Katherine Phoenix Liao, MD, MPH

Katherine Liao, MD, MPH

Associate Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School (Secondary)

Brigham and Women's Hospital Rheumatology - PBB-B3 75 Francis St Boston, MA

Katherine Liao is a clinical investigator and practicing rheumatologist. The mission of her lab her lab is two-fold: (1) is to study rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and the clinical and genetic factors that lead to outcomes such as cardiovascular disease and severe joint damage, and (2) is to apply and develop bioinformatics methods to utilize big data for clinical and translational research studies. Liao’s research focuses on applying methods such as natural language processing to electronic medical record (EMR) data to perform clinical studies in RA and other conditions. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in patients with RA. This high risk has been attributed to inflammation, which is an important risk factor for heart disease in the general population. Determining these links can identify strategies to reduce CV risk in RA, as well as lead to potential targets of treatment in the general population. Liao is the PI of the R01 funded study, Lipids, Inflammation and CV risk in RA (LiiRA). The goal of LiiRA is to investigate how inflammation may modify important traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure, and the impact of these modifications on CV risk. She is also a co-investigator on an NIH U01 multi-center RCT, Treatment Against RA and Effect on FDG PET CT (TARGET). TARGET specifically tests the hypothesis that reducing inflammation, reduces vascular inflammation and CV risk in RA. In line with her research interests, Liao is co-Director of the Cardiovascular Rheumatology Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Through her work with the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) project, Liao led the team to develop an EMR research platform for RA studies. This platform integrated clinical and biomarker data (e.g. clinical EMR data, genetics, autoantibody data) allowing for both traditional genetic association studies as well as new approaches for data analyses such as the Phenome Wide Association Study (PheWAS). Using this platform, she collaborates closely with investigators from the fields of biostatistics and bioinformatics to apply novel methods to study focused clinical questions such as CVD in RA. Currently, she is leading a pilot project to port and further develop these methods at VA Boston Healthcare using nationwide VA data with a goal to establish an EMR research platform at the VA.

Large-scale real-world data analyses of cancer risks among patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Authors: Wang F, Palmer N, Fox K, Liao KP, Yu KH, Kou SC.
Int J Cancer
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Semi-supervised calibration of noisy event risk (SCANER) with electronic health records.
Authors: Hong C, Liang L, Yuan Q, Cho K, Liao KP, Pencina MJ, Christiani DC, Cai T.
J Biomed Inform
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Contextualizing protein representations using deep learning on protein networks and single-cell data.
Authors: Li MM, Huang Y, Sumathipala M, Liang MQ, Valdeolivas A, Ananthakrishnan AN, Liao K, Marbach D, Zitnik M.
bioRxiv
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Shared inflammatory pathways of rheumatoid arthritis and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
Authors: Weber BN, Giles JT, Liao KP.
Nat Rev Rheumatol
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Diversity and Scale: Genetic Architecture of 2,068 Traits in the VA Million Veteran Program.
Authors: Verma A, Huffman JE, Rodriguez A, Conery M, Liu M, Ho YL, Kim Y, Heise DA, Guare L, Panickan VA, Garcon H, Linares F, Costa L, Goethert I, Tipton R, Honerlaw J, Davies L, Whitbourne S, Cohen J, Posner DC, Sangar R, Murray M, Wang X, Dochtermann DR, Devineni P, Shi Y, Nandi TN, Assimes TL, Brunette CA, Carroll RJ, Clifford R, Duvall S, Gelernter J, Hung A, Iyengar SK, Joseph J, Kember R, Kranzler H, Levey D, Luoh SW, Merritt VC, Overstreet C, Deak JD, Grant SFA, Polimanti R, Roussos P, Sun YV, Venkatesh S, Voloudakis G, Justice A, Begoli E, Ramoni R, Tourassi G, Pyarajan S, Tsao PS, O'Donnell CJ, Muralidhar S, Moser J, Casas JP, Bick AG, Zhou W, Cai T, Voight BF, Cho K, Gaziano MJ, Madduri RK, Damrauer SM, Liao KP.
medRxiv
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Social Determinants of Health Documentation Among Individuals With Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Conditions in an Integrated Care Management Program.
Authors: Ulysse SN, Chandler MT, Santacroce L, Cai T, Liao KP, Feldman CH.
Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken)
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Sore, Hot, and at Risk: The Emerging Specialty of Cardio-Rheumatology.
Authors: Weber B, Garshick M, Liao KP, Di Carli M.
J Am Heart Assoc
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Utilizing biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic treatment sequences to subphenotype rheumatoid arthritis.
Authors: Das P, Weisenfeld D, Dahal K, De D, Feathers V, Coblyn JS, Weinblatt ME, Shadick NA, Cai T, Liao KP.
Arthritis Res Ther
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Identifying shared genetic architecture between rheumatoid arthritis and other conditions: a phenome-wide association study with genetic risk scores.
Authors: Zhang HG, McDermott G, Seyok T, Huang S, Dahal K, L'Yi S, Lea-Bonzel C, Stratton J, Weisenfeld D, Monach P, Raychaudhuri S, Yu KH, Cai T, Cui J, Hong C, Cai T, Liao KP.
EBioMedicine
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Generate Analysis-Ready Data for Real-world Evidence: Tutorial for Harnessing Electronic Health Records With Advanced Informatic Technologies.
Authors: Hou J, Zhao R, Gronsbell J, Lin Y, Bonzel CL, Zeng Q, Zhang S, Beaulieu-Jones BK, Weber GM, Jemielita T, Wan SS, Hong C, Cai T, Wen J, Ayakulangara Panickan V, Liaw KL, Liao K, Cai T.
J Med Internet Res
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