Kimberly Butler

Senior Member of the Technical Staff

Kimberly Butler’s major scientific interests relate to detection and separation of normal and disease states and the development of therapeutics for a range of diseases. In the detection realm, she has an interest in the development of sensors and imaging modalities that can both follow normal states in real time and can detect disease states at early stages. The ability to follow both normal and disease states in real time is critical to understanding the development of disease, developing early detection strategies and to develop new therapeutic strategies. Butler’s interest in therapeutics combines with her interests in nanomaterials to focus on the development of strategies to deliver difficult therapeutic cargo, such as CRISPR components, or deliver cargo more specifically to the target of interest. Her research centers on the intersection of nanomaterials and biology, genetics and genome editing, and novel imaging modalities.

Education

Bachelor’s Degree: Biochemistry, Reed College (1996-2001)

Doctoral Degree: Biomedical Sciences, University of New Mexico (2001-2008)

Postdoctoral Fellowships:

Department of Pathology, University of New Mexico School of Medicine (2008-2011)
Interagency Oncology Taskforce Fellowship, National Cancer Institute and Food and Drug Administration (2011-2013)

During Butler’s graduate work in Biomedical Sciences, she developed methods to examine the role of telomere length, allelic imbalance, and telomere associated proteins in the prognosis of breast and prostate cancer. During her first postdoctoral appointment, she expanded her skills and built on her previous training in cancer biology to include her interests in material sciences and physics as part of an interdisciplinary group looking to detect leukemia, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and T-cell infiltration in transplant rejection using targeted superparamagnetic nanoparticles and MRI or SQUID imaging. To further expand her education and experience, she applied for and was selected for an IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) Postdoctoral Fellowship in Clinical and Translational Research. During her time as an INBRE fellow, Butler completed a year of coursework in all aspects of Clinical and Translational research, culminating in a certificate of education for the Clinical and Translational Science Center at the UNM School of Medicine. As part of the leukemia research, she acted as part of a group that submitted a Pre- investigational device exemption (IDE) application to the Center for Devices and Radiologic Health at the FDA. At this point, Butler realized the importance of understanding the FDA perspective for development of novel medical and imaging technologies. To gain understanding in this area, she applied for and was selected as one of 5 fellows in Product Research and Review through the Interagency Oncology Task Force fellowship sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration. This fellowship allowed Butler to perform research and train in regulatory review of medical devices and nanotechnology. During this fellowship, she focused on researching nanotechnology as applied to medicine and next generation sequencing in disease detection.

Research Interests

Genetics and Genome Editing

Genetic material can be utilized to detect and diagnose disease, develop personalized or infection specific strategies of treatment and genome editing, such as the use of CRISPR technology, can treat or prevent disease. Butler’s work in this area focuses on understanding the use of next generation sequencing technology to detect disease and CRISPR enabled technology to prevent or treat infection.