Physical therapy leader sets bar for excellence in education and research
As the new chairwoman of the department of physical therapy in the College of Health Professions, Krista Vandenborne, Ph.D., P.T., is working to create a nationally recognized department that boasts innovative teaching, top-notch research and strong partnerships with community clinicians.
“Dr. Vandenborne possesses incredible leadership and vision,” said Andrea Behrman, Ph.D., P.T, an associate professor of physical therapy. “We needed someone to set the bar of excellence for the department. Faculty, staff and students are inspired and excited by the new environment she has created.”
Since she joined the department in July 2001 research funding has nearly doubled, new educational programs have been established and affiliations with UF researchers and clinicians have been formed. “With nationally known faculty in spinal cord injury, stroke and respiratory training research, this department was primed for success,” said Vandenborne. “Since April 2002 when I became chair, my job has been to create an infrastructure that will take the department to the next level of excellence in education and research.”
To that end, mentorship in research and grant procurement is being provided to master’s and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and junior faculty. In conjunction with Shands Rehabilitation Services, Vandenborne has implemented a series of campus seminars by national experts who present new outcomes of physical therapy research and clinical treatments.
With department research funding escalating, the result of these programs can already be seen. In the current fiscal year, the department has received $1.6 million in grants from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Efforts are under way to offer additional clinical experience to the entry-level students. Community clinicians frequently provide guest lectures and demonstrations of treatment techniques. Students also benefit from classroom visits by pediatric patients and patients with physical disabilities caused by polio, spinal cord injury or stroke.
“Not only does this provide hands-on experience for our students and help to put a human face on the disease, but the patients feel they’ve had an opportunity to contribute to the training of future health-care providers,” Vandenborne said.
Vandenborne is guided by the philosophy that collaborations among educators, researchers and clinicians across disciplines can only advance physical therapy treatments that will someday reach patients. She has established a departmental research and educational network that includes partnerships with the Brooks Center for Rehabilitation Studies, the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute of UF, the VA Brain Rehabilitation and Research Center at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Institute on Aging, Shands Rehab and many faculty across the Colleges of Medicine, Health and Human Performance and Veterinary Medicine.
“It’s very important that we have this network,” Vandenborne said. “By working together we can move more quickly from research with the animal model to clinical trials and into general patient-care practice.”
Vandenborne has been actively contributing to research in skeletal muscle plasticity and rehabilitation, with published expertise in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy, skeletal muscle atrophy and muscle metabolism. In her own research, she studies the adaptations in skeletal muscle during disuse, disease and therapeutic interventions.
“Muscle wasting occurs within days of disuse,” Vandenborne said. “A muscle will lose 15 percent of its size and 30-40 percent of its strength after only two weeks of disuse. Patients suffering from with cancer, AIDS, or other illnesses that may confine them to bed for extended periods of time are especially at risk of experiencing muscle weakness.”
As principal investigator on two NIH-RO1 grants, and co-principal investigator on two other RO1s, she is using the university’s impressive array of MRI devices to better understand what happens to muscle during wasting and regeneration. UF’s McKnight Brain Institute and the VA Medical Center have some of the world’s most powerful MRI machines. Vandenborne implements magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy techniques to study the efficacy of rehabilitation, pharmacological and gene therapy interventions following disease and disuse.
A native of Belgium, Vandenborne began her research career as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, which is known for its pioneering MRI research. She was attracted to MRI technology for muscle and skeletal research because of its noninvasive nature, which is essential for longitudinal studies in patients with chronic disabilities.
In collaboration with her husband, Glenn Walter, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physiology and functional genomics in the College of Medicine, Vandenborne also studies the potential of gene therapy and stem cell incorporation to guard muscles from the impacts of disuse and disease and to speed up muscle regeneration.
Outside of work, she and her husband juggle parenting responsibilities for daughter Julie, 4 and son Sean, 7. Vandenborne and Walter have learned they must be very familiar with each other’s schedules and try to avoid similar grant proposal deadlines in order to plan time for family activities.