October 2009

Pathology & Laboratory Medicine News Items

Announcements:

  • The New Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Strategic Plan is now posted on our web page.
  • Joann Crain and Kathleen White from Lab Medicine have successfully completed the AACC Point of Care Specialist Certificate Program
  • Elizabeth Schuller, MA successfully completed her thesis “Delayed Addition of Anti-oxidants Fails to Modulate Cytokine Production” and requirements  to receive her Masters in Pathology Degree in September
  • A Student Research Award from the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) has been awarded to Fiona Chiem, a BU senior volunteering in the Remick Lab under the guidance of John Kim, PhD
  • Welcome to NEW FACES:
    • Dr. Zhaohua Lu was appointed Instructor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Her research interests include immunology and infectious diseases. She will work in collaboration with Dr. Jacqueline Sharon on immunotherapy and immunoprophylaxis for tularemia
    • Dr. Kobra Rezazadeh-Gharahassanlou is a new post-doc in Nader Rahimi’s Lab
  • Grants
    • Dr. Jacqueline Sharon received a 5-year, $5.5 million NIH contract award to identify and validate protective and pathogenic B cell epitopes in tularemia and determine the mechanisms of antibody protection or pathogenesis. The multi-investigator project includes Drs. Zhaohua Lu, Shinichiro Kurosawa, Deborah Stearns-Kurosawa and Daniel Remick from the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Drs. Catherine Costello and Joseph Zaia from the Department of Biochemistry, Dr. Barbara Seaton from the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, and Dr. Seshi Sompuram from Medical Discovery Partners LLC. Dr. Mercio PereiraPerrin of Tufts University School of Medicine will participate as Consultant, and Ms. Lyndianne Joseph from the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine will be the Contract Administrator
    • Marten Steffen, PhD is the PI of a recently awarded Grand Opportunity grant (1RC2GM092602-01; multi-PI: Steffen, Kasif, Roberts). The goal of the grant, entitled “SciBay: A New Methodology for Scientific Collaboration and Gene Function Determination,” is to catalyze experimental validation of gene function for genes with no known function in bacterial genomes. This grant will implement the experimental validation model proposed by co-PI Rich Roberts, the recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of introns. We will form a consortium of experimental and computational biologists that would collaborate directly to test experimentally the predicted functions of high-priority genes of currently unknown function or specificity. This high profile initiative is our attempt to ameliorate a profound problem exacerbated by next generation sequencing methods. If one were to sequence a newly discovered microbe today, the percentage of genes of unknown function would be very similar to that obtained a decade ago. We anticipate that, in the near future, as the new methods become more widely used, and generate giga- and tera-bases of new sequence data, this problem will become quantitatively worse. It is therefore imperative that we develop both new methods and opportunities for determining gene function.

 

Presentations:

  • Carmen Sarita-Reyes, MD will be presenting a Perinatal Placenta Case at the Latin-American Society of Pediatric Pathology (SLAPPE) Perinatology Seminar at Antigua, Guatemala in October
  • “Reduced adipose tissue inflammation represents an intermediate cardiometabolic phenotype in obesity” by Lija Joseph, MD has been accepted for presentation at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, to be held on Nov. 14 – 18, 2009 in Orlando, FL. This is an NIH funded research project that Dr. Joseph participate in collaboration with Dr. Noyan Gokce in the Department of Cardiology
  • Dr. Louis Liou, Van Le and Yasmin Akbari attended the New England American Urological Association’s Annual Conference in Washington D.C. this past Friday (9/25/09).  Van and Yasmin presented posters and it went pretty well. 
    • Van Le, BA, first year student at BU School of Medicine: “Evaluating  microRNA Expression Integrity in FFPE Samples with qRT-PCR by Using  Patient-Matched Formalin-Fixed and Fresh-Frozen Tissues from Renal  Cell Carcinoma (RCC) Patients”
    • Yasmin Akbari, senior at BU undergrad: “Assessing the Potential of the  Htert Cell Line as a Model of Normal Bladder Urothelium via Analysis  of microRNA Expression”

 NEAUA Poster (.PDF)               Van’s Poster (.PDF)

  • Zack Hunter, MA candidate just got word that he received 3 posters and Zach will talk as first author at this years meeting of the American Society of Hematology!
    • Poster 1: “Gene Expression Profiling Distinguishes Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia Patients Presenting with Familial Disease, Advanced IPSS Prognostic Score, and Previous Treatment with Rituximab”
    • Poster 2: “IgA and IgG Hypogammaglobulinemia Does Not Predict for Recurrent Infection Risk and Persists Despite Therapeutic Response in Patients with Waldentroms Macroglobulinemia”
    • Poster 3: “Micro-RNA Expression Profiling Reveals Distinct Correlates to Disease Pathogenesis, and Identifies Novel Pathways Involved in Tumor Cell Senescence and IL-12A Signaling”
    • Talk: “Genome Wide Association Studies of Familial Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia (WM) Reveals a Loss of GSTM1 Is Common in Families with a History of B-Cell Disorders but Not in Those with a History Specific for WM”

Publications- PUBLISHED:

  • Mary Jo Murnane, PhD has an article “Active MMP-2 Effectively Identifies the Presence of Colorectal Cancer”   by Murnane MJ, Cai J, Shuja S,  McAneny D, Klepeis V and Willett JB) that has just been published online at the website for Wiley-Blackwell publications (wiley.com).  It will be coming out soon as a hard copy in a fall ’09 issue of the International Journal of Cancer

Publications-ACCEPTED:

  • “Capzb2 Interacts with ß-tubulin to Regulate Growth Cone Morphology and Neurite Outgrowth David A. Davis1, Meredith H. Wilson1, Jodel Giraud2, Zhigang Xie3, Huang-Chun Tseng2, Cheryl England4, Haya Hersckovitz4, Li-Huei Tsai2 and Ivana Delalle1* was accepted by PLoS Biology, to be published in October 2009  Poster (.PDF)

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