Walter K. Kremers, Ph.D.

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SUMMARY

Walter K. Kremers, Ph.D., is a lead statistician in the Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics. He came to Mayo Clinic in 2000 after spending over a decade in the pharmaceutical industry, working on preclinical studies and clinical trials. Dr. Kremers' collaborations are largely in the areas of transplantation and dementia; he also collaborates in other areas including nephrology and orthopedics.

Focus areas

• Transplantation. Dr. Kremers has worked extensively with pretransplant risk assessment (which is considered when prioritizing patients on the transplant waitlist), derivation of prognostic predictors of outcomes post-transplantation, study of new treatments and evaluation of hospital performance. Most of his work concerns solid organ transplantation in the clinical setting, but he also works with blood and marrow transplantation and in laboratory studies.

  One of Dr. Kremers' major contributions is the study of the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) score as a predictor of mortality in patients with end-stage liver disease, and the value of the MELD score as a tool in quantifying patient urgency for transplantation.

• Dementia. Dr. Kremers is actively studying the epidemiology and differential diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Specifically, he is investigating factors predictive of onset and rates of disease progression and considering factors such as basic demographics, medical conditions, genetics, and biomarkers obtained from body fluids and MRI and PET imagery. He also works to develop and evaluate tools used to assess disease progression and cognition.
• Nephrology. Dr. Kremers' research involves study of the anatomical and morphological changes in the kidney occurring with age in healthy individuals. This research is based on data from a cohort of living kidney donors, who undergo extensive medical screening, and another cohort of people who've had nephrectomy for malignant mass but have otherwise healthy kidneys. Dr. Kremers has also collaborated on multiple clinical trials investigating new treatments for polycystic kidney disease.

Significance to patient care

Dr. Kremers' collaborations in transplantation and nephrology continue to advance knowledge of treatment options for patients in these populations. His work in dementia continues to better describe prevalence, incidence, and risk factors in different dementias, and it aids in the design of clinical trials aiming to treat these diseases.