Exposure-safety relationship for acyclovir in the treatment of neonatal herpes simplex virus disease.

Dr. Danny Benjamin is the Principal Investigator and Chair of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Pediatric Trials Network. The Network is responsible for designing and leading clinical trials of off-patent medicines in children of all ages across all therapeutic areas. The team has established, or is actively studying, the correct dosing and safety of more than 70 of the most commonly used medicines in children. Each of these trials is conducted under an Investigational New Drug (IND) application with guidance from the Food and Drug Administration for labeling.

The Pediatric Trials Network has directly impacted the healthcare of over 90% of American children.

Signature programs of the Network include clinical trials in premature, term infants, breast feeding mothers, and obese children. Over the past 10 years, Danny’s group has enrolled more premature infants, at more sites, in more clinical trials of off-patent anti-infectives under an IND than all other academic medical centers, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies in the world, combined.

Danny is recognized by the National Institutes of Health as a premiere mentor and educator. His research program serves as a platform to train students and early career investigators. Danny’s group has a clinical research summer program for high school and college students that has a focus on trainees under-represented in medicine, and he is the primary mentor for medical students, residents, subspecialty fellows, and multiple junior faculty. He has been the primary or secondary mentor for 10 faculty who have received career development awards and who have then gone on to secure their own funding.

Danny's service to the community is expressed through his passion for coaching baseball. He has coached over 500 recreation league, travel league, and scholastic baseball games and he is the head coach of Smith Middle School, the 5-year reigning southern conference champions. Danny and his wife own a charitable non-profit that provides athletic and fitness opportunities for disadvantaged school-aged boys and girls.

I am an Adult and Pediatric Rheumatologist and care for patients with a wide variety of autoimmune and rheumatic diseases, including: systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile arthritis, vasculitis, and sarcoidosis, among others. I have a special interest in using musculoskeletal ultrasound to optimize diagnosis and treatment decisions at the bedside.

I am also a clinical researcher at the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI). My research interests are in clinical trials and precision medicine through population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling. I obtained my PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. I serve as the principal investigator on several grants studying hydroxychloroquine and azathioprine pharmacokinetics and exposure-response in lupus, as well as principal investigator or co-investigator for several clinical trials at the DCRI. Additionally, I am an Assistant Scientific Director for the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) Registry- the largest registry of children with rheumatic diseases in North America.

I am involved in 4 major areas of research:
1) Neuroprotection. Working with colleagues from Cell Therapies, we have added to Duke's experience participating in pivotal trials of hypothermia for term newborns with moderate to severe hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) by completing, with Duke CTSI support,  phase I studies of autologous cord blood cells and allogeneic cord tissue derived mesenchymal stromal cells for these infants.  and developing and currently leading a multicenter, double-blind randomized clinical trial of autologous cord blood cells or placebo in term infants with moderate or severe HIE. 
2) Genomics. We at Duke have been in the NICHD Neonatal Research Network (NRN) since 2001. I led the NRN's development of an Anonymized DNA bank of samples collected from 1,000 extremely low birthweight infants, with phenotype information linked to the samples. This resource has been the basis for multiple candidate gene, and genome wide scan analysis, and has identified variants associated with severe retinopathy of prematurity and necrotizing enterocolitis. We partnered with the Vermont Oxford Network-Rady Genomics collaborative to bring 48 hour turnaround Whole Genome Sequencing to patients in the Duke Intensive Care Nursery, and are continuing work with Medical Genetics faculty to keep Duke at the forefront of testing the effectiveness of applied next-gen sequencing in the NICU. 
3) New Technologies: I  collaborated with Drs. David Millington from Duke and Vamsee Pamula (a Duke Pratt School graduate), from BAEBIES Inc, on prototype new technology devices for use in newborn screening for lysosomal storage disease as well as multiplex chips for screening for hyperbilirubinemia and related conditions, as well as working with Dr. Pamula and Dr. Michael Freemark (Peds Endocrinology) on screening panels for hypoglycemia and hypothyroidism, and with investigators from UAB on an Acute Kidney Injury panel.  I continue active collaborations with Dr. Cynthia Toth and the DARSI lab in pediatric ophthalmology, and Pratt School investigators to develop and apply use of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for retinal imaging that will assess associations between retinal neurovascular development, brain development, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. We continue with a comparative trial of the value and effectiveness of utilization of OCT compared with the current standard indirect ophthalmoscopy for ROP screening in the NICU. 
4)Microbiome in Micropreemies and health outcomes of periviable infants.  I have worked with multiple epidemiology researchers to assess practice variation within our center, and within the Neonatal Research Network centers, to identify how variation in practice can influence outcomes, with a particular focus on antibiotic use. This work demonstrated strong associations between high empirical antibiotic use in infants with sterile cultures and subsequent morbidities and mortality. This discovery has led to strong collaborations and new initiatives by early career faculty leading studies of the evolving microbiome, leading to hypothesis generation re: the microbiome and optimal growth in extremely preterm infants.

Dr. Smith completed his residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in neonatal medicine at Duke University Medical Center in 2004 and 2007, respectively. He completed an MHS in clinical research from Duke University in 2006 and an MPH in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. His research is focused on pediatric drug safety, neonatal pharmacology, and the epidemiology of neonatal infections. Dr. Smith is or has been the protocol chair for more than 14 studies of drugs in infants and children. He is the Principal Investigator for the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Coordinating Center.