March 31, 2025
About 200 interdisciplinary health researchers and clinicians from across the University of Missouri System attended the second annual NextGen Pathways Symposium in March at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Student Union building.
The event showcased pathbreaking research projects from system investigators at all career stages, forged new interdisciplinary collaborations with the potential to improve global health and gave young researchers an understanding of the translational science pipeline.
“The best part about meetings is the margin between the presentations,” said Dave Arnold, executive director of the NextGen Precision Health initiative. “So we have short presentations to pique your interest, and if you’re curious about something or you want to propose a project, there are chances to connect with the speakers. And we have an amazing range of different types of cutting-edge science.”
The symposium featured 41 poster presenters and 73 total participants from Mizzou, along with three faculty researchers who took the main stage to give talks: Zachary Berndsen, assistant professor of biochemistry; Jussuf Kaifi, associate professor of surgery and Margaret Proctor Mulligan Endowed Professor in Cancer Research; and Anne Sales, professor of family and community medicine and nursing.
For faculty members like these – along with postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and even a few undergraduates – the Pathways event is designed to raise the visibility of promising work that could lead to major impacts for human health.
“The things we get to do, the questions we get to ask; it really is a privilege,” said Arnold. “So it’s our responsibility to share that work with the world.”
On average in the U.S., it takes 14 years for a new treatment to make it from the discovery phase to patients. That long translation process involves a series of experts from different disciplines. NextGen’s goal is to help those teams coordinate from the very beginning to shorten their path to a new drug, device or other innovation.
Next year, Pathways will be held March 12-13 at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.
NextGen Precision Health
Highlighting the promise of personalized health care and the impact of large-scale interdisciplinary collaboration, the UM System’s NextGen Precision Health initiative is bringing together innovators from across the system’s four research universities, MU Health Care and industry partners in pursuit of life-changing precision health advancements. It’s a collaborative effort to leverage the strengths of the entire UM System toward a better future for Missouri’s health. The initiative is anchored at the Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health building, a state-of-the-art research facility which is expanding collaboration among researchers, clinicians and industry partners.
Dennis Ridenour, president and CEO of BioNexus KC, presented a progress report for the health sciences in our region as well as personal stories about navigating career possibilities and learning from past failures.
2025 Speakers
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Justin Randall, PhD |
Jussuf Kaifi, MD, PhD |
Anne Sales, PhD, RN, FAAN |
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Joe Stanley, PhD |
Dennis Ridenour |
David Arnold, MD |
Anne Sales, MU professor of family and community medicine and nursing, is focused on ensuring the things we learn from research make it all the way to the clinic through a process called implementation science.
UMKC Biochemistry and Molecular Biology PhD candidate Nicholas Frede explains his project titled “An engineered layered neural tissue to model human CNS circuitry.”
Mackenna Rodgers, an undergraduate research assistant in the lab of Associate Professor Peter Cornish who plans to attend medical school at Mizzou, presented a poster about developing a broad-range in vitro system to probe for plant-based translational inhibitory compounds.
Paula Monaghan Nichols, associate dean of research administration for the UMKC School of Medicine, asks a question during a presentation by UMSL College of Optometry professor Carl Bassi.
Jussuf Kaifi, Margaret Proctor Mulligan Endowed Professor in Cancer Research and associate professor of surgery at MU, gave a talk about how advanced new preclinical models like organoids (3D tissue cultures replicating tumor growths) can be used to inform care decisions for cancer patients.
Sunjeev Phull, a NextGen Postdoctoral Fellow based at Missouri S&T in the lab of Mark Towler, explains his "glass-based approach for treating metastatic bone disease."
Sandy Saunders, a NextGen postdoctoral fellow based at the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center, studies how autonomic circuits in the brainstem become dysfunctional in disease.
Tareq Nabhan, assistant clinical professor in UMSL's College of Optometry, presents his poster entitled, "Teleretina Evaluation using Autonomous Methods."
Missouri S&T student Omar Rinchi conducts a real-world demonstration of "Remote Breathing Monitoring Using LiDAR Technology" with Bowen Liu, a UMKC assistant professor of mathematics and statistics.
Third-year MU medical student Jeffton Pierre highlighted his research on patient understanding of the resident physician's role in orthopaedics.
Four winners of the poster competition each received $1,000 travel awards to help them present their work to new audiences. From left to right: Treiy Tinich (UMKC), Julieth Andrea Sierra Delgado (MU), Omar Rinchi (Missouri S&T), and Sid Jones (UMKC).
Reviewed 2025-03-31