Michael D. Fallacaro, D.N.S., Nurse Anesthesia
Fallacaro, chair of the Department of Nurse Anesthesia, was honored as 2008 Researcher of the Year by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Foundation. The award was established in 1999 by the AANA Foundation, the research and educational arm of the AANA, to recognize an individual who has made significant contributions to the practice of anesthesia through scholarship.

Fallacaro has authored and co-authored nearly 40 journal articles, book chapters and research abstracts in publications such as the AANA Journal, the American Surgeon, the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and the Journal of Nursing Care Quality. He has lectured across the nation on topics relating to human factors and patient safety, the anesthesia work force and doctoral education. In addition, he has secured more than $1.25 million in grant funding for health care related training and research, with emphasis on the medically under-served.

Rita Pickler, Ph.D., School of Nursing
Pickler, professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Health in VCU’s School of Nursing, recently was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing for 2008. She was nominated by two current academy fellows and was selected for her outstanding achievements in the nursing profession. Pickler has demonstrated her strengths in nursing through her widely recognized research efforts, including preterm infant feeding.

Peter Byron, Ph.D., School of Pharmacy
Byron, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutics in VCU’s School of Pharmacy, has been named guest professor of State Key Lab of New Drug and Pharmaceutical Process at Shanghai Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry. Byron was affiliated with the SIPI scientists through previous research efforts at VCU in 2005. He is renowned for his investigative research with aerosol chemicals and chlorofluorocarbons, once commonly used as aerosol propellants.

Read news release.

Please join the VCU Libraries as it celebrates the contributions that MCV Campus authors have made to scholarly literature. This event is free and open to the public. Parking is available for a fee in the Patient/Visitor or 8th Street parking decks.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Special Collections & Archives Reading Room, 1-032, MCV Campus

For further information and to RSVP, please contact Ms. Shannon D Jones at (804) 828-0626 sdjones@vcu.edu

The economic cost of death due to cancer is high in the United States, regardless of whether researchers estimate the economic impact in lost work productivity or in a more global measure using the value of one year of life, according to two studies published online Dec. 9 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers can estimate the economic burden of cancer mortality in terms of lost years of work (the human capital approach) or by using the willingness-to-pay approach, which calculates the impact based on how much people would pay to gain one additional year of life ($150,000 based on prior studies in the U.S.).

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the economic impact of cancer mortality, Robin Yabroff, Ph.D., of the Health Services and Economics Branch of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues used the willingness-to-pay approach, while Cathy J. Bradley, Ph.D., of Virginia Commonwealth University and the Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, Va., and colleagues used the human capital approach.

In 2000, cancer deaths cost the United States $115.8 billion in lost productivity, Bradley reports. That estimate jumped to $147.6 billion for 2020, due to changes in the population size and age. An annual 1 percent reduction in mortality, compared with current trends from leukemia and lung, breast, colorectal, pancreatic and brain cancer, would reduce the estimate by $814 million per year. When Bradley and colleagues included the value of caregiving and household duties lost, as well as regular wage earning jobs, the cost of cancer mortality more than doubled to $232.4 billion in 2000 and $308 billion for 2020.

The estimates were even larger when Yabroff and colleagues used the willingness-to-pay approach. In that case, the cost of cancer mortality was $960.7 billion in 2000 and was predicted to be $1,472.5 billion in 2020. An annual decrease in mortality of 2 percent reduced the projected cost of breast cancer mortality from $121.0 billion in 2020 to $80.7 billion, of colorectal cancer from $140.1 billion to $93.5 billion, for lung cancer from $433.4 billion to $289.4 billion, and for prostate cancer from $58.4 billion to $39.0 billion.

Lung cancer alone accounted for 25 percent or more of the costs in the two models.

“Regardless of the method used to estimate the societal value of premature deaths, these mortality costs are an important component of the burden of disease,” write Yabroff and colleagues. Moreover, Bradley and colleagues note that the cost of cancer mortality is high when compared with other diseases, such as diabetes or influenza.

“Decision makers can use the information we provide as a basis to assess the costs of interventions relative to their benefits to determine how to best allocate resources among these strategies,” write Bradley and colleagues. “From a productivity-loss perspective, investments in programs that reduce lung, breast, colorectal, leukemia, and/or pancreatic cancer mortality are likely to yield the largest annual reduction in productivity costs for U.S. society.”

In an accompanying editorial, Scott Ramsey, M.D., Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle notes that both papers provide important, but somewhat incomplete, estimates of the cost of cancer. Despite the limitation, the numbers provide important information that can help policy makers. For example, he points out that by either measure the current investment in cancer research in the United States is low. “Clearly, these two studies suggest that the value of that information far exceeds our research investment (the National Cancer Institute’s budget for 2008 is about $4.8 billion),” he writes.

“As a tool for advocacy, dollar values can be powerful, particularly when they are weighed against other programs that influence human life and health under limited budgets,” he concludes.

View the press release.

Read US News & World Reports article.

With the most recent release of data from the National Oncologic PET Registry (NOPR), researchers may have reached the moment of critical mass by confirming the effectiveness of positron emission tomography (PET) in the monitoring of tumor activity across a wide range of cancers.

"During the first year of the study, we verified that PET finds more areas of active cancer than other imaging tools and leads, in some cases, to earlier initiation of subsequent treatment," said Bruce E. Hillner, M.D., professor of medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, and lead author of the article. "We noted that PET has a clinically significant impact on cancer management, resulting in a change in treatment in more than one out of three cases — or 36 percent of the time."

In the article, published in the December issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, researchers reported results by cancer type for the first two years of data collected from nearly 41,000 PET studies conducted at more than 1,300 cancer centers nationwide. Analysis was restricted to the use of PET for staging, restaging or detection of suspected recurrences in patients with pathologically proven cancers.

Study data released in March 2008 showed a striking consistency of the impact of PET on referring physicians' intended management plans. At that time, NOPR researchers felt that the significance of the evidence was such that they formally asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to reconsider the current National Coverage Determination on oncologic use of PET.

"As a result of the data, the follow-up question for the second year was: Does the impact of PET vary between cancers?" explained Hillner. "We found that it did not vary significantly, and that changes in treatment plans for rare cancers—such as stomach cancer—clustered around the same one-third mark as the more common cancers. As a result, we believe that coverage for PET in the staging, restaging and detection of recurrence of cancer should be handled the same across the board."

Read more of the press release.

Read Science Daily article.

Virginia Commonwealth University is part of an international research team that has developed a noninvasive diagnostic method for Down syndrome that uses a sample of blood from a pregnant woman.

The results may one day lead to a fast, accurate and noninvasive method for prenatal testing for Down syndrome, which occurs when an individual has three, instead of two, copies of chromosome 21. As a result of the additional genetic material, individuals with Down syndrome experience developmental difficulties.

In the United States, Down syndrome affects 1 in 800 newborns. Those odds increase to about 1 in 350 when the mother is age 35 or older.

Current methods available to test for Down syndrome, as well as to detect other genetic disorders prenatally, include amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling, or CVS. Both are invasive tests that pose a risk of miscarriage.

The study, published online in December 2008 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a collaboration between researchers based at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in China and VCU. Using a new approach known as massively parallel DNA sequencing to detect fetal trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, the team developed a prenatal maternal blood-based test. The blood test measured small amounts of fetal DNA found in the mother's blood. Each blood sample from the mother was about 10 to 20 milliliters, and the cell-free plasma DNA was examined by the team. Through the blood test, the team was able to correctly identify cases of normal fetuses and cases of Down syndrome fetuses.

While the paper was under review, similar findings were reported in October 2008 by researchers at Stanford University in California. Both teams independently used massively parallel sequencing of plasma DNA to identify the fetal chromosomal abnormalities, however there were several differences. The Stanford study involved 18 pregnant women, of which 17 had undergone an invasive prenatal diagnostic procedure 15 to 30 minutes prior to blood sampling. It is known that such invasive procedures may increase the levels of fetal DNA in maternal plasma, thus potentially making fetal DNA measurement easier. All Down syndrome cases in the Stanford study were from the second trimester.

In contrast, the new study included a sample of 28 women in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy and included 14 cases of fetuses with trisomy 21 and 14 cases of normal fetuses with matched gestational ages; in most of the cases, no invasive diagnostic procedure had been performed prior to blood sampling.

“As more and more couples marry and have children later and later in life, a testing for Down syndrome is becoming increasingly more important. Most parents choose not to undergo amniocentesis or CVS screening due to the invasive nature along with the small associated risk of miscarriage,” said Yuan Gao, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science in VCU’s School of Engineering and in VCU Life Sciences’ Center for the Study on Biological Complexity. Gao was a key collaborator on the study.

“Our work suggests that we can do this diagnosis by using circulating cell-free fetal DNA in the pregnant mother's blood. The test is noninvasive for the unborn baby, has no related risk of miscarriage,” he said.

This work was supported by University Grants Committee of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China, under the Areas of Excellence Scheme and a sponsored research agreement with Sequenom, a molecular diagnostic company in San Diego, Calif.

Bin Xie, a senior research associate in Gao's lab also contributed to this work. Dennis Lo, M.D., Ph.D., the Li Ka Shing Professor of Medicine at CUHK, was the study's principal investigator, and Rossa Chiu, Ph.D., a professor at CUHK was the first author of the paper.

Read press release.

Cedars-Sinai cardiologist, C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., named to prestigious national award

Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., a nationally recognized authority on preventive cardiology and women’s heart health, has taken the top honor in the inaugural Dr. Carolyn McCue Woman Cardiologist of the Year Award program, presented by the Virginia Commonwealth University Pauley Heart Center.

Dr. Bairey Merz holds the Women's Guild Endowed Chair in Women's Health and is director of the Women's Heart Center, director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center and professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The McCue Award honors the memory of Dr. Carolyn McCue, one of the few female cardiologists of her time and a pioneer in the field of pediatric cardiology, who practiced at the Medical College of Virginia, now the VCU Medical Center, for 42 years. She created and chaired the school's Pediatric Cardiology Division for 20 years, during which she was instrumental in establishing pediatric cardiology clinics in medically underserved communities throughout Virginia.

The McCue Award is made possible by a grant from the McCue family “to encourage and inspire other young women to pursue careers in cardiology.” The award carries a $10,000 prize and will be presented at a ceremony in Richmond on Feb. 26, 2009. The family plans to make it an annual award.

“Dr. Bairey Merz truly exemplifies the qualities of Dr. Carolyn McCue,” said George W. Vetrovec, M.D., chair of the VCU School of Medicine's Division of Cardiology. “She is a trailblazer, a prolific researcher, an inspiring educator and mentor, and a very fine cardiologist. Her groundbreaking work in both preventive cardiology and women’s heart health has advanced our knowledge base and given serious momentum to these critically important areas of our field. I can’t think of a better role model for young women considering cardiology careers.”

Since 1997, Bairey Merz has been chair of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute-sponsored multicenter study, Women’s Ischemic Syndrome Evaluation (WISE), which is investigating the potential for more effective diagnostic, evaluation and treatment methods for ischemic heart disease in women and is considered the pre-eminent examination of women and ischemic heart disease.

Throughout her career Dr. Bairey Merz has served the medical community in countless ways. She is on the board of trustees of the American College of Cardiology, serves on the steering committees for the National Cholesterol Education Program and writing group and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute and is chair of the American Heart Association Women in Cardiology committee. She has authored more than 170 peer-reviewed research papers and has been an invited presenter at more than 300 scientific meetings. The McCue Award Program attracted nominations from top medical centers throughout the country.

“We are extremely pleased with the quantity and quality of nominations we received, especially given that this was the program’s inaugural year,” said Vetrovec. “Many of the most accomplished women cardiologists in the country were nominated, making it a highly competitive award and a tough decision for our award panel.”

Award Panel members included: George A. Beller, M.D., University of Virginia; Robert O. Bonow, M.D., Northwestern University; Anne B. Curtis, M.D., University of South Florida; Pamela S. Douglas, M.D., Duke University; William C. Little, M.D., Wake Forest University School of Medicine; Mary Ann Peberdy, M.D., Virginia Commonwealth University; Kiran B. Sagar, M.D., University of Wisconsin; Kim Allan Williams, M.D., University of Chicago and George W. Vetrovec, M.D., Virginia Commonwealth University.

Read Richmond Times Dispath

VCU's 2008 Winter Closing, December 22, 2008 through January 2, 2009, requires 12 additional hours for which eligible faculty and staff must take leave, with or without pay, to cover the time away from work. During the winter closing, most academic buildings will be closed, and temperatures in those buildings may be set back significantly. Some academic buildings used for intersession classes, ongoing research or patient/clinic operations, or containing equipment that could be damaged by low temperatures, will continue to be heated during the holiday closing period. The plan to close certain buildings and reduce heat does not apply to housing, recreation, athletics, dining, or Health System hospital and clinic buildings.

For intersession bookstore hours, visit:
http://www.bsv.vcu.edu/retailstr/2008HolidayOperatingHours.pdf.

For more information, visit:
http://www.hr.vcu.edu/communications/holidays.htm.

The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System’s Virginia Premier Health Plan was recently honored for its innovative programs and comprehensive coverage by the National Committee for Quality Assurance and in the U.S. News rankings.

Virginia Premier’s health plan was selected in the U.S. News Media Group and NCQA’s fourth edition of America’s Best Health Plans as the 24th-ranked Medicaid plan in the country and the top program in Virginia.

“America’s Best Health Plans places health plans nationwide on a level playing field and provides crucial information when consumers need it most,” said Margaret E. O’Kane, NCQA president. “These rankings recognize the best health plans and identify those that are committed to improving their quality of care through measurement and reporting.”

The 2008 guide — released in November and featured in an issue of U.S. News, as well as on www.usnews.com — provides comprehensive rankings and important consumer information for nearly 700 commercial, Medicare and Medicaid health plans. The rankings are based on more than 100 aspects of prevention, treatment and consumer experience.

“Health consumers today are overwhelmed with data and not all of it is clear, let alone trustworthy,” said Avery Comarow, U.S. News editor of America’s Best Health Plans. “The health plan rankings are part of the U.S. News mission to bring consumers data that is reliable, understandable and timely.”

NCQA also honored Virginia Premier’s efforts to reach across cultural and language barriers and provide health plan members in Virginia with services that meet their unique needs.

The Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural Health Care Award — sponsored by the California Endowment with support from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of Minority Health — is part of NCQA’s efforts to improve the quality of health care in the U.S. through development of a truly multicultural health care system.

“Virginia Premier’s innovative efforts to improve the lives of African-American women and their infants are a model for health plans across the country,” O’Kane said. “As a nation of diverse cultures, languages and lifestyles, it’s essential for health plans to recognize the health risks and vulnerabilities of special populations and design programs that reach out and improve the quality of those members’ lives.”

To reduce disparities and barriers to breastfeeding, Virginia Premier collaborated with the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services and other community agencies and regional health departments to develop a comprehensive program for the African-American community.

The initiative consisted of numerous interventions designed to encourage, support and educate women about breastfeeding that, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, significantly reduces the risk of a large number of acute and chronic diseases and provides infants with significant advantages in general health, growth and development.

“As a result of this multifaceted initiative, breastfeeding rates among African-American members in the pilot program area increased from 22 percent to 50 percent,” said Linda Hines, Virginia Premier vice president for medical management. “The initiative has been so successful that we have incorporated it as a component of our Health Heartbeats maternal-child wellness program.”

NCQA honored Virginia Premier’s initiative at a September ceremony in San Francisco.

See photo and press release.

Cancer and its treatments can reduce fertility and create other obstacles on the way to parenthood. But now more than ever, there are options for patients to consider before treatment and for survivors to consider after treatment. Join us for an inspirational and informative discussion on this important topic.

Peggy Orenstein, a survivor of breast cancer, the best-selling author of “Waiting for Daisy” and New York Times contributor, will share her personal experiences with cancer and the pathways she and her husband explored for parenthood.

Elizabeth McGee, M.D., reproductive endocrinologist at VCU Medical Center, will describe the latest innovations and treatment guidelines that may help men and women become parents despite cancer. She is a nationally recognized physician-scientist working to improve the reproductive options for cancer patients and survivors.

Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009 • 7-9 p.m.
Science Museum of Virginia
2500 W. Broad St.

This symposium is free and open to the public. To register, call (804) 828-8360 or visit www.massey.vcu.edu/symposia.

View flier.

Findings may one day lead to new molecular targets to manage pain

A team of researchers has developed a compound able to block the action of a key enzyme in the endocannabinoid signaling pathway of the brain, which results in reduced pain sensitivity and marijuana-like behavioral effects in mice, according to new findings published in Nature Chemical Biology.

The findings, published Nov. 23, help shed some light on the molecular mechanisms involved in the endocannabinoid system and may ultimately point investigators to possible new therapeutic targets for the treatment of pain. The endocannabinoid system regulates physiological processes such as appetite, pain sensation, inflammation and memory.

The collaborative study, led by The Scripps Research Institute, together with Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers, employed a mouse model to examine the interaction between the enzyme monacylglycerol lipase (MAGL), and a compound developed by the team, JZL184.

A chemical reaction known as enzymatic hydrolysis governs endocannabinoid system signaling. Enzymatic hydrolysis causes a cascade of molecular events resulting in disruption in the system’s signaling. Previous studies indicate that MAGL may play a key role in hydrolyzing the naturally occurring cannabinoid 2-arachidonylglycerol (2-AG), which is responsible for activating cannabinoid receptors, CB1 and CB2 in the central nervous system and throughout the body. The team developed JZL184 as the first drug that selectively inhibits MAGL.

According to Aron Lichtman, Ph.D., associate professor in the VCU Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and principal investigator on the VCU portion of the study, CB1 receptors are responsible for the psychoactive effects of marijuana as well as many of the therapeutic effects of cannabinoids. In contrast, stimulation of CB1 receptors has been shown to elicit anti-inflammatory effects in laboratory animals. Lichtman said that It is hypothesized that elevating endogenous cannabinoids by blocking enzymes controlling their degradation will elicit therapeutic effects, with minimal side effects associated with marijuana.

In this study, the team found that blocking MAGL with JZL184 led to a dramatic increase in 2-AG in the brain, resulting in decreased pain sensitivity and a subset of other marijuana-like effects in mice, which included decreases in both locomotor behavior and body temperature. The effects were mediated through a CB1 receptor mechanism of action because JZL184 was inactive in the CB1 receptor knockout mice, or normal mice, that were pretreated with a drug that blocked the CB1 receptors.

"The availability of JZL184 will provide investigators in the field of drug discovery an important compound to explore the role of 2-AG in pain and other important physiological functions. Our work provides proof of principle that the enzyme MAGL may be a novel therapeutic target to treat pain,” said Lichtman.

This work was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Health, the Helen L. Dorris Child and Adolescent Neuro-Psychiatric Disorder Institute, and the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology.

Lichtman collaborated with VCU researchers Lamont Booker, James J. Burston, Steven G. Kinsey, Ph.D., Joel E. Schlosburg, and Dana E. Selley, Ph.D.; and Benjamin F. Cravatt, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study, Jonathan Z. Long, and Weiwei Li from The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology and Department of Chemical Physiology at The Scripps Research Institute; and Franciso J. Pavon, Ph.D., Antonia M. Serrano, Ph.D., and Loren H. Parsons, Ph.D., from the Committee on the Neurobiology of Addiction at The Scripps Research Institute.

Press release.

A Mission of Mercy dental outreach project was held in the Greensville County High School gymnasium in Emporia, Va., from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008.

The MOM project is a collaborative effort of the Southside Dental Society, the Virginia Dental Association and the MCV/VCU School of Dentistry. Held in response to the shortage of dental-care access in Southside Virginia, the event provided more than $241,655 in donated dental care.

More than 50 treatment chairs were used by at least 53 dentists, 22 hygienists, 39 dental assistants and 55 dentistry and dental hygiene students to provide care to more than 447 adults and 39 children. In all, at least 225 volunteers donated their time and efforts.

A wide range of dental services were provided, including basic restorative, hygiene, oral surgery, patient education and referrals for extended treatment.

Additional support was provided by Benco Dental; local community service organizations, such as the Emporia Rotary Club and Beta Sigma Phi Sorority; and family and friends of local dentists.

Funding for the MOM project was made by grants from the Virginia Dental Health Foundation and the Greensville Memorial Foundation. A coalition of community service organizations was coordinated and mobilized by Jamie Neal, wife of Emporia dentist Harold Neal.

To get the event under way, meetings were held with the directors of social services in Greensville, Southampton and Brunswick counties. The three directors assisted in securing funds for the production and distribution of brochures describing the MOM project. The brochures were distributed to physicians' offices, health departments, area churches and to children in the counties' schools to take home to their families. Ministers were encouraged to include the MOM project in their sermons.

Patients were screened and pre-registered for the event starting Friday night, Oct. 31, and by 9 a.m. Saturday, more than 75 people had to be turned away because of the huge response. One young man traveled from Florida to receive oral surgery.

More than $14.4 million in donated dental care has been provided to the underserved in Virginia through 37 MOM projects since the program's inception in 2000.

The Virginia MOM project serves as a model for projects in eight other states. If you are interested in volunteering in a MOM project, visit the VDA's Web site at www.vadental.org.

Read Richmond-Times Dispatch article from December 2, 2008.

Virginia Commonwealth University is part of an international research team that contributed to a discovery of a noninvasive way to detect Down syndrome mentioned in Time magazine as one of the Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs for 2008.

The team, composed of researchers based at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in China and VCU in the United States, developed a noninvasive diagnostic method for Down syndrome that uses a sample of blood from a pregnant woman.

The results may one day lead to a fast, accurate and noninvasive method for prenatal testing for Down syndrome, which occurs when an individual has three rather than two copies of chromosome 21.

Current methods available to test for Down syndrome, as well as to detect other genetic disorders prenatally, include amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling, or CVS. Both are invasive and pose a risk of miscarriage.

The discovery was recently reported online in the December 2008 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Similar findings in a separate study were reported in October 2008 by researchers at Stanford University in California.

Read press release.

The next VCU Women In Science, Dentistry & Medicine (WISDM) professional development seminar will include an ELAM Fellows Interactive Panel to discuss guidelines on managing your career; advice regarding career advancement; overcoming challenges; and resources for leadership training.

Monday, January 12, 2009
12p-1.15p
Medical Sciences Building, 104-105

Lite lunch is provided. Please contact Debbie Stewart at dstewart@vcu.edu for more information.

Additional information [pdf].

Visit VCU WISDMon-line.

The Virginia Commonwealth University Pauley Heart Center is the first in the United States to use a new type of intracardiac ultrasound machine that produces enhanced imaging of the heart, allowing cardiac electrophysiologists to better diagnose and treat atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation, or a-fib, is caused by abnormal electrical impulses that begin at the top of the heart and travel down the upper chambers, or atria, causing erratic contractions. The irregular rhythm, which affects more than 2 million Americans, interferes with the heart’s ability to efficiently pump blood. As a result, blood can pool in the atria, which can lead to the formation of clots and the possibility of a stroke.

Intracardiac ultrasound (ICU) is a technique that allows doctors to better visualize structures in the heart using a special catheter that is laced through a blood vessel in the leg and advanced into the heart. Traditionally, ultrasound imaging of the heart is done outside the chest with a probe and requires a large, heavy machine that cannot be moved easily.

“Using the ICU catheter allows us to better visualize important structures in the heart, it allows us to better move our catheters around more safely inside the heart and finally, it allows us to move catheters to certain areas in the heart where we feel we need to deliver radio frequency energy so we can ablate the right tissues,” said Kenneth Ellenbogen, M.D., professor of cardiology and director of the cardiac electrophysiology lab at the VCU Medical Center, who performed the imaging technique using the new technology.

GE Healthcare developed the small and compact, Vivid i system that delivers imaging performance equal to that of today’s leading high-end console ultrasound systems without crowding the lab. The Vivid i ultrasound system displays high quality images of the anatomical structures of the heart and delicate valvular structures, helping to improve efficacy of the catheter ablation and patient safety.

“We’re going from a machine that is quite big and takes up a lot of space to one the size of a laptop computer that is positioned at the bedside. It gives us spectacular images of the heart, our catheters in the heart and the structures in the heart and helps us do an even better job of ablating atrial fibrillation more safely and more effectively,” Ellenbogen said.

Using ICU, cardiac electrophysiologists can to some extent avoid or decrease the use of X-ray or radiation to image the heart because the catheter uses sound waves to help detect what’s going on in the heart.

About 10 years ago, VCU cardiac electrophysiologists, together with experts from several other centers, pioneered the use of this catheter to treat a-fib.

Catheter ablation is used to burn sites inside the atria and ventricles – the heart’s lower pumping chambers – that cause arrhythmias. In the procedure, one or more catheters is placed inside the heart to locate the origin of the electrical short circuits. Once the area is located, the surgeon delivers heat energy to destroy the abnormal electrical circuit.

“Through catheter ablation of a-fib, our main goal is not just to improve efficacy but to make it safer for patients. The way we do that is to make it so we’re better able to visualize what we’re doing inside the heart, by avoiding delicate structures that we don’t want to treat and using our imaging tools and technology to get the best and safest results,” Ellenbogen said.

See news release.

Findings could lead to effective gene therapy for cancer.

Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University have identified a new anti-tumor gene called SARI that can interact with and suppress a key protein that is overexpressed in 90 percent of human cancers. The discovery could one day lead to an effective gene therapy for cancer.

According to Paul B. Fisher, M.Ph., Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Human and Molecular Genetics and director of the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine in the VCU School of Medicine, and lead investigator of the study, this novel gene highlights a previously unrecognized molecular pathway underlying the anti-tumor action of interferon, INF.

In the study, published online in the Dec. 8 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report the discovery of a new gene named SARI, which was uncovered by a powerful technique pioneered in the Fisher laboratory known as subtraction hybridization. SARI, which is induced by a potent immune system modulator called interferon, was found to suppress growth and survival of tumor cells by interfering with the action of cancer cell molecules that drive cell division and promote survival.

The investigators delivered SARI to cancer cells using a virus and the infected cancer cells subsequently stopped dividing and died. Since 90 percent of all cancer types rely on a similar mechanism to proliferate and evade destruction, Fisher noted that SARI could be an effective anti-cancer treatment for many tumors.

“Additionally, IFNs are powerful immune modulating agents that contribute to the immune response to cancer and they are effective inhibitors of new blood vessel formation, the process of angiogenesis, which is obligatory for the growth of both primary and metastatic cancers,” said Fisher, who is the first incumbent of the Thelma Newmeyer Corman Endowed Chair in Cancer Research with the VCU Massey Cancer Center.

Currently, IFNs are relevant in the clinical treatment of a number of solid tumors and hematological malignancies, such as melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, malignant glioma, lymphomas and leukemias, either as a monotherapy or as an adjuvant to chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

“We have uncovered a new way by which interferon can induce anti-tumor activity. The identification of SARI also provides a new potential reagent for the selective killing of tumor cells,” said Fisher.

“The present study indicates that interferon can suppress cancer growth by inhibiting expression of a cancer-dependent transcription factor that controls genes that regulate cancer cell growth. The SARI gene may provide novel and selective gene therapy applications for cancer. It could also prove amenable for inhibiting proliferative disorders that depend on AP-1 activity,” he said. AP-1 plays a key role in regulating proliferation and transformation of cancer cells.

The team is now developing improved approaches to more effectively target the delivery of SARI. Fisher said these studies will be crucial for exploiting the cancer-selective killing activity of this gene and enhancing its therapeutic applications.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation and the National Foundation for Cancer Research.

Fisher worked with a team that included VCU School of Medicine researchers Zaozhong Su, Ph.D., associate professor in the VCU Department of Human and Molecular Genetics; Devanand Sarkar, Ph.D., assistant professor and Harrison Endowed Scholar in Cancer Research at the VCU Massey Cancer Center, the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine and the Department of Human and Molecular Genetics; Seok-Geun Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor at the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the Department of Human and Molecular Genetics; and Kristoffer Valerie, Ph.D., professor at the VCU Massey Cancer Center and Department of Radiation Oncology; and Pankaj Gupta, Ph.D., senior research scientist, Immunomedics Inc., in Belleville, N.J.; Luni Emdad, Ph.D., assistant professor, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York; Irina V. Lebdeva, Ph.D, senior scientist, Enzo Biochemicals Inc., Farmington N.Y.

See news release.

See Science Daily article.

VCU Health Sciences faculty may apply for a one-time small grants program sponsored by the Health Disparities Service Learning Collaborative. Grants of up to $3,000 are available for faculty training, classroom materials, software, etc., that will support service learning in the health sciences. Application deadline is January 16, 2009.

For details, visit www.epidemiology.vcu.edu/MPH_Program/serviceLearning/collaborative.html.

The Research Incubator and Tompkins McCaw Library will host the fourth in a series of research seminars. “Unraveling the Mysteries of the Pink Sheets” will be held Wednesday, January 7, 2009, from noon until 1 p.m. at the Research Incubator, second floor. Chris Gennings, Ph.D., professor of biostatistics and director of the Research Incubator, will discuss how to interpret and respond to grant reviewers' comments.

For more information or to R.S.V.P., contact Pam Dillon at pmdillon@vcu.edu

Two Virginia Commonwealth University professors have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Sarah Spiegel, Ph.D., an internationally renowned researcher and professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, was recognized for her discovery of a potent lipid mediator with important roles in cancer, inflammation and allergy. Audrey Smedley, Ph.D., professor emeritus of anthropology with a joint appointment in African American Studies, was recognized for her contributions to anthropology and the history of race and race relations in the United States.

Spiegel and Smedley were among 486 individuals honored by the AAAS on the basis of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications.

Spiegel was selected for her discovery that sphingosine-1-phosphate, or S1P, is a bioactive lipid mediatory that regulates vital physiological processes important for health and diseases. Spiegel’s contributions to this research have opened new avenues for drug development to fight these diseases. She developed the concept that sphingolipid metabolites serve as signaling molecules, and S1P, which she discovered in the early 1990s, is now the most thoroughly characterized and widely accepted mediator in this field.

Spiegel, who is also the program co-leader of the Cancer Cell Biology Program at the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the Mann T. and Sara D. Lowry professor of oncology, has received multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health to continuously fund her research for nearly 20 years.

Smedley, who retired from VCU in 2002, was recognized for distinguished contributions to the anthropology and history of race and race relations in the United States and for writings that have increased public awareness of the fallacies of race.

Smedley has written on the history of anthropology and the origin and evolution of the idea of race since the late 1970s. Her comprehensive book on the subject, “Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview,” examines the idea that race has no basis in biology or science but is a cultural invention by wealthy plantation owners at the turn of the 18th century to rationalize slavery. The book was first published in 1993 and is now in its third edition.

The election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. Fellows were announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the Dec. 19 issue of the journal Science. New fellows will be recognized in February at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The tradition of AAAS fellows began in 1874. The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal, Science. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes approximately 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals.

See news release.