundberg, Ph.D. With approximately one in four children presenting with asthma attacks having obesity, her research addresses a critical gap in pediatric pharmacology where current dosing guidelines don't account for obesity despite associated worse health outcomes.