faculty photo

Darko Stefanovski, PhD MS

Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Department: Pediatrics

Contact information
Penn Vet
New Bolton Center
382 West Street Road
Kennett Square, PA 19348
Office: 610-444-5800
Fax: 610-925-6823
Graduate Group Affiliations
Education:
BS (Computer and Information Sciences)
Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, WV, 1999.
M.S. (Bioengineering)
University of Pennsylvania, 2003.
Ph.D. (Physiology and Biophysics)
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 2009.
Post-Graduate Training
Physiology and Biophysics , Keck School of Medicine, University of Souther California, Los Angeles CA, 2009-2010.
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Description of Clinical Expertise

Biostatistical analysis using STATA and R packages. Mathematical Modeling of Biological Systems. PK/PD Analysis. Molecular Dynamics study of proteins and In-silico design of small-peptide probes.

Description of Research Expertise

Dr. Stefanovski’s research focus is in the field of the biomedical sciences, at the intersection of integrative physiology, statistics and computational biology. For over a decade, he has been involved in research studying obesity and its association with insulin resistance, a state of impaired glucose tolerance, and subsequent pathologies, such as Type 2 Diabetes. Current research indicates that the metabolic syndrome, as a combination of medical disorders, is not only associated with the cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but also with some types of cancer. His diverse background has enabled him to approach the complexity of the metabolic syndrome with a multitude of methodologies, including mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, molecular dynamics, molecular biology, and animal model experiments. His current research involves the study of the effects of rear variants of hepatic glucokinase and its repressor protein GKRP on glucose metabolism and development of novel mathematical model of free fatty acids (FFA) kinetics capable of quantifying whole-body insulin sensitivity of FFA metabolism. Additionally, he is studying the biophysical principles of ions selectivity.

Selected Publications

Stefanovski D, Vellanki P, Smiley-Byrd DD, Umpierrez GE, Boston RC: Population insulin sensitivity from sparsely sampled oral glucose tolerance tests. Metabolism. June 2020.

Stefanovski D, Boston R, Punjabi NM: Sleep-disordered Breathing and Free Fatty Acid Metabolism. Chest June 2020.

Stefanovski D, Moate PJ, Frank N, Ward GM, Localio AR, Punjabi NM, Boston RC: Metabolic modeling using statistical and spreadsheet software: Application to the glucose minimal model. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine. February 2020.

Stefanovski D, Shih PB, Hammock BD, Watanabe RM, Youn JH: Assessment of soluble epoxide hydrolase activity in vivo: A metabolomic approach. Prostaglandins & Other Lipid Mediators. January 2020.

Stefanovski D, Boston RC, Woodward EM, Althouse GC: A multifaceted analytical approach for detecting effects on semen quality when using small sample sizes. Theriogenology June 2019.

Sorenmo KU, Durham AC, Kristiansen V, Pena L, Goldschmidt MH, Stefanovski D: Developing and testing prognostic bio-scoring systems for canine mammary gland carcinomas. Veterinary and comparative oncology. May 2019.

Stefanovski D, Tang G, Wawrowsky K, Boston RC, Lambrecht N, Tajbakhsh J: Prostate cancer diagnosis using epigenetic biomarkers, 3D high-content imaging and probabilistic cell-by-cell classifiers. Oncotarget. 8(34): 57278-57301, Jul 2017.

Scherrer NM, Lassaline M, Richardson DW, Stefanovski D: Interval prevalence of and factors associated with colic in horses hospitalized for ocular or orthopedic disease. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 249(1): 90-5, Jul 2016.

Ngo V, Stefanovski D, Haas S, Farley RA: Non-equilibrium dynamics contribute to ion selectivity in the KcsA channel. PLOS ONE. 9(1): e86079, 2014.

Stefanovski D, Youn JH, Rees M, Watanabe RM, Ader M, Ionut V, Jackson AU, Boehnke M, Collins FS, Bergman RN : Estimating hepatic glucokinase activity using a simple model of lactate kinetics. Diabetes Care. 35(5): 1015-20, May 2012.

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Last updated: 09/26/2022
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