With over 30 years of experience in respiratory pharmacotherapy, pharmacogenomics and pediatric clinical trials, Dr. Kathryn Blake serves as Director of the Center for Pharmacogenomics and Translational Research and as a Principal Research Scientist at Nemours Children’s Health. She has led or collaborated on over 110 clinical trials, authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, and contributed to 12 book chapters on asthma and respiratory disease. Her research has been supported by numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, including a K23 award focused on β2-agonist pharmacogenetics and an R01-funded decentralized clinical trial, MATCH, designed to improve asthma medication adherence in adolescents and young adults across 18 Airways Clinical Research Centers sites.
Dr. Blake has been actively engaged with the American Lung Association since 1999, when Nemours Children’s Health became a participating site in the Lung Association’s Airways Clinical Research Centers (ACRC) network. Since then, she has contributed to every ACRC asthma treatment study. In 2015, Nemours was designated the biorepository site for ACRC, and as the scientific Principal Investigator, Dr. Blake oversees the receipt and storage of more than 500,000 biospecimens supporting the Lung Health Cohort study.
Dr. Blake has played a critical role in shaping national policy and clinical guidelines. She has served on key federal advisory committees, including the NIH Interdisciplinary Clinical Care Study Section, the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Expert Panel Report-4 Working Group and the FDA’s Pulmonary and Allergy Drugs Advisory Committee. She is also Chair of the Nemours Pediatric Institutional Review Board (IRB 2) and has served as a member since 2001.
From 2001 to 2024, Dr. Blake served on the Northeast Advisory Board of the Lung Association of Florida, and in 2024, she joined the Lung Association’s national Scientific Advisory Committee. Her enduring commitment to lung health research, clinical leadership, and public policy continues to drive her contributions to the Lung Association’s mission to save lives by improving lung health and preventing lung disease.
