Evans Research Days- Oct 3 & 4, 2019

 

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The 34th Annual Evans Department of Medicine Research Days celebrated and showcased the research activities of the department's faculty, trainees and researchers. This year's event featured the 2nd year of the Poster Blitz, 24 3-minute oral presentations of some of this year's most exciting submissions. The poster session featured 97 presentations, a record high for the event, and included digital poster displays in the newly remodeled entry lounge to the Hiebert Ball Room.

The Gala reception celebrated trainee winners of the Oral Presentations and Poster Session, and honored faculty recipients of the department's annual awards. This year's event saw the inaugural ARC Leadership Award presented by the Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical research and the inaugural David Aaron Freed award in memory of Aaron's legacy of compassion and excellence.

Thank you to all who helped make this year's event so special!

Award Winners

Evans Center IBR Research
Collaborator of the Year Award
Rhoda Au, PhD – Anatomy & Neurobiology		 Inaugural ARC Leadership Award
Lindsay Farrer, PhD – Biomedical Genetics
Clinical Innovation Award
Palliative Medicine UnitSandhya D. Rao, MD -Team Lead
Henri Lee, MD
Perla Macip-Rodriguez, MD
Alexandra Dobie, LICSW
Jessica Knight, FNP-C, ACHPN
Amy L Cann, BS		 Clinical Excellence Award
Won M. Lee, MD —Geriatrics
Junior Faculty Mentoring Award
Shayna Sarosiek MD —Hematology and
Medical Oncology
Jessica L Fetterman, PhD —Vascular Biology		 Research Mentoring Award
Vipul C. Chitalia, MD, PhD –Nephrology
Citizenship Award
Thomas Ostrander, MD — General Internal Medicine
Gustavo Mostoslavsky, MD, PhD— Gastroenterology		  Clinical Quality Improvement Team Award
Antibiotic Stewardship TeamTamar F. Barlam MD – Team Lead
Karrine Brade PharmD – Co-Lead
Excellence in Educational Scholarship Mentoring
Catherine A. Rich, MD — General Internal Medicine		 Special Recognition Teaching Award
Gopal Yadavalli, MD — Infectious Diseases
Inaugural David Aaron Freed Award
John Farrell — Biomedical Genetics		 Most Abstract Submissions
Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM)
Clinical Oral Presentation
1st Place: Maura Walker
2nd Place: Magdalena Buczek
3rd Place:  Simeon Kimmel		 Basic Research Oral Presentation
1st Place:  Fatima Rizvi
2nd Place:  Jason Nasse
3rd Place:  Elissa Everton
 Clinical Poster Winners
1st Place: Mengjie Yuan
2nd Place: Feven Ataklte
3rd Place: Erika Crable		 Basic Research Poster Winners
1st Place: Kristine Abo
2nd Place: Anukul Shenoy
3rd Place: Ayumu Osaki

 

Actively Creating a Culture that Supports and Strengthens Diversity

Chair of Medicine, Dr. David Coleman is featured in BU Today's article "The Key to BU’s Diversity Efforts? Powerful Allies".

As an Ally, Dr. Coleman reflects that there are many things all of us can do to create a culture on campus and in medicine to celebrate diversity. Crystal Williamson, Boston University’s first associate provost for diversity and inclusion,  adds “Allies are people who are committed to creating more equitable and inclusive environments, but who may not be the key recipients or foci of that work.”

Read More

Spring 2019 Newsletter

This edition includes

Upcoming Events
Announcements
Spotlight: EPIC Leads
Admin Spotlight
Intern Match Results
Award Recipients and Recognition
Appointments & Promotions
Research Corner
DOM Happenings

View Newsletter

Framingham Heart Study Awarded $38M NHLBI Contract Renewal

The Framingham Heart Study (FHS), the nation’s longest running cohort study with longitudinal analysis of cardiovascular disease, has received a contract renewal for an additional six years and $38 million dollars from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

The contract period will support examining the elderly groups of the cohort study, the Offspring and Omni 1 cohorts, in hopes of better understanding the biology of aging and determinants of health and disease in older people, as well as examination of the younger generation of the FHS after a couple of years. This examination serves as a platform for newer cutting-edge ancillary studies with the study’s core protocols.Examples of ancillary studies in the older cohort include studying liver fat, platelet function, arterial stiffness, the heart and great vessels and patterns of thousands of circulating blood proteins in the elderly participants.

The funding also allows for continued maintenance of study operations, its data and bio-sample collection as well as follow-up and surveillance of all FHS participants and continued analyses of their data. In its seven decades, the FHS has been responsible for numerous research breakthroughs, including smoking’s contribution to heart disease risk (1960); identifying fundamental risk factors for heart disease (1961); the benefit of physical activity and the risk posed by obesity, with regard to heart disease (1967); heightened stroke risk from high blood pressure (1970); and the importance of so-called good cholesterol in reducing death risk (1988). Now 70 years later, researchers are studying the children (Offspring, Omni 1 cohort) and grandchildren (Generation 3, Omni 2 cohorts) of those original participants, which has led to groundbreaking discoveries in other domains including neurodegenerative diseases, obesity, lung abnormalities and pulmonary fibrosis.

The Framingham Heart Study is led by Boston University Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology,and Principal Investigator and Director of FHS, Vasan S. Ramachandran, MD, FACC.

Boston University has administered the FHS since 1971.

To learn more about the Framingham Heart Study please visit framinghamheartsstudy.org

For investigators interested in developing their own (or collaborating with FHS investigators for) research projects, please visit framinghamheartstudy.org/fhs-for-researchers

Coverage of The Framingham Heart Study has recently been featured in

New Research Grant Will Enable Framingham Heart Study to Explore Biology of Aging

 

 

71-year-old Heart Study Gets $38M Grant for Another 6 Years

 

 

Framingham Heart Study Awarded $38 Million to Continue Research

 

 Framingham Heart Study Will Examine Aging with New $38M Funding

Dr. Lindsay Farrer featured on NBC 10 Boston

"DNA Kits Yield Different Results From Two Genetics Companies"

Dr. Lindsay Farrer, Chief of Biomedical Genetics section, helps clarify the accuracy of DNA ancestry kits like 23 and Me and Ancestry.com.

Users of these genetic testing services have questioned their accuracy after receiving different test results from different companies.

Dr. Farrer notes that differing reference samples and unique algorithms used by each company may be the cause of differing results. Read More.

NEJM Editorial by Dr. George O’Connor featured in New York Times

Featured in the New York Times article "E-Cigarettes Are Effective at Helping Smokers Quit, a Study Says", the New England Journal of Medicine editorial by BU pulmonologist  Dr. George O'Connor and Dr. Belinda Borrelli, a behavioral health expert, "noted that 80 percent of the study participants who had quit by using e-cigarettes were still vaping at one year, while only nine percent of the nicotine replacement therapy group was still using nicotine products." 

Countering the claim by other studies mentioned in the article, the editorial suggests that while cigarette use has discontinued in both groups, nicotine exposure continued at one year for 8 times as many participants using e-cigarettes opposed to nicotine replacement therapy. This "raised concerns, they wrote, about sustained nicotine addiction and the unknown health consequences of long-term e-cigarette use."

Read More.