CCTS Welcomes to New Path to K Funded Research Trainees
The CCTS has long supported the journey of researchers to their first K award through the Davis Bremer Path to K Mentored Career Development Grant for College of Medicne faculty. Now, with the support of the Office of the Chancellor for Health Sciences, the CCTS has created a new, expanded, Path to K Mentored Career Development Grant to support researchers from all the OSU health sciences colleges.
The first of these new Path to K scholars are Audra Hanners of the College of Nursing and Kai Xu of the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Audra Hanners (left), DNP, APRN-CNP, FNP-C, PMHNP-BC, CKNS, is Assistant Professor of Clinical Nursing. Before her faculty appointment, Dr. Hanners worked as a family nurse practitioner in community home care and primary care settings. She also started her own health coaching business. Her clinical and research interest is in health, wellness and disease prevention in the context of evidenc- based practice. Dr. Hanners’s Path to K project is “Keto Prescribed+: A Healthy Thinking and Eating Intervention for African American Women.” This pre- post-intervention study will examine the preliminary efficacy of Keto Prescribed+, an intervention that delivers both a mental well-being intervention and a low carbohydrate dietary intervention, with the goal to relieve obesity, stress, and high blood pressure in African-American women.
Kai Xu (right), PHD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Veterinary Bioscience, College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Xu is new to Ohio State, having spent the last seven years at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, where he participated in the development of vaccines and antibody drugs against several infectious diseases. His primary research interest is focused on understanding the mechanisms of pathogen-host interaction and protective humoral immune responses and applying that knowledge to vaccine and antibody drug design. For his Path to K project, Kai will be exploring anti-bodies from COVID-19 patients to identify those most effective in protecting against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that could be developed into antibody therapies for severe COVID-19 cases.