By Gary Moss, University Gazette
Twenty years ago, Kim L. R. Brouwer was a young clinician scientist in Carolina’s School of Pharmacy focused on making a difference in patients’ lives.
She specialized in pharmacokinetics, the branch of pharmacology concerned with the movement of drugs within the body. Brouwer’s particular interest was the science of drug transporters, proteins that play key roles in the absorption, distribution and excretion of many medications — and contribute to the variable response that patients have to the same drug.
In response to this challenge, Brouwer co-invented B-CLEAR® (U.S. Patent No. 6,780,580), which promised the possibility of a reliable method to measure and predict how drugs are handled by the liver to help ensure that they are safe for use before they go to clinical trials and the market.
Today, the technology she helped create is exclusively licensed from the University to Qualyst Inc. And Brouwer, as a Qualyst co-founder and former chair of the company’s scientific advisory board, was honored as Carolina’s Inventor of the Year during the 2019 UNC Celebration of Inventorship.
The Office of Technology Commercialization, which is part of the Vice Chancellor’s Office for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, hosts the event each year to recognize a member of the campus community who has demonstrated a commitment to the University’s culture of encouraging innovation, disseminating knowledge and promoting entrepreneurship.
Read full story at the University Gazette website.
| UNC-CH
