Pathology & Laboratory Medicine News Items – June/July 2017

Pathology & Laboratory Medicine News Items – June/July 2017

 

  • Announcements:
      • Sandra Cerda MD, was invited as a guest speaker and scientific session Chair and moderator at the “3rd International Conference on Cytopathology & Histopathology” that took place in Philadelphia on June 22-23. Theme “Transforming the Future of Cytopathology & Histopathology”
      • Reyhan Gedik, MD presented a poster at ACLPS 2017 Annual Meeting, June 15-17, 2017 in New Haven, CT. Her poster title was “Computerized Approach to Antibody Identification in Pre-transfusion Testing”
      • Dr. Ivana Delalle has accepted an invitation to become an Associate Editor in Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
      • Dr. Delalle has also been invited to give a talk on her research at Molecular Pathology seminar series at Johns Hopkins Medical School
      • Dr. Daniel Remick was invited to speak at the Association of Pathology Chairs annual meeting at the new chairs bootcamp. The title of his talk was “The Unique Leadership Challenges in the Pathology Research Mission”
      • Dr. Daniel Remick became the President of the American Society of Investigative Pathology on July 1, 2017. He will serve for a one year term
      • Dr. David Sherr and his team resubmitted their competitive renewal for the BU Superfund Research Center and were awarded a $3,500,000 grant over 2.5 years; http://www.bu.edu/sph/research/research-landing-page/superfund-research-program-at-boston-university/
      • Resident Israa Laklouk, MD submitted abstract entitled  “Predictive accuracy of thyroseq v2 for malignant thyroid nodules among Bethesda-III cytology subcategories: Atypia of undetermined significance (AUS) and follicular lesion of undetermined significance (FLUS)” has been accepted as an Oral Presentation and will be part of the Scientific Programme during the  29th European Congress of Pathology to be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The authors list: Israa Laklouk, MD;  Mahmoud Soliman MD, PhD; Dhay Kamel ,MD; Huihong Xu, MD; Sandra Cerda, MD
      • Please Welcome our New Residency Coordinator Daphney Noel! Daphney comes to us via Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  In her recent position as a program coordinator at BWH’s Center for Faculty Development and Diversity Daphney was responsible for planning and arranging programs in support of the faculty and research community. Daphney graduated from Colby-Sawyer College with a BA in History and hopes to get her MS of education in counseling
      • 2017 Graduation Celebration was held this year at Cinquecento Restaurant; Congratulations to All!!

 

n    BU-CTSI Spring 2017 Pilot Awardees

 

Boston University Clinical and Translational Science Institute (BU-CTSI) is pleased to announce the recipients of the Spring 2017 Integrated Pilot Grant Program.  This cycle we received 47 applications, 22 applicants were awarded, including 12 deferred from fall 2016. Each awardee received $20,000 in funding . The CTSI would like to recognize the faculty who reviewed the applicants and offer our sincere thanks for their time and efforts.

 

The purpose of the Integrated Pilot Grant Award mechanism is to stimulate scientific discovery in all areas of basic or translational research related to the prevention, diagnosis, and management of human disease.

 
Nader Rahimi, PhD The purpose of this pilot CTSI grant proposal is to investigate the novel tumor suppressor function of TMIGD1 in renal cancer and possible therapeutic strategy. Renal cell carcinoma is one of the most common and lethal forms of renal cancers and also is a high-risk metastasizing tumor with a poor prognosis. Treatment remains highly challenging as renal cell carcinoma is an intrinsically chemo/radiotherapy-resistant cancer.

 
Joel Henderson, MD, PhD The goal of this study is to evaluate the utility of urine podocyte measurement, or podometrics, in biobanked urine specimens from the Framingham Heart Study. Podocytes are kidney epithelial cells that are critical to the formation and maintenance of the kidney filtration system. Their loss and accumulation in the urine under conditions of stress indicates damage to the kidney filter, and is a critical step in the eventual development of progressive chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Daniel Remick, MD Antibiotic resistance has become an important problem with few new antibiotics approved in the past 10 years. Prior work in the lab has shown that it is possible to stimulate the innate immune system so that the white blood cells eradicate bacteria more effectively. Giving mice a drug that activates the substance P receptor activates the cells so that they are more effective at eliminating bacteria in the lungs. This is essentially a new way of treating pneumonia.

The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine launched a series of initiatives to increase scholarly activity and increase grant funding. These initiatives arose from the strategic planning process. The Department was recently asked to provide information about specific faculty development programs, and we provided the information below.

    • Writing workshops. A 9 part series of workshops were presented on how to prepare a manuscript. Topics included using bibliography and graphing software, writing an abstract and selecting the most appropriate journal for the manuscript etc. Faculty involved included Daniel Remick, M.D., and Shinichiro Kurosawa, M.D., Ph.D.
    • Manuscript accelerator sessions. These sessions are held each week with the intent of accelerating the completion of manuscripts. Participants (grad students, fellows, junior faculty etc.) participate in a 4 part series by bringing different portions of the manuscript to the session. The senior faculty member at the session serves more as an editor than actual reviewer of the manuscript. A 2017 survey of the faculty showed that 82% of the respondents felt these accelerator sessions should be continued. The faculty involved included Drs. Sharon, O’Brien, Kurosawa, Stearns-Kurosawa, Remick, Panchenko and others.
    • Internal grant reviews. During each grant review cycle the Department offers internal review of grant submissions. Faculty send in their abstract and specific aims page, and another faculty member is assigned as the reviewer. This initiative has just been started, so it is too early to track success in a systematic manner. However, at least 2 CTSI grants, a Dahoud biobank and Shipley Prostate biobank study have been funded after internal review.
  • Publications ACCEPTED:
    • Parul Agnihotri, Nicholas M. Robertson, Sarah E. Umetsu, Ksenia Arakcheeva and Susan Winandy; Lack of Ikaros cripples expression of Foxo1 and its targets in naive T cells. Accepted for publication in Immunology
    • Adams SL, Benayoun L, Tilton K, Chavez OR, Himali JJ, Blusztajn JK, Seshadri S, and Delalle I: Methionine sulfoxide reductase-B3 (MsrB3) protein associates with synaptic vesicles and its expression changes in the hippocampi of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Accepted for publication in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
    • Agis-Balboa RC, da Silva Pinheiro PC, Rebola N, Kerimoglu C, Benito E, Gertig M, Bahari-Javan S, Jain G, Burkhardt S, Delalle I, Jatzko A, Dettenhofer M, Zunszain P, Schmitt A, Falkai P, Pape J, Binder E, Mulle C, and Sananbenesi F: Formin 2 links neuropsychiatric phenotypes at young age to an increased risk of dementia. Accepted for publication in EMBO Journal, June 27, 2017
  • Publications PUBLISHED:
    • Nisma Mujahid, Yanke Liang, Ryo Murakami, Hwan Geun Choi, Allison S. Dobry, Jinhua Wang, Yusuke Suita, Qing Yu Weng, Jennifer Allouche, Lajos V. Kemeny, Andrea L. Hermann, Elisabeth M. Roider, Nathanael S. Gray, David E. Fisher; A UV-Independent Topical Small-Molecule Approach for Melanin Production in Human Skin. Cell Reports, Volume 19, Issue 11, p2177–2184, 13 June 2017
    • Yang JH, Siroky MB, Yall SV and Azadzoi KM: Mitochondrial Stress and Activation of Phosphoinositol 3 Kinase (PI3K) and Protein Kinase B (Akt) Survival Pathway in Bladder Ischemia. Res Rep Urol 2017, June 10, 9:93-100
    • Bharath, LP, Ip, B, Nikolajczyk BS. 2017. Adaptive immunity and metabolic health: harmony becomes dissonant in obesity and aging. Comprehensive Physiology (In Press).
    • Agrawal, M, Kern, PA, Nikolajczyk BS. The Immune System in Obesity: Developing Paradigms Amidst Inconvenient Truths. Current Diabetes Reports (In Press

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