January 2009

Pathology & Laboratory Medicine News Items

Happy New Year!

Announcements:

BU Bridge, the Boston University Clinical and Translational Science Institute, is delighted to announce the awardees of its 2008-2009 Pilot Project and Methods Project Grants and K12 Fellowship. These awardees were chosen after reviewing many outstanding applications. One of the PILOT PROJECT GRANTS was awarded to Nader Rahimi, PhD: Identification of Novel Anti-Angiogenesis Agent for Treatment of Angiogenesis-associated Eye Diseases. The goal of this project is to study the efficacy and pharmacokinetics of PLCã1 peptide inhibitor conjugated with two different carriers (PLCI-I and PLCI-II fusion octamer PLCã1 peptides) in inhibiting choroidal neovascularization (CNV) in an animal model. Dr. Rahimi’s group has shown that PLCI-I and PLCI-II fusion octamer PLCã1 peptides are cell membrane permeable and inhibit endothelial cell proliferation and angiogenesis in vitro.

Dr. Kazem Azadzoi has been appointed to the Surgery Scientific Merit Review board of the Department of Veterans Affairs (V A) Joint Biomedical Laboratory Research and Development and Clinical Science Research and Development for a term ending 2012

Recent updates to the Pathology Resident Curriculum includes a Molecular Pathology rotation. The molecular pathology rotation includes exposure to testing performed in anatomic pathology and microbiology. In addition a 6 lecture introductory series was created to provide background knowledge. Attendings: Nancy Miller and Karen Quillen; Faculty Member: Shi Yang; Residents: John Lee and Bethany Tierno, and technical support staff Beverly Orr, Audrey Quinn, and Charline Mack were involved in creating this new curriculum.

Basic Life Support Certification Renewed for:

  • Dr. Steven Bogen

Grants

  • Grant awarded from the DoD PCRP for 3 years to Steve Bogen’s group. The project is to study peripheral leukocytes in patients with elevated PSA levels. The goal is to identify an adjunct biomarker that could increase the specificity of the PSA test, thereby reducing the need for prostate biopsy

Publications:

  • Hyunjin Shin, Yue Zhang, Madhumita Jagannathan, Hatice Hasturk, Alpdogan Kantarci, Honsgheng Liu, Thomas Van Dyke, Lisa Ganley-Leal, and Barbara Nikolajczyk, “B cells from periodontal disease patients express surface Toll-like Receptor 4” in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology. Accepted on Dec 5 2008.
  • Dr. Rosana Meyer’s manuscript entitled “Identification of ligand-induced proteolytic cleavage and ectodomain shedding of VEGFR-1/FLT-1 in leukemic cancer Cells” (Rosana D Meyer, Todd Golde and Nader Rahimi) is accepted for publication in the Cancer Research Journal. This is Dr. Meyer’s second paper accepted for publication within less than two months.
  • Finnerty CC, Jeschke MG, Herndon DN, Gamelli R, Gibran N, Klein M, Silver G, Arnoldo B, Remick D, Tompkins RG: Temporal Cytokine Profiles In Severely Burned Patients: A Comparison Of Adults And Children, Mol Med 2008, 1076-1551
  • Sperry JL, Friese RS, Frankel HL, West MA, Cuschieri J, Moore EE, Harbrecht BG, Peitzman AB, Billiar TR, Maier RV, Remick DG, Minei JP: Male gender is associated with excessive IL-6 expression following severe injury, J Trauma 2008, 64:572-578
  • Natarajan S, Kim J, Remick DG: Acute pulmonary lipopolysaccharide tolerance decreases TNF-alpha without reducing neutrophil recruitment. J Immunol 2008, 181:8402-8408.
  • Minter RM, Bi X, Ben-Josef G, Wang T, Hu B, Arbabi S, Hemmila MR, Wang SC, Remick DG, Su GL: LPS-binding protein mediates LPS-induced liver injury and mortality in the setting of biliary obstruction. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 2009, 296:G45-54
  • Merritt, W., Y. G. Lin, L. Y. Han, A. A. Kamat, W. A. Spannuth, R. Schmandt, D. Urbauer, L. A. Pennacchio, J-F Cheng, A. Zeidan, H. Wang, P. Mueller, M.. E. Lenburg, J. W. Gray, S. Mok, M. J. Birrer, G. Lopez- Berestein, R. L. Coleman, M. Bar-Eli, A. K. Sood. 2008. Decreased expression of RNA interference machinery, Dicer and Drosha, is associated with poor outcome in ovarian cancer patients. New England Journal of Medicine. 359:2641-2650.
  • Schembri, F., S. Sridhar, C. Perdomo, A. Gustafson, X. Zhang, A. Ergun, J. Lu, G. Liu, X. Zhang, J. Bowers, K. Sensinger, J.J. Collins, J. Brody, R. Getts, M.E. Lenburg, A. Spira. MicroRNAs as modulators of smoking-induced gene-expression changes in human airway epithelium. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In Press.
  • Ibifiri Wilcox,1 Kevin Boettger,1 Lance Greene,1 Anita Malek,1 Lance Davis,1 Martin H. Steinberg,2,3 Hong-Yuan Luo,1,2 and David H.K. Chui Hemoglobin Kenya composed of a- and (Agb)-fusion-globin chains, associated with hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin. American Journal of Hematology 84: 55-58, January 2009
  • Jozef Bartunek, MD, PHD,*,† Leen Delrue, PHD,*,† Frederik Van Durme, MD,*Olivier Muller, MD, PHD,* Filip Casselman, MD, PHD,‡ Bart De Wiest, RN,* Romaric Croes, MD,§ Sofie Verstreken, MD,* Marc Goethals, MD,* Herbert de Raedt, MD,* Jaydeep Sarma, MD, PHD, Lija Joseph, MD,_ Marc Vanderheyden, MD,*,† Ellen O. Weinberg, PHD Nonmyocardial Production of ST2 Protein in Human Hypertrophy and Failure Is Related to Diastolic Load. Journal of the American College of Cardiology Vol. xx, No. x, 2008

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