Andre Kalil, MD, honored as Scientist Laureate

“What makes good clinical research? In one word, empathy.”

-Andre Kalil, MD, UNMC Scientist Laureate

You could say Andre Kalil, MD, is a perfectionist when it comes to his patients. He’s not satisfied with the status quo. He’s always asking himself whether there are better treatments or better diagnostics to help his patients.

For 19 years he’s been a practicing physician and doing clinical research at UNMC. Dr. Kalil, who holds a master’s degree in public health, has studied many challenging infections, including transplant-related infections, hospital-acquired pneumonia, sepsis, Ebola and COVID-19.

His work has made a difference in saving the lives of patients worldwide and contributed to the body of knowledge in the scientific world.

Early in the pandemic with UNMC’s recognized expertise and leadership in infectious diseases, Dr. Kalil enrolled the first patient in the very first double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial for COVID.

In 59 days, the National Institutes of Health ACTT trial (Adaptive COVID Treatment Trial) showed an antiviral therapy was effective and safe for treating COVID in hospitalized patients. In 54 days, the second trial, ACTT-2, discovered another beneficial therapy, which acts in the immune system, to fight severe COVID.

“These trials showed significant clinical benefit for our patients, but also for patients all over the planet," Dr. Kalil said. "That’s what makes clinical research so rewarding. This is to me really exciting — there’s no limits to make the outcome of our patients better.”

His love for clinical research started when he realized he could improve the care of his patients.

“I saw clearly that the standard of care for our patients had limitations,” Dr. Kalil said. “Anything you do in medicine, there’s always a limit — there’s a point where we’re doing everything we can, but we still have some patients who may not improve. I always ask myself — how can I help my patients beyond the standard of care? It really drives me in everything I do.”

“Now you have to implement the new idea into practice and put together a design of the study — working with an interdisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, research coordinators, statisticians, ethicists and others. I love it, and I think it’s the beautiful thing about clinical research, that there’s so many people and disciplines involved in the same goal to enhance clinical care. You can’t do it alone, and the project is going to be much better because people with different skills are collaborating.”

He said that failure in clinical research also can lead to successful discoveries.

“Clinical trials strictly monitor in real-time the safety and efficacy of drugs being evaluated in patients. If a drug fails to help or if it harms, the trial is stopped immediately, and that drug won’t ever be given to anyone else. Without clinical trials, ineffective and unsafe drugs would continue being used for many years, and we would not have the proven effective and safe therapies we have today for life-threatening diseases, including serious infections, cancer and heart diseases. The only way to know what works and is safe, and what does not work or is unsafe, is by doing the rigorous research.”

“Clinical care truly benefits from clinical research in the same way individual health benefits from public health. Both are interdependent and complementary.”