Dr. Kirkland Wilson, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist whose laboratory focuses on the study of small molecule inborn errors of metabolism using chromatographic techniques. He received his MD and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine through the Medical Scientist Training Program, and his graduate work was completed in the laboratory of Dr. Henri Brunengraber. For his PhD, he studied the effects of analyte accumulations in disorders of propionyl-CoA metabolism. He next completed a dual Pediatrics-Medical Genetics residency at the combined Children's National Hospital/National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) residency program in Washington, DC. He remained at the NHGRI to additionally complete a laboratory-focused Clinical Biochemical Genetics fellowship and then a patient-focused Medical Biochemical Genetics fellowship. During his fellowship time, he worked to develop a novel methodology for analyzing amino acids using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) as well as began his work developing novel pretreatment strategies for dried blood spot cards to improve sample stability.
Research Information
Research Interests
Dr. Wilson seeks to develop and apply alternative, and low-cost, analytical techniques to the study of inborn errors of metabolism in order to improve access and availability to care for this patient population. Diseases of interest include aminoacidopathies, organic acidopathies, andfatty acid oxidation defects, and his research is focused on:
- Studying small molecules and metabolomic pathways using HPLC techniques
- Developing assays which can be implemented in low-resource areas
- Adapting and improving at-home/out-of-hospital sampling options for diagnosis and monitoring of patients
- Investigating novel uses of small molecule compounds as potential therapeutics in a broader array of diseases