Nalan Yurtsever, MD, assistant professor of laboratory medicine, is among the winners of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Replication Prize. Replication means scientists repeat a study or experiment to check if the results are the same, reliable, and not just due to chance. The prize recognizes and rewards progress in making important areas of biomedical research more replicable and encourages a culture change where replication activities are normalized as a standard part of the scientific process.
Yurtsever and Imran Unal, MD, an endocrinologist at ChristianaCare, were selected for a Replication Ideas award. Their idea questions whether HbA1c measurements are reliable for diagnosing diabetes across different laboratory platforms and patient groups, challenging a key part of clinical practice.
The NIH announced the awards on May 13. Yurtsever's and Unal's work combines laboratory medicine, endocrinology, and clinical informatics to address a key challenge in diabetes care: making sure HbA1c measurements are reliable and reproducible in complex clinical settings. They study how differences in biology—like changes in red blood cell lifespan, hemoglobin types, and other diseases—combine with test and platform factors to affect how HbA1c works in real-world practice.