News
Read the Fall 2022 Bench to Bedpost Bulletin Here!
The Fall 2022 edition of the Boston University MD/PhD Bench to Bedpost Bulletin is now live! Some highlights from this semester's Alumni edition include:
- Dr. Borkan's interview with Dr. Ian Francis (MD/PhD '20)
- A recap of the 2022 annual MD/PhD Retreat
- Two award-winning MD/PhD students
- And more!
The Bench to Bedpost Bulletin is brought to you by Aria Pearlman Morales, Morgan Corniquel and Katie Hohl, all chairs of the Alumni Committee Branch of the MD/PhD Student Government.
Conor Shea wins Moorman-Simon Fellowship
Congratulations to Conor for winning the 2022-2023 Moorman-Simon Fellowship! The fellowship is provided to current MD/PhD and PhD students in Computational Biomedicine who are working in the field of cancer research. Conor has been working in Beane and Spira-Lenburg Labs, using single cell RNA transcriptomics to profile premalignant lesions in the lungs and identify their progression to cancer.
Learn more about the fellowship here.
New paper from David Swain: Investigating the morphological changes induced by glaucoma
Congratulations to David Swain for his new paper studying endothelial glycocalyx morphology in primate eyes with induced glaucoma published in Cells this month! The work provides another puzzle piece in our ongoing investigation into the pathophysiology of glaucoma, mainly the effects of decreased outflow on the trabecular outflow pathway. Read more about his work here.
Congratulations to Martin Ma for winning a poster prize at the FASEB Lung meeting
Congratulations to Martin Ma from Darrell Kotton's lab for winning a poster prize at the FASEB Lung meeting! Martin’s poster was about using iPSC derived epithelial cells for airway regeneration.
Here is a picture of Martin at the poster presentation with his PI and fellow MDPhD classmate Carly Merritt!
Dr. Borkan wins 2022 BU Ignition Award
Congratulations to Dr. Steven Borkan, program Co-Director, who was recently awarded a 2022 Boston University Ignition Award for his work investigating novel inhibitors of apoptosis in the setting of acute kidney injury (AKI). Read more about it at BU's The Brink newsletter.
Congratulations to our rising M3s on defending!
We are so proud of our students who are beginning their transition back into their clinical training. Below are our students and the titles of their thesis.
- Shen Ning (GPN, PI: Shelley Russek)- “Developing Targeted Magnetic Nanoparticles for Therapeutic Antibody Delivery in Alzheimer’s Disease”
- Margaret Minnig (GPN, PI: Valentina Sabino)- “The Role of Corticostriatal Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase Activating Polypeptide (PACAP) in Excessive Alcohol Drinking”
- Anthony Yeung (MTM, PI: George Murphy)- “Hematopoiesis in the Lung: From Development to Adulthood”
Congrats to our 2022 graduates!
Congratulations to our 2022 MD/PhD graduates Batbold Boldbaatar, Eric Brownhill, Chinaemere (Chino) Igwebuike, Ryan Quinton, and Yuliang (Leon) Sun! We wish you the best in your upcoming endeavors!
MD/PhD graduation/defense celebration
Thank you everyone for coming to our MDPhD graduation and defense celebration! It was great to see everyone together and we wish you the best in your transition to M3/residency!
Grand Rounds – Dr. David Holtzman
This month's Grand Rounds featured Dr. David Holtzman, Barbara Burton and Reuben M. Morriss III Distinguished Professor of Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis. For the past 27 years, professor Holtzman has been leading research into understanding Alzheimer's disease pathology and potential treatment options. Professor Holtzman has recently been investigating the role of sleep-wake cycle on amyloid-beta accumulation and subsequent Alzheimer's disease progression. While discussing the very interesting research topic, Dr. Holtzman provided examples in which insights in pathology learned through basic science research can be applied to potential clinical therapy developments. We are thankful to Dr. Holtzman for showing a potential pathway for physician-scientists who wish to combine basic science and clinical translation.
Grand Rounds – Dr. George Murphy
This month's Grand Rounds was led by Dr. George Murphy, an associate professor and co-director of Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) at BUSM. As one of the leading researchers at CReM, professor Murphy has been developing stem cell based platforms to study various hematopoietic diseases and potential clinical treatments. In this Grand Rounds talk, professor Murphy shared many insights on the clinical need for stem cell based sickle cell therapies and the current state of the field. Besides the scientific knowledge, professor Murphy also shared his views on the role of medical ethics in upcoming genetic modification therapies and the unique role physician-scientists will play in development of these therapies. We are thankful to have Dr. Murphy for our Grand Rounds this month and we hope to invite him for further discussion when opportunity arises.
Please click here to learn more about his lab and its recent achievements.
Career Development Event – Step 1
Thank you very much to the M1/M2s as well as the upper years for coming to this career development event (CDE) for Step 1 preparation. We appreciate the upperclassmen who have come today to share their insights in studying for Step 1, including useful resources and common pitfalls. We wish the best for the M1/M2s who hopefully found today's talk helpful for planning their study strategies.
Grand Rounds – Laura Lewis
For this month's Grand Rounds we have Dr. Laura Lewis, an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. She has made recent headlines in neuroscience research community by imaging the cerebrospinal fluid washing in and out of the brain during deep sleep. Today, professor Lewis provided more insights on the collaboration that took place between her lab and the clinicians that lead to many meaningful research findings. Thank you Dr. Lewis for coming to our Grand Rounds and sharing your experiences.
APSA NE Physician Scientist Regional Meeting
This year, we will be hosting the Northeast Physician Scientist Student Symposium. This is a multi-institutional effort co-organized by BU, Tufts, Harvard/MIT, and UMass, to bring together students, trainees and faculty from the Northeast region medical schools to discuss career development and science as physician scientists. This event is a great opportunity to network and meet other MD/PhD’s in the area!
For more info, including registration and abstract submission links, head here.
We are very excited to welcome 6 new entering M1s to BUSM and to our program!
Sam Calderazzo (Boston University)
Kenny Kim (Wash U)
Minyi Lee (MIT)
Carly Merritt (Colorado College)
Linzheng Shi (Vanderbilt)
Benjamin Snyder (UC Berkeley)
Alissa Frame (M3) received an F31 from the NIDDK for her project entitled: Renal and Neural Mechanisms of Age-Related Hypertension. She also received an award for the best poster presentation at the American Heart Meeting on Hypertension.
Marc Vittoria (G4) was awarded an F30 from the NCI for his proposal entitled: Defining Novel Mechanisms of Genome Instability in BRAF-Mutant Melanoma
Leon Sun (G4) was recently awarded an F30 from NHLBI for his proposal to investigate rare forms of childhood interstitial lung disease using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells.
Sanghee Lim (M3) received Medical Student Grants Targeting Melanoma and Skin Cancer Research from the Melanoma Research Foundation. His dissertation from the Ganem Lab was recently published in Nature Communications (Paper)
Ryan Quinton (G4) recently received two awards: the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Doctoral Foreign Study Award and the Jean McPhail Award
Stephanie Pavlovich’s M4 new Cell Paper detailing her dissertation work can be found here!