November 2014

Pathology & Laboratory Medicine News Items 

Announcements:

  • Kate Murphy has announced that the Blood Bank had its’ 4th inspection of the year – American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) on November 19th and 20th for an extremely thorough assessment, including nursing competency.  We were successfully accredited for another 2 years!
  • Zach Hunter, PhD Candidate in the Steven Treon’s Lab at Children’s Hospital presented at the following conferences:
    • August 14th in London, UK. At the 8th International Workshop on Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia. His oral presentation was entitled: “Genomic Landscape of WM”
    • August 17th in London, UK, WMUK’s 5th International Doctor Patient Forum “Making Sense of Key Information about your WM: MYD88, CXCR4 and the Genetics of WM”
  • Caitlin S. Leibowitz Parello, PhD, Kurosawa Lab, successfully defended her thesis “Investigating the Contributions of Leukocyte Responses and Kidney Cell Stress on Shiga- Toxin Pathogenesis” on Friday, November 21st

    LeibowitzParelloDefense.11.21.14
    Caitlin’s Defense
  • Zach Hunter also received a grant in his own name; “Identification of Germline and Somatic Variants Associated with Predisposition to WM” from the International Waldenström’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation
  • Barb Nikolajczyk, PhD presented:
    • “Immunometabolism, Lymphocytes and Obesity” at The Obesity Society annual meeting in Boston, MA on November 6th
    • “Lymphocytes in Human Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes” at the Evans Center/Whitaker mini-symposium on Immune Cells and Metabolism on November 21st
  • David Kindelberger, MD (along with colleague Eric Huang from the University of California, Davis) presented a workshop titled “2012 Updated ASCCP Consensus Management Guidelines for Women with Abnormal Cervical Cancer Screening Tests” at the 62nd Annual American Society of Cytopathology Scientific Meeting on November 17th in Dallas
  • Daniel Remick, MD was given a water pitcher to acknowledge his serving on the Society for Leukocyte Biology Council, and serving as the Program Chair for the 2014 Annual Leukocyte Biology Meeting. The 2014 meeting in Salt Lake City was a joint meeting between Leukocyte Biology and the International Endotoxin and Innate Immune Society.

    Remick Watervase jpg
    Dr. Remick with watervase
  • Mostafa Belghasem, PhD Candidate, Henderson Lab:
    • Presented a poster entitled “Heterozygous Actn4 Mutant Mice are Susceptible to Glomerulopathy when Subjected to Hemodynamic Stress” at American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Kidney Week 2014 in Philadelphia, PA, November 11-16, 2014
    • Mostafa was also selected to participate in the ASN 2014 Kidney STARS program and received a Travel Award from the ASN

 Publications ACCEPTED:

  • Ying Tan, Amanda A. Watkins, Benjamin B. Freeman, John A. Meyers, Ian R.Rifkin and Adam Lerner; “Type 4 cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase inhibitors block intracellular Toll-like receptor signaling in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and normal hematopoietic cells”. Journal of Immunology
  • Anastasia Gomez, Nancy S. Miller, and Irina Smolina. Visual detection of bacterial pathogens via PNA-based padlock probe assembly and isothermal amplification of DNAzymes. Analytical Chemistry, Publication Date (Web): 21 Nov 2014

Publications: PUBLISHED:

  • Castillo JJ, Olszewski AJ, Cronin AM, Hunter ZR, Treon SP. Survival trends in Waldenström macroglobulinemia: an analysis of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database. Blood. 2014 Jun 19;123(25):3999–4000. PMID: 24948623
  • Cao Y, Hunter ZR, Liu X, Xu L, Yang G, Chen J, Patterson CJ, Tsakmaklis N, Kanan S, Rodig S, Castillo JJ, Treon SP. The WHIM-like CXCR4(S338X) somatic mutation activates AKT and ERK, and promotes resistance to ibrutinib and other agents used in the treatment of Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia. Leukemia. 2014 Jun 10; PMID: 24912431
  • Ansar H, Mirzaei K, Malek A, Najmafshar A, Hossein-nezhad A. Possible resting metabolic rate modification by the circulating RBP4 in obese subjects. Diab Met Syndr: Clin Res Rev (Oct, 2014)
  • Treon SP, Hunter ZR, Castillo JJ, Merlini G. Waldenström Macroglobulinemia. Hematol Oncol Clin North Am. 2014 Oct;28 (5):945–970. PMID: 25212891
  • Cao Y, Hunter ZR, Liu X, Xu L, Yang G, Chen J, Tsakmaklis N, Kanan S, Castillo JJ, Treon SP. CXCR4 WHIM-like frameshift and nonsense mutations promote ibrutinib resistance but do not supplant MYD88(L265P) -directed survival signalling in Waldenström macroglobulinaemia cells. Br J Haematol. 2014 Nov 5; 
  • Sikora JL, Logue MW, Chan GG, Spencer BH, Prokaeva TB, Baldwin CT, Seldin DC, Connors LH (2014) Genetic variation of the transthyretin gene in wild-type transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTRwt). Human Genet. 2014 (e-Pub ahead of print) PMID: 25367359