.jpg?sfvrsn=c3b70fbb_0 "Kristen Boyle")
Kristen Boyle PhD
(She/Her)
Associate Professor
Co-Director, Basic Science Research Core, LEAD Center
- Division of Nutrition, Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine
- Pediatric Nutrition (SOM)
Email Address:kristen.boyle@cuanschutz.edu
Primary Phone:303-724-5969
Mailing Address:
- CU Anschutz
Research Complex II
12700 East 19th Avenue
Aurora, CO 80045
Background
Kristen Boyle, PhD, received her BS from University of Massachusetts in Amherst, her MS from Ohio University and her PhD from East Carolina University.
Research + Funding
In 2013, Dr. Boyle received the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) scholarship from the Ludeman Center through the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The project was titled, “Maternal Programming of Fetal Stem Cells,” and focused on how obesity during pregnancy impacts risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes in the child. Her research team developed a novel model for studying how fetal exposures during gestation impact predisposition for metabolic disease in humans. They tested mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) collected from umbilical cord tissue of human infants after birth, which were used to deeply interrogate metabolism and molecular factors that can change metabolism in the infants’ cells.
“While the financial support and training opportunities have been very helpful to me, the less tangible support provided by Judy Regensteiner, PhD, and Jane Reusch, MD, over the years in the form of advocacy and confidence building, has been invaluable.”—Dr. Boyle.
Transforming Women’s Health
Dr. Boyle’s overarching goal is to identify and implement the best care for mother and child. With her success in developing the proposed infant MSC model during her Ludeman Center-funded research, she was able to receive funding by a KO1 award and several RO1s.
Her group is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health to collect infant MSCs in two separate cohorts investigating the effects of maternal stress and social disadvantage on infant outcomes in collaboration with investigators at University of California, Irvine. They are on their way to establishing infant MSCs as a robust, precise, predictive and mechanistic tool for investigating developmental predisposition for obesity and metabolic disease in human infants.
