March 2015

Pathology & Laboratory Medicine News Items

Announcements:

  • 104th USCAP Meeting, Boston, MA, March 21-27 2015
    • Cathryn Byrne-Dugan, MD had her abstract accepted: “Podocyte Infolding Glomerulopathy – Occurrence of the Disease Entity in the United States, and the Potential Role of an Autoantibody;” Authors:Cathryn J Byrne-Dugan, Pavel Kopach, Laurence H Beck, Vanesa Bijol, Monika Pilichowska, Helmut G Rennke, Masha Bilic
    • Meera Mahalingam will be the Chair/Moderator of “Neoplastic Dermatopathology – Clues and Confounders.” Topic was selected to highlight histopathologically confounding issues in cutaneous neoplasms. Neoplasms selected encompass a spectrum of lineage-unrelated tumors that are commonly encountered some perhaps more than others by a general pathologist both in private practice and in an academic setting. Each speaker will begin with an initial description of the entity and conclude with clues and confounding issues relevant to the entity discussed
    • Qing Zhao, Shi Yang, Cecilia Ponchiardi, and Michael O’Brien had their abstract “BRAF/KRAS Mutation, MSI/MSS Status and Tumor Budding in Colorectal Carcinoma” at the Poster Session on Tuesday, March 24th
    •   “Resident Shiva Khoobyari, MD enjoying a Poster at this year’s USCAP in Boston”
      USCAP2015.Shiva.58983127-DSC_624
  • Congratulations to Karen Quillen on her recent promotion to full professor. There is a nice article in BU today about her advancement. http://www.bu.edu/today/2015/med-promotions/
  • Daniel Remick, M.D., has been selected to be a Guest Editor for the Journal of Leukocyte Biology beginning February 2015. Dr. Remick will serve as the Editor for manuscripts solicited from the 2014 joint annual meeting of the Society for Leukocyte Biology and the International Innate Immune and Endotoxin Society.
  • On March 9th 2015 in Boston, MA. Carmen Sarita-Reyes presented at the 2015 Annual Session and Exhibition of the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) a Chair of the ADEA Board of Directors Symposium. The presentation was titled: “IGNITING MINDS THROUGH STUDENT SELF-DIRECTED GROUP LEARNING: Integrated  Problem Sessions (IPS.) Chair of the ADEA Board of Directors Symposium;” Cataldo W. Leone, DMD, DMSc, Carol T. Walsh, MA, PhD, Carmen D. Sarita-Reyes, MD, Monica A. Pessina, MEd, PhD, and Elizabeth R. Whitney, MSPT, PhD
  • Resident Reyhan Gedik, MD volunteers for a non-profit organization called White Tulip Foundation. We organize monthly seminars (called Boston Medical forum http://www.bostonmedicalforum.org/ ) to share our experiences as medical doctors and scientists. In March they invited David Kindelberger to give a talk about “Circulating Tumor Cells; New Tools for Personalized Medicine” and he kindly accepted. Keep an eye out for other interesting topics.
  • Clarissa Koch, PhD, Connors Lab, successfully defended her thesis “Characterizing the Effect of Transthyretin Amyloid on the Heart” on Monday, March 16th
  • “Clarissa Koch, PhD Candidate and her PI Lawreen Connors, about to give her Defense” and “Dr. Koch’s Celebration”
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  • MATCH DAY 2015:
    • Bravo to MD/PhD Graduate David Stepien for successfully being accepted into his First Choice in this year’s Match; Dave will be taking up residence in the University of Michigan Hospital Integrated Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Residency Program
    • Hooray to 2011 Masters Degree Graduate Nik Bajaj for also getting into his First Choice in this year’s Match; Nik will begin his residency in the University of Illinois – COM – Chicago Neurology Residency Program
  • Kevin Chandler, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow working jointly in the Dr. Cathy Costello and Nader Rahimi laboratories was awarded a three year postdoctoral fellowship from the NIH. The goal of the project is to map the glycosylation of VEGFR-2 and the role of this posttranslational modification in the angiogenic signaling of VEGFR-2
  • David Sherr’s graduate student, Liz Stanford, was selected to be the GMS commencement student speaker
  • Barb Nikolajczyk, PhD is an invited speaker in March 2015 for:
    • Experimental Biology, Diet and Immunometabolism Symposium, Boston, MA, Lymphocyte function in human type 2 diabetes, 2015
    • Immunology Microbiology Program Spring Seminar Series, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Inflammation in human type 2 diabetes, 2015
    • Beth Israel Medical Center,  Inflammation in human type 2 diabetes, 2015
  • Carol Cohen will be presenting at the AATB Quality and Donor Suitability Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia on April 20th. Susan Sharpe MS, MT(ASCP), SBB, CTBS who is the Supervisor of the Tissue and Transfusion Service at Northside Hospital in Atlanta and Carol will be presenting on the FDA’s new ruling that requires medical devices to have unique device identifiers
  • Lawreen Connors, PhD was invited to speak at the EB/ASIP meeting here in Boston on March 31st; the title of her presentation was “The Translational Science of Transthyretin-associated Cardiomyopathies.”
  • Here’s a link to an article in the Chicago Tribune in which David Sherr is quoted/featured: http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/sc-hlth-401-environmental-cancer-20150326-story.html#page=1
  • Remick was recently notified that graduate student, Ms. Erika Langley, was chosen this semester as a Teaching as Research Fellow. As a winner of this fellowship, she will receive an award of $1,000 and partake in a seminar in teaching as research. Teaching-as-Research involves the deliberate, systematic, and reflective use of research methods to develop and implement teaching practices that advance the learning experiences and outcomes of students and teachers. Erika will be in the TAR seminar this spring, and implement a project in a classroom in the summer or fall. Erika’s TAR project has the working title: Improving scientific literacy in undergraduates; she has the support of her faculty advisor for the project Prof. Paul Lipton and her research advisor Prof. Alpaslan Dedeoglu.

Publications ACCEPTED:

  • Goldberg, L.J., E. Wise, N. S. Miller. White piedra in a northern climate caused by Trichosporon inkin: A report of two cases. Item of correspondence. Accepted for publication, March 7, 2015. British Journal of Dermatology
  • Chad L Mayer, Caitlin S.L. Parello, Benjamin C Lee, Kiyoshi Itagaki, Shinichiro Kurosawa, DJ Stearns-Kurosawa. “Pro-Coagulant Endothelial Dysfunction Results from EHEC Shiga toxins and Host Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns”  Frontiers in Immunology, section Microbial Immunology.

Publications PUBLISHED:

  • Tagne, J.B., Mohtar, O.R., Campbell, J.D., Lakshminarayanan, M., Huang, J., Hinds, A.C., Lu, J., Ramirez, M.I. (2015) Transcription factor and microRNA interactions in lung cells: an inhibitory link between NK2 homeobox 1, miR-200c and the developmental and oncogenic factors Nfib and Myb Res. 16:22 PMC4335692 http://respiratory-research.com/content/16/1/22
  • Rai A, Nimeh T, Sood A, Thirumavalavan N, Thurmond PE, Azadzoi KM, Lerner LB. Could nocturia be an indicator of an undiagnosed sleep disorder in male veterans? 2015 Mar;85(3):641-7. PMID: 25733279
  • Lei X, Liu C, Azadzoi KM, Li C, Lu F, Xiang A, Sun J, Guo Y, Zhao Q, Yan Z, Yang J,; A novel IgM-H-ficolin complement pathway to attack allogenic cancer cells in vitro. Sci Rep. 2015 Jan 16;5:7824. PMID: 25592840
  • Poutahidis, T., Varian, B. J., Levkovich, T., Lakritz, J. R., Mirabal, S., Kwok, C., & Erdman, S. E. (2015). Dietary microbes modulate transgenerational cancer risk. Cancer research, canres-2732       (BJ Varian is one of our Masters Students; this is with his MIT affiliation)
  • Shivanna S, Harrold I, Shashar M, Meyer R, Kiang C, Francis J, Zhao Q, Feng H, Edelman ER, Rahimi N, Chitalia VC. c-Cbl regulates nuclear β-catenin and angiogenesis through its Wnt-mediated phosphorylation. J Biol Chem. 2015 Mar 17J Biol Chem
  • Melody P. Lun, Matthew B. Johnson, Kevin G. Broadbelt, Momoko Watanabe, Young-jin Kang, Kevin F. Chau,Mark W. Springel, Alexandra Malesz, André M.M. Sousa, Mihovil Pletikos, Tais Adelita, Monica L. Calicchio,Yong Zhang, Michael J. Holtzman, Hart G.W. Lidov, Nenad Sestan, Hanno Steen, Edwin S. Monuki, and Maria K. Lehtinen. Spatially Heterogeneous Choroid Plexus Transcriptomes Encode Positional Identity and Contribute to Regional CSF Production. The Journal of Neuroscience 25 March 2015, 35(12): 4903-4916
  • Vanesa Bijol, Cathryn J. Byrne-Dugan, and Melanie P. Hoenig. Medical student web-based formative assessment tool for renal pathology. Medical Education Online, Volume 20, 2015; http://med-ed-online.net/index.php/meo/article/view/26765

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