May 15, 2025
Dr. Taylor Hendrixson, UW Pediatrics Assistant Professor, receives 2025 CFAR New Investigator Award
Congratulations to Dr. Taylor Hendrixson, Assistant Professor in UW Pediatrics, for receiving a 2025 UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) New Investigator Award! The two-year award focuses on supporting early career investigators to conduct independent HIV research and apply for future funding to continue their HIV/AIDS research careers.
Dr. Hendrixson is a neonatologist, pediatric infectious disease physician and faculty within the UW Department of Pediatrics. His research has focused on improving maternal and early infant nutrition to optimize growth and improve long-term outcomes in low- and middle-income settings. He works on clinical and clinical-translational trials targeting populations at high-risk for nutritional deficiencies and growth faltering. He is the PI of a K23 award investigating multi-omic interactions of the maternal-breastmilk-infant triad and associations with clinical outcomes among women living with HIV and their infants HIV-exposed uninfected in Kenya.
With support from the new award, Dr. Hendrixson will investigate anemia and iron status in pregnancy among women living with HIV and associations with neurodevelopmental outcomes of children HIV-exposed uninfected to guide future interventional studies.
This project will leverage banked blood samples and data from mother-baby pairs in the Tunza Mwana Birth Cohort – a study aimed to evaluate the association between maternal HIV infection and infant health outcomes through breast-milk mediated pathways. The funding will allow for new iron assays to investigate the associations of iron status and iron deficiency in pregnancy and early infancy with infant neurodevelopmental outcomes at 36 months among women living with HIV and their children who are HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU). This pilot data is a critical step in identifying possible opportunities for intervention that may improve cognitive outcomes of children HEU.
If evidence demonstrate higher rates of iron-deficiency anemia among pregnant women living with HIV and their children HEU despite supplementation during pregnancy, alternative approaches to iron supplementation for this population may be needed. Additionally, iron deficiency in pregnancy and early infancy may influence child neurodevelopment offering an opportunity to improve the long-term health of this group of children HEU. This research aims to set the foundation for a clinical trial of innovative iron supplementation strategies among women living with HIV and/or their children who are HIV-exposed uninfected.
This project is a collaboration between the University of Washington, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Investigators include Christine McGrath (UW), Benson Singa (Kenya Medical Research Institute), Sarah Benki-Nugent (UW), Tracy Q. Dong (Fred Hutch).
We look forward to learning more about the project outcomes in 2027.