2002 Outstanding Scientific Achievements by a Young Investigator
Thomas Daly, MD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. After receiving his baccalaureate in chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1990, he attended medical school at Washington University in St. Louis. During his medical training, he participated in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH Research Scholars program, where he worked with Drs. Patrick Hwu and Steven Rosenberg in the Surgery branch of the National Cancer Institute. His research examined the use of retroviral vectors to functionally redirect T lymphocytes to recognize tumor-specific antigens. He returned to medical school following this research training and received his medical degree from Washington University in St Louis in 1995.
Dr. Daly remained at Washington University for his residency and trained in the laboratory medicine program at Barnes-Jewish hospital. During this period, he performed postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Mark Sands, focusing on techniques for the treatment of pediatric genetic disease. His experiments involved the use of adeno-associated virus vectors to transfer therapeutic genes to newborn mice. Using these vectors, Dr. Daly demonstrated that a single treatment at birth could completely prevent the development of clinical disease in a murine model of mucopolysaccharidosis type VII, a lysosomal storage disorder. Dr. Daly has authored numerous articles in the field of neonatal gene transfer, including publications in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Gene Therapy, and Pediatric Research.
During his final year of residency, Dr. Daly served as chief resident in laboratory medicine and received specialized training in clinical chemistry and molecular diagnostics. He accepted a faculty position at the University of Alabama-Birmingham in 2000, where he is currently the Section Head of Clinical Chemistry. His clinical responsibilities include serving as the director of the core chemistry and emergency department rapid-response laboratories. His clinical interests include biomarkers of congestive heart failure and the evaluation of new technologies to improve test availability in the emergency department context. Dr. Daly has also continued to maintain an active research interest and is an member of the Division of Human Gene Therapy headed by Dr. David Curiel. He remains interested in the field of inborn errors of metabolism, and is currently examining methods to develop modified viral vectors to improve targeting of neonatal tissues. Dr. Daly is a member of the American Society of Gene Therapy, the Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists, and the the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (formerly AACC).