Alex F. Bokov, Ph.D.
Faculty Instructor
During Dr. Alex Bokov's Ph.D. training in physiology, he delved further and further into statistics and bioinformatics. He went on to do post-doctoral training in the Department of Population Health Sciences at The UT Health San Antonio. Part of this time, he worked after hours to complete a second post-graduate degree, an M.S. in Applied Statistics. His cross-disciplinary training, further augmented by over a decade of practical programming and database experience, gives him the unique ability to help bridge the gap between biology, statistics, and scientific computing, helping facilitate more powerful experimental design, valid statistical analysis, and biologically relevant interpretation of results. In January 2014, he transitioned the Clinical Informatics Research Division where he built our flagship EMR data warehouse and, as Deputy Chief, helped Directors build a top-notch biomedical informatics team.
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Professional Background
Education
- 2014 - MS - Applied Statistics - University of Texas
- 2008 - PhD - Physiology - UT Health San Antonio
- 2008 - Postdoctoral Training - Population Health Sciences - UT Health San Antonio
- 2001 - BS - Cellular and Molecular Biology - University of Michigan
Appointments
- 1/2015 - Faculty Instructor - UT Health San Antonio, Department of Population Health Sciences
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Instruction & Training
- 5/2017 - Present, Membership on Supervising Committee, UT Health, MSCI
- 9/2016 - Present, Membership on Supervising Committee, UT Health, MSCI
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Research & Grants
Grants
Federal
Funding Agency NIH Title San Antonio Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center Medicine Status Active Period 6/2015 - 4/2020 Role Contributor Grant Detail The central premise underlying the proposed San Antonio Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center (OAIC) is that we are at a point in the history of aging research when there are scientifically valid anti-aging therapies to test in humans. We propose an Intervention Program that will move forward discoveries obtained in rodents to the pre-clinical arena using a non-human primate model, the common marmoset, and from the pre-clinical arena to humans through randomized clinical studies. Our Center will provide investigators with state-of-the-art scientific infrastructure and services that are required in developing innovative interventions which target the aging process and aging-related diseases. Initially, a major focus will be on pharmacologic interventions, however, regenerative and gene transfer interventions also will be tested as they become available. The Specific Objectives of the OAIC are: 1. To provide support, through Resource Core (RC)-1, to pre-clinical studies in non-human primates to investigate the mechanism of action, efficacy, and tolerability of aging interventions. This Core also will provide functional assessment (healthspan) services and will determine the effect of interventions on lifespan. 2. RC-2 will provide human clinical research and pharmacology services to studies of interventions aimed at preventing physiological decline and aging-related diseases. Services provided by this core include subject recruitment, compliance, and procedures to assess physical performance, cognition, glucose metabolism, vascular function, atherosclerosis, exercise tolerance, gait, balance, imaging, and specimen (blood, muscle, fat) processing. This core also performs pharmacokinetic human studies. 3. To provide, through the Biostatistics Core (RC3), expertise in data entry systems, data quality control, data security, and state of the art quantitative and qualitative analytic and medical informatics strategies. 4. To provide assistance to faculty for Funding Agency National Institute on Aging Title Supporting Caregiver Role Transition Following Dementia Diagnosis Disclosure Status Complete Period 9/2017 - 8/2019 Role Contributor Grant Detail The purpose of this project is to learn how best to adapt the ?Learning to Become a Family Caregiver? program (a program designed to help support successful caregiver role transition following dementia diagnosis disclosure) for the diverse San Antonio and South Texas community. Funding Agency Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute(PCORI) Title Greater Plains Collaborative Clinical Data Research Network Status Complete Period 9/2015 - 9/2018 Role Co-Investigator Grant Detail Broadening the network partnerships across clinical data research networks and five patient-powered research networks to create enhanced data resources to support observational/interventional research, adding record linkage and duplication analysis capabilities and deploying free text note de-identification and processing to support advanced large scale computable phenotyping. Funding Agency NIH/NIA Title San Antonio OAIC Pilot/Exploratory Studies Core Status Active Period 5/2017 - 5/2018 Role Co-Investigator Grant Detail Effectiveness of frailty screening in predicting post-operative morbidity and mortality
Private
Funding Agency University of Kansas City Medical Center Title PCORnet Obesity Observational Study: Short- and Long-term Effects of Antibiotics on Childhood Growth Status Active Period 2/2016 - 1/2018 Role Co-Investigator Grant Detail (PID: 159509). The goal of this grant is to collaborate with the Great Plains Consortium which has developed a large clinical data research network of electronic health record information to facilitate the conduct of clinical trials and comparative effectiveness research investigations. This project examines antibiotic occurrences within the populace.
Funding Agency Long School of Medicine and the Institute for Integration of Medicine and Science Title Novel Translational Informatics Software: an Application to Kidney Cancer, Long School of Medicine KL2 Award Status Active Period 7/2018 - 8/2020 Role Principal Investigator Grant Detail The clinical relevance of this work will be to determine, amidst as yet sparse published evidence, whether a disparity in kidney cancer outcomes affects two regional Hispanic populations (San Antonio and Boston). In the process, information will be generated to help plan follow-up studies (effect sizes, covariance structures, candidate covariates). The informatics relevance of this work will be to demonstrate feasibility and utility of my software for supporting multi-site studies in a flexible, convenient, and efficient manner.
This two-year grant provides 75% PI salary support, $25,000 dedicated to the research plan, and fosters activities that promote career development (e.g. grantsmanship, research ethics, manuscript writing, research conferences, and mentoring workshops).
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Service
National
2009 Paul F. Glenn Award, For meritorious reseach in the area of biomedical gerontology by a post-doctoral fellow, American Aging Association
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Publications
Abstract
Leonardo V, Connolly D W, Bokov A, McMahon T, Al-Hihi E, Waitman L R. Extending Clinical Research Informatics to Health System Quality Improvement: Using i2b2: American Medical Informatics Association; 2015 May. (AMIA Summit on Clinical Research Informatics). Long Parma DA, Bokov A, Munoz E, Tirado-Ramos A, Ramirez AG. Helicobacter Pylori Diagnoses Among UTMed Clinic Patients in San Antonio, Texas: A Health Disparity Check: Springer; 2015 Apr. (Annals of Behavioral Medicine; vol. 49).
Journal Article
Davis, A. M., Hanrahan,L. P., Bokov, A. F., Schlachter, S., Laroche, H. H., & Waitman, L. R.(2019). Patient Engagement and Attitudes Toward Using the Electronic Medical Record for Medical Research: The 2015 Greater Plains Collaborative Health andMedical Research Family Survey. JMIR Res Protoc, 8(3), e11148.doi:10.2196/11148; Zhang Z, Ambrogi F, Bokov A, Gu H, de Beurs E, Eskaf K. Estimate risk difference and number needed to treat in survival analysis Annals of Translational Medicine 2018 Apr;6(7). Gelfond JA, Goros M, Hernandez B, Bokov A. A System for an Accountable Data Analysis Process in R R Journal 2018 Jan;. Bokov A, Olin G P, Bos A, Tirado-Ramos A, Kittrell P, Olin G P, Jackson CE. Exhaustively Characterizing a Patient Cohort by Prevalence of EMR Facts: a Generalized, Vendor-Agnostic Method for Quality Control and Research AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings 2017 Nov;2017. Bokov A, Manuel L S, Tirado-Ramos A, Gelfond JA, Pletcher S D. Biologically relevant simulations for validating risk models under small-sample conditions Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communication 2017 Jul;:290-295. Bokov A, Bos A, Manuel L S, Tirado-Ramos A, Kittrell P, Jackson CE, Olin G P. Using Prevalence Patterns to Discover Un-mapped Flowsheet Data in an Electronic Health Record Data Warehouse Computer-Based Medical Systems 2017 Jun;:324-327. Munkacsy, E, Khan, MH, Lane, RK, Borror, MB, Park, JH, Bokov A, Fisher AL, Link, CD, Rea SL. DLK-1, SEK-3 and PMK-3 Are Required for the Life Extension Induced by Mitochondrial Bioenergetic Disruption in C. elegans PLOS GENETICS 2016 Jul;12(7). Bokov A, Tirado-Ramos A, Bos, Angela B., Chen, Catherine, Manuel, Laura S. Denormalize and Delimit: How not to Make Data Extraction for Analysis More Complex than Necessary Procedia Computer Science 2016 May;80:1033-1041. Zhang Y, Liu Y, Walsh M, Bokov A, Ikeno Y, Jang YC, Perez VI, Van Remmen H, Richardson A. Liver specific expression of Cu/ZnSOD extends the lifespan of Sod1 null mice Mech Ageing Dev 2016 Mar;154:1-8. Mishur, RJ, Khan, M., Munkacsy, E., Sharma, L., Bokov, A., Beam, H., Radetskaya, O., Borror, M., Lane, R., Bai, Y., and Rea, S. Mitochondrial Metabolites Extend Lifespan Aging Cell 2016 Jan;. Sataranatarajan K, Ikeno Y, Bokov A, Feliers D, Yalamanchili H, Lee HJ, Mariappan MM, Tabatabai-Mir H, Diaz V, Prasad S, Javors MA, Choudhury GG, Hubbard GB, Barnes JL, Richardson A, Kasinath BS. Rapamycin increases mortality in db/db mice, a mouse model of type-2 diabetes J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2016 Jan;71:850-857. Bai X, Wey MC, Fernandez E, Hart MJ, Gelfond J, Bokov A, Rani S, Strong R. Rapamycin improves motor function, reduces 4-hydroxynonenal adducted protein in brain, and attenuates synaptic injury in a mouse model of synucleinopathy Pathobiol Aging Age Relat Dis 2015 Aug;5:28743-28743. Fok W.C., Livi CB, Bokov A, Yu Z., Chen Y, Richardson AG, Perez VI. Short-term rapamycin treatment in mice has few effects on the transcriptome of white adipose tissue compared to dietary restriction Mech Ageing Dev 2014 Sep;140:23-29. Fok, Wilson C, Bokov A, Gelfond JA, Yu, Zhen, Zhang Y, Doderer, Mark, Chen Y, Javors MA, Wood, William, Zhang, Yongqing, Becker, Kevin G, Richardson AG, Perez, Viviana I. Combined treatment of rapamycin and dietary restriction has a larger effect on the transcriptome and metabolome of liver Aging Cell 2014 Apr;13(2):311-319. Pan H, Qin K, Guo Z, Ma Y, April C, Gao X, Andrews TG, Bokov A, Zhang J, Chen Y, Weintraub ST, Fan J-B, Wang D, Hu Y, Aune GJ, Lindsey ML, Li R. Negative elongation factor controls energy homeostasis in cardiomyocytes Cell Reports 2014 Mar;7(1):79-85. Fok, Wilson C, Chen Y, Bokov A, Zhang Y, Salmon A, Diaz, Vivian, Javors MA, Becker, KG, Zhang, Yongqing, Becker, KG, Perez VI, Richardson AG. Mice Fed Rapamycin Have an Increase in Lifespan Associated with Major Changes in the Liver Transcriptome PLoS One 2014 Jan;9(1):e83988-e83988. Bhattacharya A, Bokov A, Muller, FL, Jernigan AL, Maslin K, Diaz D, Richardson A, and Van Remmen H. Dietary restriction but not rapamycin extends disease onset and survival of the H46R/H48Q mouse model of ALS Neurobiol Aging 2011 Jul;33(8):1829-1832. Caccamo A, Maldonado MA, Bokov AF, Majumder S, Oddo S. CBP gene transfer increases BDNF levels and ameliorates learning and memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer`s disease Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2010 Dec;107(52):22687-22692. Salmon AB, Perez VI, Bokov A, Jernigan A, Kim G, Zhao H, Levine RL, Richardson A
. Lack of methionine sulfoxide reductase A in mice increases sensitivity to oxidative stress but does not diminish lifespan FASEB J 2009 Oct;23(10):3601-3608.