For alumna and pharmacy researcher Kerry LaPlante, education is contagious
Kerry LaPlante ’00, Pharm.D. ’02 has published over 150 peer-reviewed publications on infectious disease topics and has served as dean, professor and founding director of the Rhode Island Infectious Diseases Antibiotic Research Program at the Providence VA Medical Center since 2023.
Before becoming a prolific researcher of multidrug-resistant bacteria, LaPlante first caught the research bug as a student at Wayne State University’s Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
LaPlante grew up near Buffalo, New York, in a blue-collar family, the daughter of second-generation Sicilian and Polish immigrants. She was a first-generation college student and completed her undergraduate degree at Canisius College in 1996. She applied to Wayne State shortly thereafter and moved to Michigan to live with her uncle, who worked for General Motors.
“I appreciate Wayne State giving me the chance,” LaPlante said. “Back then, it was almost impossible to get into pharmacy schools because there were many more applicants than there were spots. As a first-generation college student, the trajectory of my life, my kids’ lives and their kids’ lives changed because of the opportunities I had at Wayne State.”
As a pharmacy student, LaPlante interned at Arbor Drugs (founded by the college’s namesake, Eugene Applebaum) and Meijer Pharmacy while working weekends at a sushi bar in downtown Royal Oak. In her final year of pharmacy school, she joined Henry Ford Hospital.
“I was part of the care team for someone who had cystic fibrosis, who had a double lung transplant and was not doing well. That was my first clinical interaction to see how important the pharmacist role was,” LaPlante said. “As an intern, I oversaw pulling all her drug levels, managing her antibiotics, making sure there were no drug interactions, and I was just hooked; the impact we had was huge. We were equal with the physicians. We oversaw the meds they were diagnosing. It made me fall in love with studying infectious diseases.
“Working at a pharmacy in Michigan and the training I got at Wayne State absolutely made me the successful researcher, pharmacist and clinician I am today,” LaPlante added. “It was an outstanding education. It was gritty and a lot of hours, and there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but the things I was exposed to at Detroit Receiving and Henry Ford — you don't see that everywhere.”
After graduation, LaPlante completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacotherapy from 2002-04 under Dr. Michael Rybak at the Anti-Infective Research Laboratory, a partnership between WSU Applebaum and Detroit Receiving Hospital.
“I spent two years doing research and I just fell in love with it,” LaPlante said. “The intimacy of research, the team building and how you and your hardworking team could produce a publication that could impact the care of patients later that week. Before coming to Wayne State, I had never left Buffalo, and suddenly I'm going to Nice, France, standing on stage presenting my research, and these infectious disease physicians from Duke are like, ‘Hey, what did you find?’ It was unreal. It felt so impactful. That’s when I knew I wanted to become a professor and do research.”
LaPlante said pharmacy is a fulfilling profession and advises students interested in research to find dynamic mentors.
“Finding the right mentor can be more important than the content area. I was originally interested in cardiology, and if Dr. Ryback were a cardiologist, I'd probably be doing cardiology right now. It wasn't that I loved the subject matter of infectious disease, honestly — it was his mentorship. That's what made me love studying infectious diseases. I had an internationally renowned mentor who really invested in my education and got the best he could out of me. That's what made the difference.”
Learn more about the ARL and Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at applebaum.wayne.edu.