Boston University Medical Campus
School of Medicine

Osamu Shimomura stood quietly in front of a Medical Campus audience yesterday, slender shoulders slouched forward, eyes gazing down.

Osamu Shimomura, a School of Medicine professor emeritus of physiology and one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008, returned to MED to give his Nobel lecture, Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP: My Nobel Prize Lecture. Photos by Kalman Zabarsky

Beside him, David Atkinson, chairman of the School of Medicine physiology and biophysics department, displayed a gold medallion the size of his palm to the growing crowd: Shimomura’s Nobel Prize in chemistry.

“See that everybody?” Atkinson asked. “That’s the real thing.”

Shimomura, a MED professor emeritus of physiology and a former senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, was one of three winners of the prize in 2008 for his discovery of green fluorescent protein in the jellyfish Aequorea victoria. He shared the $1.4 million award with Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, two researchers who pioneered cellular research techniques using the proteins Shimomura identified.

Shimomura was back at BU to give his Nobel Prize presentation, Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP: My Nobel Prize Lecture, before dozens of BU faculty, staff, and students in the auditorium at 670 Albany Street.

President Robert A. Brown introduced Shimomura. Without the researcher’s discovery of “tiny molecular flashlights,” Brown said, many of the experiments performed in laboratories around the world, in fields ranging from biophysical chemistry to ecology and evolution, would not be possible.

All this from a man who saw the horrors that scientific experimentation can bring. At 16, Brown recounted, Shimomura was 15 kilometers from the epicenter of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

Read the whole story by Leslie Friday on BU Today

Androgen deprivation therapy reduces prostate cancer (PCa) tumor growth; however, disease relapse often ensues independently of androgen stimulation, producing androgen refractory tumors with increased invasion, proliferation, and malignancy. Androgens down-regulate epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in normal prostate but not in PCa. Thus, loss of EGFR regulation and altered signaling may, in part, explain the transition of prostate tumors from androgen-dependent to androgen-independent. Studies in animal models, PCa cell lines, and tumor specimens suggest that androgens modulate prostate growth and function via mechanisms that involve “cross-talk” between androgen receptor (AR) and growth factor receptors signaling pathways.

“We reviewed the literature from mid 1980s through 2009 to assess the relationship between androgens and EGFR function in modulating growth of normal and PCa and found the loss of androgen regulation of EGFR in PCa may be responsible for increased tumor growth, invasion and metastasis with important implications on the clinical management of prostate cancer,” said Abdulmaged M. Traish, MBA, PhD, a professor of biochemistry and urology at BUSM, whose paper appears in the current issue of British Journal of Cancer. According to Traish, the loss of regulation of EGFR expression by androgens in PCa represents an important pathway in cellular growth, invasion and metastasis. “Better understanding of this regulation may represent a target for therapeutic management of PCa,” he added.

Rhoda M. Alani, MD, has been appointed chair of the Department of Dermatology, Herbert Mescon Chair and professor of dermatology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and chief of the Department of Dermatology at Boston Medical Center (BMC). She will assume these positions in January 2010.

Rhoda M. Alani, MD

Prior to these appointments, Alani was a faculty member in Oncology, Dermatology, and Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she currently serves as Director of The Laboratory of Cutaneous Oncology in the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center. Alani’s research focus is in understanding the molecular basis of melanoma development and progression with the aim of translating her laboratory findings to better prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of melanoma. Alani’s clinical interests are focused on pigmented lesions and melanoma and she is currently Director of the Pigmented Lesion and Melanoma Clinic in Dermatology at Johns Hopkins. She is also actively involved in teaching medical students, graduate students, and dermatology residents and has served as Director of the Dermatology Residency Training Program at Johns Hopkins.

“Dr. Alani is an outstanding academician who has been a leader in research and education, and a outstanding addition to our faculty leadership,” said BUSM Dean Karen Antman, MD, provost of the Boston University Medical Campus.

“Dr. Alani brings a wealth of clinical experience to this role, which will be of great benefit to our patients. We look forward to the leadership she will provide to the department of dermatology and the hospital,” said Elaine Ullian, BMC president and CEO.

Alani received her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School, where she received the Graduation with Distinction in Research Award. She completed an internship in internal medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, and a residency in dermatology at Harvard Medical School. From 1995 to1997 Alani served as an instructor in dermatology at Harvard Medical School and from 1997 to 1999 as an instructor in dermatology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

She was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2005 and currently serves as the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine representative to this organization. She is also a member of the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Investigative Dermatology and a Founding member of the Society for Melanoma Research.

Avrum Spira, MD, MSc has been appointed as chief of the section of computational biomedicine in the department of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM). This newly established division will develop and apply computational approaches to the analysis of high-throughput molecular datasets in order to improve the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of complex medical diseases.

Avrum Spira, MD, MSc

Spira received his medical degree from McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, Canada, and his master’s degree in Bioinformatics from Boston University. He performed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Toronto and his fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Boston Medical Center (BMC).

He attends to patients in the Medical Intensive Care Unit and on the Pulmonary/Critical Care Interventional service at BMC. Spira directs both the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Program in the Pulmonary Center and the Translational Bioinformatics Program in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at BUSM.

Spira’s research interests focus on applying high-throughput genomic and bioinformatics tools to the translational study of lung cancer and Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease. He is funded as a Principal Investigator through the National Institutes of Health and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. His primary research is on determining how cigarette smoking affects intra-thoracic (lobar bronchi) and extra-thoracic (mouth and nasal) airway epithelial cell gene and microRNA expression and to use this information to develop a non-invasive genomic biomarker for lung cancer that can identify that subset of smokers who have, or are at risk for developing, lung cancer.

Additionally, his lab is exploring how this molecular “field of injury” in the airway epithelium reflects information about the perturbation of specific oncogenic pathways within an individual, potentially allowing personalized genomic approaches to lung cancer chemoprophylaxis and therapy. This airway “field of injury” concept is also being extended to explore the molecular pathways that contribute to the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive lung disease, as well as identify non-invasive measures of the biological response to tobacco exposure that can be applied to large-scale population studies as part of the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH/NIEHS) Genes and Environment Initiative.

Spira, an associate professor medicine and pathology at BUSM, belongs to numerous professional organizations including the American Thoracic Society and the American Association for Cancer Research. He has served as a member of NIH study sections at both the National Heart Lung and the National Cancer Institute.

Spira is a reviewer for many journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and has patented several approaches and devices for the early detection of lung cancer.

Jerrold J. Ellner, MD, has been appointed chief of the section of infectious diseases at Boston Medical Center and professor of medicine in the department of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Ellner previously had served as chair of the department of medicine at the New Jersey Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey from 2002 to 2006, and was most recently professor of medicine and scientific director of the Center for Emerging Pathogens at UMDNJ.

Jerrold J. Ellner, MD

Ellner received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore. He received post-doctoral training in Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Ellner joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University as an assistant professor in 1976 and was promoted to professor of medicine and pathology in 1983. He served as chief of the division of infectious diseases at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals of Cleveland from 1979 through 1996. Ellner also served as vice-chair, executive vice chair and interim chair of the department of medicine at Case Western Reserve University.

He was director of the Tuberculosis Research Unit at Case Western Reserve University from 1994 through 1999. Ellner was recruited to UMD-New Jersey Medical School in 1999 as Emerging Pathogens Endowed Professor of Medicine and director of the Ruy V. Lourenço Center for the Study of Emerging and Re-Emerging Pathogens. He was appointed as the first University Professor of UMDNJ and served as vice-chair for research and chief of infectious diseases of the department of medicine, and then as interim chair before becoming chair of medicine June 2002.

Ellner is internationally recognized for his research on tuberculosis and its interactions with HIV infection. He has published more than 250 original articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. He was the principal architect of the Uganda-Case Western Reserve University Research Collaboration, which was extended to UNMNJ and is a founding member of the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa. Ellner is principal investigator of the recently awarded Clinical Diagnostics Research Consortium from the NIH which will evaluate investigation TB diagnostics in endemic areas.

Ellner’s accomplishments have been recognized by his election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He received the Squibb Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 1990.

Ellner has served as chair of the Tuberculosis Panel of the U.S.-Japan, Cooperative Medical Sciences Program. He was member and chair of bacteriology and mycology-1 study section of the NIH, and a member of the National Advisory Allergy and Infectious Diseases Council, the Immunology of Mycobacterial Diseases Steering Committee of the World Health Organization and the Public Health Service Advisory Council for Elimination of Tuberculosis. He received the Northeast Ohio Live, Outstanding Achievement in Health/Medicine Award in 1998 and was named Best Doctor in New York, 2001 by New York Magazine and Top Doctor in New Jersey by New Jersey Monthly on numerous occasions.

Ellner was co-editor-in-chief of “Tuberculosis” formerly known as “Tubercle and Lung Disease” and section editor of the Journal of Immunology and currently serves as executive editor of Clinical and Translational Sciences. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Heiser Program on Tuberculosis and Leprosy and chairs the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Aurum Center for Global Health.

Anil K. Nair, MD, assistant professor of Neurology at BUSM presented a talk on “Doctor Can I Drive? Driving Issues in the Elderly” at the Massachusetts Neurologists Association Annual Fall Meeting on Wednesday, November 4, at the Massachusetts Medical Society in Waltham, Mass. More than 70 neurologists from all over Massachusetts attended his presentation.

Anil Nair, MD

Nair’s research interests are in early and preclinical detection, treatment and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), with special emphasis on mild cognitive impairment. He is a clinical trialist working with new drug treatments in AD. He also investigates genetics of AD, with a special focus on genetic disclosure to at risk persons. He is also interested in Lewy body dementia, Primary Progressive Aphasia and Frontotemporal dementia from a clinical perspective.

Osamu Shimomura, PhD, BUSM Professor Emeritus and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will address the BU Medical Campus community on Tuesday, November 17. He will speak on “Discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP: My Nobel Prize Lecture.”

BUSM Professor Emeritus Osamu Shimomura was one of three winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He will speak on the BU Medical Campus on Tuesday, Nov. 17.

Shimomura is credited with the discovery of green fluorescent protein or GFP, which he observed in 1962 in the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria, found off the west coast of North America.
“This protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. “With the aid of GFP, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread.”

Shimomura shared the $1.4 million prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, both colleagues were recognized for pioneering cellular research techniques that use the proteins Shimomura identified.

The BUMC community is invited to join in the celebration of Dr. Shimomura and his achievements. The lecture will begin at 3 pm in the 670 Albany Street auditorium. A reception will be held at 4 pm in the lobby of the auditorium following Dr. Shimomura’s formal remarks.

The Genome Science Institute held its inaugural Research Symposium, an interdisciplinary research symposium that explores genetic and genomic science, in the Boston University Medical Campus Hiebert Lounge on Thursday, Oct. 8. Sixty-three abstracts were submitted by students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty from Institutions throughout the Boston area.

Prizes were awarded in undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral fellow categories. Six abstracts were chosen for oral distinction and the first authors were invited to give an oral presentation at the symposium. Seven researchers were awarded outstanding poster prizes. Winners of both oral distinction and poster prizes received an award of $100.

Award Winners for Oral Distinction:

Graduate Level

Adam Gower, “openSESAME: A new tool for discovering biologically relevant connections in public gene expression data.” Faculty advisors: Marc Lenburg, PhD., and Avrum Spira, MD., PhD., BUSM.

Paul Romesser, “Cancer biomarker discovery by genome-wide transcriptome vs. proteome profiling: problems, advantages, limitations and insights.” Faculty advisor: Gerald Denis, PhD., BUSM.

Undergraduate Level

Vishal Patel, BU, Biology, “Understanding the Molecular Nature of the Loss of Function Mutation, THREAD 1.” Faculty Advisor: Kim McCall, PhD., BU.

Arun Rai, BUSM, Biochemistry, “GM-CSF is a novel target of p53-related p63.” Faculty Advisor: Jim Xiao, PhD., BUSM.

Post-Doctoral Level

Hamid M Abdolmaleky, BUSM, Genetics Program, “Epigenetic dysregulation of serotonin receptors type-2 (5HTR2A) in post-mortem brains of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.” Faculty advisor: Sam Thiagalingam, PhD., BUSM.

Jean-Bosco Tagne, BUSM, Pulmonary Center, “Genome-wide Identification of Titf1 Target Genes in the Developing Lung.” Faculty advisor: Maria Ramirez, PhD., BUSM.

Outstanding Poster Prizes:

Graduate

Alexandra Silveira, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School, “Haplotypes Within The Vitamin D Metabolism Gene CYP24A1 Are Associated With the Development Neovascular AMD.” Faculty Advisor: Margaret DeAngelis, MD., PhD., Harvard Medical School.

Ari Friedland, BUSM, Biomedical Engineering, “A Synthetic Gene Network that Counts.” Faculty Advisor: James Collins, PhD., BUSM.

Jenny Loew, BUSM, Medical Nutrition Program, Cancer Research Center, “CpG Demethylation of ARHI Gene and Synergistic Inhibition of Ovary and Breast Cancer Cells by HDAC Inhibitors and Natural Isoflavonoid Product Genistein.” Faculty Advisor: Sibaji Sarkar, PhD., BUSM.

Joseph Gerrein, BU, Bioinformatics Program, “Deep-sequencing identifies smoking and lung-cancer associated changes to the large airway transcriptome.” Faculty Advisor: Avrum Spira, MD., PhD., BUSM.

Josh Campbell, BUSM, Pulmonomics, “Changes in gene expression with progression of emphysematous destruction in COPD.” Faculty Advisor: Avrum Spira, MD., PhD., BUSM.
Postdoc

Alexia Eliades, BUSM, Biochemistry, “New roles for cyclin E in megakaryocyte polyploidization.” Faculty Advisor: Katya Ravid, PhD., BUSM.

Alex Ensminger, Tufts University, Molecular Biology and Microbiology, “From broad host range to isogenic prison: genotypic plasticity in experimentally evolved strains of Legionella.” Faculty Advisor: Ralph Isberg, PhD., Tufts University.

Kelly Harrington, VA Boston, “Reexamining the Associations of DRD4 and 5-HTT with ADHD Using an Alternative Comorbid ADHD Phenotype.” Faculty advisor: Irwin Waldman, PhD. Emory University.

Poorly Cleaned Public Restrooms on Cruise Ships May Predict Norovirus Outbreaks

A team of researchers from Boston University School (BUSM), Carney Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance and Tufts University School of Medicine, have found that widespread poor compliance with regular cleaning of public restrooms on cruise ships may predict subsequent norovirus infection outbreaks (NoVOs). This study, which appears in the November 1st issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, is the first study of environmental hygiene on cruise ships.

Outbreaks of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) often occur in close populations, such as among cruise ship passengers. Recent epidemiologic investigations of outbreaks of AGE confirmed that 95 percent of cruise ship AGE outbreaks are caused by norovirus. Despite biannual sanitation monitoring and hand hygiene interventions among passengers and crew members, 66 ships monitored by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experienced NoV infection outbreaks (NoVOs) between 2003 and 2008.

Trained health care professionals evaluated the thoroughness of disinfection cleaning of six standardized objects (toilet seat, flush handle or button, toilet stall inner handhold, stall inner door handle, restroom inner door handle, and baby changing table surfaces) with high potential for fecal contamination in cruise ship public restrooms.

The researchers found only 37 percent of the 273 randomly selected public restrooms that were evaluated on 1,546 occasions were cleaned daily. The overall cleanliness of the six standardized surfaces on each ship ranged from four to 100 percent. Although some objects in most restrooms were cleaned at least daily, on 275 occasions no objects in a restroom were cleaned for at least 24 hours.

Overall, the toilet seat was the best-cleaned object and the least thoroughly cleaned object was the baby changing table. Furthermore, 19 objects in 13 ships were not cleaned at all during the entire five-to-seven-day monitoring period. Toilet area handholds were largely neglected, accounting for more than half of the uncleaned objects on 11 ships. Although almost all standardized objects were assessed at the time of each evaluation, baby changing tables were not found in public restrooms on 79 percent of vessels. On three ships, none of the changing tables were cleaned during the study period. The thoroughness of cleaning did not differ by cruise line and did not correlate with Center for Disease Control and Prevention Vessel Sanitation Program inspection scores which averaged 97 out of a possible 100 points for the study vessels.

Philip Carling, MD

According to the researchers these findings are of particular note because five of the six evaluated objects could readily be directly contaminated by pathogens during regular use. “Although hand hygiene with soap after toileting may diminish the transmission of enteric pathogens via bathroom door knobs or pulls, hand washing is unlikely to mitigate the potential for any of the other toilet area contact surfaces to serve as a source of transmission of enteric pathogens,” said lead author Philip Carling, MD, a professor of clinical medicine at BUSM. “Furthermore, there was a substantial potential for washed hands to become contaminated while the passenger was exiting the restroom, given that only 35 percent of restroom exit knobs or pulls were cleaned daily. Only disinfection cleaning by cruise ship staff can reasonably be expected to mitigate these risks,” he added.

Although the thoroughness of disinfection cleaning was 30 percent on more than half of the ships, near-perfect cleaning was documented on several vessels, providing evidence that a high level of environmental hygiene is achievable. “We believe that additional studies on the role of contaminated surfaces in cruise ship NoV transmission are warranted to determine whether improved environmental hygiene will decrease the incidence, duration, or severity of outbreaks,” added Carling.

Co-authors include Lou Ann Bruno-Murtha, DO, clinical instructor in medicine of Cambridge Health Alliance, and senior author, Jeffrey K. Griffiths, MD, MPH&TM, an associate professor in the department of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Francis Farraye, MD, Professor of Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine and Clinical Director in the Gastroenterology Section at Boston Medical center, has received the William D. Carey Award from the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG). The award is reserved for an exceptional individual who has served the Board and the College with distinction. In being selected for this award Dr. Farraye has shown clear demonstration of outstanding contribution to the College such as service within leadership positions, participation in educational efforts, committee service or participation in research related activities. In addition he has shown a strong history of meritorious service to the Board of Governors.

Francis A. Farraye, MD

Dr. Farraye also served as co-director for the ACG “What’s New in Pharmacology” course offered at the ACG meeting with 430 participants, breaking all previous attendance records.

Dr. Farraye’s clinical interests are in the care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, the management of colon polyps and colorectal cancer, as well endoscopy in patients after bariatric surgery. He is studying Vitamin D absorption in patients with IBD, the management and diagnosis of dysplasia and cancer in patients with IBD, and predictors of pouchitis after ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA). In the area of colorectal cancer, he is examining the role of hyperplastic polyps as an alternative pathway in the development of colorectal cancer.