# Research Career Scientist

> **NIH VA IK6** · PORTLAND VA MEDICAL CENTER · 2024 · —

## Abstract

Current Research Activities
Ototoxicity is a common side effect of platinum-based chemotherapy that leads to significant negative health and
psychosocial consequences among adult cancer survivors (Miaskowski et al. 2018; Dillard et al. 2022).
Prospectively monitoring patients with cancer for early signs of ototoxicity provides the opportunity to mitigate its
adverse effects when the oncologist is able to modify drug treatment, and/or the audiologist can deliver timely
rehabilitation (ASHA 1994; AAA 2009). Unfortunately, significant barriers exist to integrating audiology supportive
services into oncologic care. Principal among these are barriers related to care and referral coordination with
oncology, audiology workload, and lack of protocols. Development of interventions is further hampered by
uncertain pathophysiology and variable patient susceptibility to ototoxicity, particularly as it relates to the
development of tinnitus and difficulties understanding speech in noise. The result is that ototoxicity management
(OtoM) as delivered currently in VA is elective care that occurs sporadically and fails to inform the patient’s
ototoxicity risk stratification, oncologic treatment or survivorship plan (Konrad-Martin et al. 2021, 2023).
The objectives of Dr. Konrad-Martin’s program of research are to: (i) construct tools to forecast individual patient
susceptibility to ototoxic hearing loss and tinnitus; (ii) test new hypotheses developed in animal models, about
the cochlear changes that trigger tinnitus and temporal processing problems in humans; and (iii) characterize
ototoxicity and OtoM from the perspectives of the patient and provider. For this research, patients receiving
cisplatin, carboplatin, or oxaliplatin are providing behavioral and physiological measures of auditory function
before, during, and after treatment. A subset contribute a blood sample for a genetic association pilot study.
i. Forecasting model development. We have developed a prognostic model to mathematically transform the
patient’s personal and treatment features into the expected post-treatment audiogram, which can be expressed
on a variety of measurement scales to address the clinical concern for patients, audiologists and oncologists
(McMillan et al. in progress). Into this model, we have incorporated population-based data from unexposed
controls on normal test-retest variability in pure tone thresholds. For Dr. Konrad-Martin’s SPiRE, model predictors
additionally include the presence and numbers of specific single nucleotide polymorphisms within four genes
selected for their potential association with cisplatin ototoxicity, including: ACYP2 (Xu et al., 2015); COMT
(Hagleitner et al., 2014); TPMT (Ross et al., 2009); and TRPV1 (Jiang et al., 2019).
ii. Relating ototoxic symptoms to the underlying auditory injury. A combination of wideband acoustic reflex (AR)
amplitude growth (Westman et al., 2021), and distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) levels is being
used ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10864863
- **Project number:** 1IK6RX005044-01
- **Recipient organization:** PORTLAND VA MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** DAWN L KONRAD-MARTIN
- **Activity code:** IK6 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-01-01 → 2028-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10864863

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10864863, Research Career Scientist (1IK6RX005044-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10864863. Licensed CC0.

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