Fox Lab

Welcome to the Fox Laboratory

While cardiac and thoracic surgeries are often life-saving and may invoke life-changing improvements in health related quality of life, many patients also experience varying degrees of end organ injury and associated complications that can persist in the years following surgery. In 2014 Dr. Fox initiated a genomics, biomarkers and outcomes research group at UT Southwestern Medical Center. This group values multi-specialty collaborations between anesthesiologists, surgeons cardiologists, radiologists, critical care physicians, biostatisticians, geneticists, bench scientists, and many other specialties.

Our Lab’s biggest and busiest study to date has enrolled 700 patients who underwent cardiac surgery at Clements University Hospital, and enrollment continues. Our research primarily focuses on long-term development of heart failure and renal injury during the months and years after surgery. We use data from this study is to identify clinical risk factors, surgical characteristics, genomic variants and blood and urine biomarkers that can be used to better predict which cardiac surgical patients are at highest risk long-term to experience major adverse cardiovascular events and kidney events (i.e. development of chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease).

This work should allow better selection of at risk patients to be enrolled in clinical trials that can prevent or mitigate end organ dysfunction. Our group is also interested in genomics and is working to enroll 1,500 patients, a number that can result in appropriately powered assessment of genomic contributors to adverse cardiovascular and renal events after cardiac surgery.