by Lauren Stiles, Dysautonomia International President & Co-Founder

It is with a heavy heart that I share this sad news. Dr. David C. Kem, a leader in POTS research, passed away from COVID-19 complications on the morning of Sunday, November 22, 2020.

Dr. Kem was a good friend to everyone here at Dysautonomia International. We send our sympathies and prayers to his wonderful wife Janet and their many children and grandchildren.

Dr. Kem was a gifted researcher and clinician, who continued to innovate with his research until the very end of his life. Just last week, he submitted a new medical journal article with Dr. Blair Grubb. Upon hearing the news of Dr. Kem’s passing, Dr. Grubb noted, “David Kem was a gentleman and a scholar.” I could not think of a more perfect description.

Dr. Satish Raj, a frequent collaborator with Dr. Kem on POTS antibody research, added, “Dave Kem was a wonderful scientist and a great collaborator. He was passionate about his work, not only for the sake of science, but because of his strong belief that he could alleviate patient suffering. As accomplished as Dave was as a scientist, I will remember Dave as a true gentleman who was devoted to his family.  He truly sparkled when he spoke about his grandchildren. Dave will be greatly missed.”

Dr. Kem graduated from Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1963. He completed post-doctoral training in endocrinology, metabolism and hypertension at the University of Michigan and the NIH in the late 1960s. Dr. Kem spent decades publishing important research on the relationship between hormones, immune function and cardiovascular disorders. He eventually led his own distinguished research lab at the University of Oklahoma, where he served as the George Lynn Cross Research Professor and a Regents Professor of Medicine.

I absolutely loved talking about POTS research with Dr. Kem. In his late 70s/early 80s, when many other researchers would have long ago retired, he was as excited about new research as a little kid opening presents on Christmas morning. You could hear the enthusiasm in his voice. He was determined to figure out POTS. Even when his health started to fail, he would have his wife Janet call to give me research updates from the hospital.

His last email to me was in August. He heard about a hurricane hitting New York on the news, so he emailed me to ask if my chickens were OK. Even though he was a brilliant academic and a serious medical school professor, he was still a sweet Oklahoma farm boy at heart. The email was also dotted with various research updates, some related to POTS, some not… aplastic anemia, marrow transplant, muscarinic antibodies, manuscript in review, new antibody assays going, now recruiting… I loved getting those emails. The email was followed by a long phone call, where we discussed post-viral autoimmunity in the context of COVID. I introduced Dr. Kem to some other researchers interested in exploring the role of autoimmunity in post-COVID syndrome, and after a few emails, they were collaborating on a new study.

How Dr. Kem became a POTS researcher in his 70s is a pretty cool “serendipity” story. This story was told to me by Dr. Kem and Dr. David Robertson, founder of the Vanderbilt Autonomic Dysfunction Center.

In the early 2010s, Dr. Kem was studying arrhythmias in Graves’ disease, an autoimmune thyroid disorder that is known to be associated with arrhythmias in some patients. He had identified adrenergic receptor antibodies (a type of G protein-coupled receptor antibody) in a subset of Graves’ disease patients, which he thought may be contributing to their arrhythmias, but when he look at their charts, he noticed that many of the antibody positive Graves’ patients had been diagnosed with POTS too.

Like many doctors, Dr. Kem wasn’t too familiar with POTS. He called his hospital’s cardiology department and asked if they had any POTS patients. Like most cardiology departments, they had more POTS patients than they knew what to do with. He checked the serum of some patients from a local clinic who had POTS, but not Graves’ disease, and sure enough, they all had the same adrenergic receptor antibodies as his Graves’/POTS study subjects.

Dr. Kem was not a POTS researcher at the time, but he thought he might be on to something big that warranted further research. He applied for an NIH grant. NIH rejected his application, but suggested that he may want to partner with an existing POTS research center and re-apply.

He cold-called Dr. David Robertson, founder and director of the Vanderbilt Autonomic Dysfunction Center, and asked him to collaborate on a study. He told Dr. Robertson, “I think I found antibodies that may be causing POTS.” Dr. Robertson was skeptical, but open-minded, so he told Dr. Kem if he could send him some serum samples from healthy people and POTS patients from Vanderbilt, and if Dr. Kem could tell who had POTS and who was healthy based on the presence of the antibodies, he would collaborate with Dr. Kem on a study. Dr. Kem agreed to Dr. Robertson’s plan. So Vanderbilt’s autonomic lab sent Dr. Kem 14 samples – seven from people who had been diagnosed with POTS, and seven from healthy people, with no indication of which tube contained which type of sample. Dr. Kem was able to accurately tell Dr. Robertson who had POTS and who was a healthy control, just based on his analysis of their serum.

After the results came back, Dr. Robertson called me and said, “Lauren, David Kem is brilliant, he has found something important, and you should fund his research.” Dr. Robertson was a legend in the field of autonomic research, and researchers don’t often encourage you to fund someone else’s research, so I knew this was going to be big news. Eventually, Dysautonomia International would fund several of Dr. Kem’s studies on autoimmunity in POTS and vagus nerve stimulation in POTS.

Dr. Kem’s research has had a ripple effect across the entire field. Over the past six years, he collaborated on POTS antibody studies with researchers at Vanderbilt, University of Calgary, Lund University, the Karolinska Institute, and UT Southwestern, amongst others. While we still have a long way to go to fully understand the role of immune function in POTS, Dr. Kem’s pioneering work on this topic has launched an avalanche of new research that will be felt for generations to come.

He will be dearly missed by all who knew him.

by

by