A Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center research team has received a renewal grant totaling nearly $1.3 million from the National Cancer Institute to improve the activity of a novel class of agents, known as histone deacetylase inhibitors, in the treatment of leukemia and other blood malignancies. Read more.
Walking through the busy corridors of Main Hospital of the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, Ben Horrocks could easily pass for a physician in his white lab coat. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation and Research Center has received a $20,000 gift from the Gerry Bertier #42 Foundation. Read more.
Richard Wenzel, M.D., chair of internal medicine at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, is the principal investigator of a new project grant to support women health care workers from Africa, Asia and the Asian sub-continent. Read more.
Dr. Francis Merrill Foster Sr., an assistant professor of general-practice dentistry at Virginia Commonwealth University and a retired Richmond dentist, died Sunday from cancer. He was 86. Read More.
Improving pregnancy outcomes; reducing infant mortality and increasing prenatal awareness among African-American women. Read more.
Research in biology, chemistry and medicine intersects with the arts, business and world studies in the premiere issue of Across the Spectrum, www.spectrum.vcu.edu, a new online magazine showcasing the scope of Virginia Commonwealth University's nearly $230 million research program across both of its campuses. Read more.
A lightweight, granular, dressing compound developed and studied by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers that quickly stems high-pressure bleeding in moderate to severe wounds has received FDA approval and will soon be used in combat. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University is part of a research team that received a National Institutes of Health grant to explore common practices of scientists when conducting research, their views of ideal standards and how they may vary among different research disciplines. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University has received a $90,000 federal grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to promote participation in research studies for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities, autism spectrum disorders and genetic conditions. Read more.
VCU professor of medicine is lead author for “Annals of Internal Medicine” report. Read More.
Asking About Smoking Status when Checking Vitals Increases Advice to Quit, but not Help with How, VCU Study Finds. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center announced today that it has been chosen as a clinical research site in a national pivotal clinical study called EMPOWER, to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of an investigational device providing VBLOC™ Therapy, for the treatment of obesity, according to James Maher, M.D., chair, Division of General Surgery and lead investigator at the VCU Surgical Weight Loss Center. Read More.
A group of Virginia Commonwealth University cardiothoracic surgeons conducted a training session of a procedure to help stop irregular heart rhythm that was transmitted live from an operating room at VCU’s Pauley Heart Center to a large audience of electrophysiologists gathered at the 13th Annual International Boston Atrial Fibrillation Symposium in Massachusetts on Jan. 17. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Board of Visitors recently appointed six distinguished VCU School of Medicine faculty members to newly created chairs and professorships.Read more.
When it comes to alcohol use, teens tend to be influenced by their parents' drinking behavior, both directly and indirectly, via influences on how their parents monitor and discipline them, according to new findings from an international team of researchers.Read more.
Gov. Timothy Kaine has named 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, as one of the state’s Outstanding Scientists of 2008 for her discovery of a potent lipid mediator, which she demonstrated to have important roles in cancer, inflammation and allergy. Read more.
George W. Vetrovec, M.D., chair of cardiology at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, known nationally for his study and treatment of coronary artery disease, has written an editorial review of a new technique for treating blocked coronary arteries. Read more.
This year the School's Pediatric Dentistry Clinic opened its doors to provide free dental care for regular patients, scheduled appointments, and walk-in treatment on Give Kids a Smile Day. Faculty, staff, students, and residents treated five patients with general anesthesia in the clinic operating rooms, three patients in the hospital operating room, and provided dozens of restorative and preventive procedures on children throughout the morning and afternoon. Read more.
A Virginia Commonwealth University psychology professor has received a National Cancer Institute grant totaling more than $2.8 million to study and identify toxins in waterpipe tobacco smoke – another potentially lethal form of tobacco use — and determine the extent to which waterpipe smokers are exposed to these toxins. Read more.
Patients who have an in-hospital cardiac arrest at night or on the weekend have a substantially lower rate of survival to discharge than hospitalized patients who experience a cardiac arrest during the day or on weekdays, according to a nationwide study of hospitals led by a Virginia Commonwealth University physician. Read more.
The combined Virginia Commonwealth University and VCU Health System Commonwealth of Virginia Campaign had another record-breaking year. Read more.
Georgene Roth (N’71) dedicated many of her years to working with dementia patients in nursing homes. Read more.
The healthcare proposals of the Republican and Democratic candidates for their respective party’s presidential nomination were researched by the ten members* of the School’s Effective Leadership and Advocacy class this past fall. During the semester break they continued to work as a group with faculty support from Drs Matzke, Musselman, Rymers and Holdford to craft a comprehensive perspective based on the candidates’ statements and published commentaries. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University's Institute for Women's Health and the VCU Health System's nursing program have been recognized for excellence by the 2008 General Assembly. Read more.
VCU Health Sciences faculty are recognized. Read more.
Anyone who has struggled to drop a few pounds has most likely heard that the best way to lose weight is through a combination of a healthy diet and regular physical activity. But for some people — the morbidly obese — weight loss isn’t a matter of a couple of pounds, it can be hundreds, and sometimes weight loss surgery is the best option. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have identified a gene associated with schizophrenia that could provide further insight about the functional changes that occur on the molecular level in individuals who suffer from it. Read more.
Using molecular and biochemical tools, Sarah Spiegel, Ph.D., professor and chair in the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is breaking new ground in cancer research with her work on the lipid mediator, sphingosine-1-phosphate, and its role in the regulation of cell growth, apoptosis and angiogenesis in human cancers. Read more.
VCU establishes the Center for Clinical and Translational Research. Read more.
Online tool helps track patients' history and can prompt them to get care. Read more from the Richmond Times Dispatch.
The Office of Naval Research awarded $3.5 million in four grants to the Virginia Commonwealth University Reanimation Engineering Shock Center, VCURES, for research using the blood substitute Oxycyte in studies of decompression sickness, embolisms, traumatic brain injury and blast injuries. Read more.
The Office of Naval Research announced it has awarded Virginia Commonwealth University's Reanimation Engineering Shock Center pre-clinical research monies. Read more from United Press International.
Crippling health care bills, long emergency room waits and the inability to find a primary care physician just scratch the surface of the problems that patients face daily. Read more from USA Today.
An X-ray guided injection of synthetic bone cement into fractured pelvic bones may provide rapid and safe pain relief to osteoporosis patients with low back pain, according to a new multicenter pilot study. Read more.
The Virginia chapter of the American College of Physicians has bestowed the Laureate Award to Richard Wenzel, M.D., chair of internal medicine at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. Read more.
For the second consecutive year, the National Association for Female Executives, NAFE, has named the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System one of five top nonprofits in the country. Read more.
By April, a blood-clotting product created by Virginia Commonwealth University scientists could win the Army's approval for battlefield use. Read more from The Wall Street Journal.
Project is the First Clinical Trial Spawned by the Virginia Israel Bioscience Commercialization Center
The Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center will open a Phase I pancreatic cancer study later this year in conjunction with leading researchers from Israel, marking the first time cancer researchers at VCU have partnered with their counterparts in Israel. Read more.
Article also appeared in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.
The Women in Science, Dentistry and Medicine (WISDM) Professional Achievement Award has been presented to two Virginia Commonwealth University faculty members for their special contributions, dedication, leadership, mentorship and accomplishments in the schools of Medicine and Dentistry. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine this year experienced an unprecedented Match Day — the day when thousands of medical students learn which residency programs they will attend. Over the past four years, VCU has seen the percentage of its students who match increase steadily. This year, the university exceeded the national average with 96 percent of its students matching with a residency of their choice. Read more.
Preventive medical procedures can sometimes result in misleading test results and needless anxiety for the patient, and the costs they generate are a problem with soaring health care expenditures. These procedures, which make up a substantial amount of all medical services offered in the United States, are continually under scrutiny by public health experts to determine their necessity and validity. Read more.
Seminar series to focus on impact of climate change on health. The seminar series on "Climate Change: Our Health in the Balance," will take place April 7-10 at noon in the Hermes A. Kontos Medical Sciences Building, rooms 104 and 105, 1217 E. Marshall St. Read more.
A Richmond-area doctor is in the running to become the national president of the American Academy of Pediatrics — a high-profile position that typically represents the voice of the medical profession on the national-media circuit. Read more from Style Weekly magazine.
Also rank among Best Doctors in America. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center’s Surgical Trauma Intensive Care Unit will be honored with the Beacon Award from the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. Read more.
As we move from childhood to young adulthood, the genes that influence our common fears of rats, the dark, or flying change considerably over time rather than staying static, according to a new study by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers. Read more.
Assistant Dean Ellen Byrne was elected to a four-year term on the Joint Commission on National Dental Examinations earlier this week at the 2008 Annual Session of the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Byrne’s term will begin at the conclusion of the 2008 Annual Session of the American Dental Association (ADA) in October. Read more.
A successful launch to an unprecedented health fair at VCU has organizers thinking of next year. Read more from WWBT.
VCU Health System No. 1 for first time among private firms.
When it comes to top employers, health care is taking the place of financial firms that once dominated the local scene.
Virginia Commonwealth University Health System ranked No. 1 for the first time on the Top 50 list of private area employers this year, increasing the number of full-time equivalent workers by 1.32 percent to 7,082 employees. Read more from the Richmond Times Dispatch.
- Susan G. Kornstein, M.D., executive director of the Institute for Women's Health, is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Women's Health, which has been named the official journal of the American Medical Women's Association. The AMWA is devoted to the advancement of women in medicine and the improvement of women's health. The Journal of Women's Health is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that are prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women than in men. From School of Medicine news. Read more from the AMWA.
New building in Northern Virginia opens to house high-tech simulation lab, uniquely designed research facility and VCU School of Medicine. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women’s Health recently hosted the 4th Annual Women’s Health Research Day, which celebrated and promoted excellence in interdisciplinary women’s health research and featured experts who discussed the physical, mental and general welfare of women. Read more.
For the third year in a row, the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System has been named the Greater Richmond Area Employer of Choice. The VCU Health System also received the national Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility. The award presentations were made Wednesday at the annual All Star Awards presented by the Richmond Human Resources Management Association and the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have discovered how an antibiotic works to modulate the activity of a neurotransmitter that regulates brain functions, which eventually could lead to therapies to treat Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, epilepsy, stroke, dementia and malignant gliomas. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University student Suele Kabir, a native of Bangladesh, has seen firsthand the lack of resources that doctors face in developing countries. In particular, the need for an affordable operating table struck her as a common thread that ran through the hospitals of her home country. Read more.
The presidents of the College of William and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University today announced a signature collaboration to address one of the most difficult issues facing U.S. communities today – health policy. Read more.
Brian T. McMahon, Ph.D., a professor in Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Rehabilitation Counseling, and his colleagues have received the Kevin Karr Innovative Rehabilitation System of the Year Award for 2007. Read more.
The Evans-Haynes Burn Center at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center is now offering a new support program for burn victims. Read more.
Student leaders from the Doctor of Dental Surgery and dental hygiene classes presented Dean Ronald J. Hunt, D.D.S., and Kim Isringhausen, director of dental hygiene, class gifts of $125,000 and $16,867 respectively at the School of Dentistry hooding ceremony on May 17. Read more.
A team of Virginia Commonwealth University researchers has received a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant totaling nearly $7.3 million for a Cooperative Research Center to study various aspects of asthma and allergic disease. Read more.
Leaves lasting impression at institution
Richard R. Lower, M.D., who helped develop the techniques for transplanting a human heart and performed the ninth transplant in the United States, died May 17 at his home in Twin Bridges, Mont. He was 78. Read more.
An international team of researchers has identified a gene that may play a role in pre-eclampsia, a condition that can occur during pregnancy that can affect both mother and unborn infant, according to findings published in the May 11 advance online issue of Nature. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researchers have identified that a combination of novel anti-cancer compounds is able to kill chronic myelogenous leukemia cells previously resistant to conventional forms of therapy. Read more.
With a video camera (Ramcam) on the top of the School of Nursing, friends of the dental school now can view live video of the Perkinson Building construction site. Watch later next week to see more concrete poured, scaffolding built and earth moved. Read more and visit the Ramcam here.
The Charles G. Thiel Award, endowed by 3M Drug Delivery Systems at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, is being presented to Lars Borgström, associate director, Clin Pharm, AstraZeneca R&D, Lund in Sweden. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System has been recognized as a CIO 100 honoree by CIO magazine for using information technology to create business value. Read more.
The MCV Foundation hosted a reception recently to honor the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women’s Health in recognition of House Joint Resolution No. 78. Read more.
Joseph Laver, M.D., chair of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, has accepted the position of clinical director and vice president of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Read more.
Joann N. Bodurtha, M.D., M.P.H., professor, departments of Human and Molecular Genetics, Pediatrics, Obstetrics-Gynecology, Epidemiology and Community Health has been selected as a 2008-2009 fellow in the national Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program for women. Forty-eight senior female faculty from across the United States and Canada were selected. Read more.
Billy R. Martin, Ph.D., chair of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine’s Department of Phamacology and Toxicology, and internationally renowned for his research in understanding addiction and drugs of abuse and how they affect the brain, died Sunday in Richmond. He was 65. Read more.
A lightweight, granular, dressing compound developed by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers that quickly stems high-pressure bleeding in moderate to severe wounds is going into combat. Read more.
JAMA Publication Provides Guidance on “When is Enough, Enough?”
Physician-researchers from the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center – home to one of the nation's leading cancer palliative care programs -- published a case study in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) exploring the role of chemotherapy given in the last phases of life to cancer patients in the United States. Read more.
Dr. Isaac K. "Ike" Wood has been appointed senior associate dean for medical education and student affairs in the VCU School of Medicine, effective July 1. Read more.
The Buford Road Pharmacy has been chosen as one of eight recipients of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy's 2008 Crystal APPLE award. The Chesterfield County pharmacy is an independent site with a pharmaceutical care clinic and is the primary site for residency for Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy students. Read more.
Nancy L. McCain, D.N.S., R.N, is the 2008 recipient of the Southern Nursing Research Society Distinguished Researcher Award, which recognizes the lifetime achievements of an individual whose research has enhanced the science and practice of nursing. Read more.
The Virginia Poison Center recently commemorated 50 years of service at an anniversary celebration. Read more.
James Michael "Jim" Messmer, M.D., is retiring from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine as senior associate dean for medical education, effective June 30. Messmer came to VCU in 1981 as a full-time radiologist in the abdominal imaging area. He has been the school's senior associate dean for the past 16 years. His successor, Dr. Isaac K. "Ike" Wood, takes over July 1. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University and VCU Massey Cancer Center researchers have uncovered how a gene, melanoma differentiation associated gene-7/interleukin-24 (mda-7/IL-24), induces a bystander effect that kills cancer cells not directly receiving mda-7/IL-24 without harming healthy ones, a discovery that could lead to new therapeutic strategies to fight metastatic disease. Read more.
A Virginia Senate Joint Resolution has designated July 1, 2008, as Virginia Commonwealth University Day in the Commonwealth to commemorate the university’s 40th Anniversary. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center recently performed the Richmond area’s first da Vinci sacrocolpopexy – a minimally invasive surgical procedure designed to correct pelvic organ prolapse. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University’s Reanimation, Engineering and Shock Center, VCURES, announced today is has been awarded a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Army to study new technologies for optimizing wound healing and limiting wound infections. Read more.
Only medical center in Central Virginia to be ranked in U.S. News’ 2008 report for second consecutive year.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System has been ranked in U.S. News Media Group’s 2008 publication of America’s Best Hospitals. The VCU Health System was one of 170 medical centers to be ranked among the best out of a survey of nearly 5,500 hospitals. Read more.
VCU Health Sciences degree programs follow stringent standards set forth by their respective academic accreditation agencies. This chart lists the accrediting agencies and cycles for each program.
This chart may be found on the VCU Health Sciences Academic Affairs page.
The VCU men’s basketball team recently took a group trip to the dentist with a simple goal in mind — the Rams want to avoid any unnecessary trips to the dentist during the season.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Pauley Heart Center today announced a national award for women physicians to honor the memory of Carolyn McCue, M.D., who in her day ventured where few men, and even fewer women, had gone before — into the practice of pediatric cardiology. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University is part of an international research team that received a Wellcome Trust Foundation grant totaling more than $2.8 million to identify the genetic variants that have an impact on the risk for recurrent major depression. Read more.
A small group of area high school students has been given hands-on research experience in a pilot medical science internship program with Virginia Commonwealth University.
The medical science internship program, sponsored by the VCU School of Medicine, allows highly motivated high school students to explore both the university-level research as well as the healthcare components of medicine. Read more.
School of Pharmacy dean, Victor A. Yanchick, Ph.D., and School of Nursing professor, Mary Jo Grap, Ph.D., R.N., are celebrated in VCU faculty and staff features. Read more.
Susan G. Kornstein, M.D., has been chosen by Jewish Women International as a 2008 Women to Watch honoree for her work as a pioneer in women’s health. Read more.
On the last weekend of July dozens of VCU School of Dentistry students, faculty and staff made the trek to the Wise County Fairgrounds to participate in the VDA's Annual Mission of Mercy Project there. Throughout the year the school collaborates with the VDA in additional localities including Grundy, Roanoke, the Eastern Shore and Northern Virginia, but the project in Wise is the oldest and by far the largest. This year alone, it is estimated that over 200 volunteers treated over 1,300 dental patients. Read more.
Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine have published findings that implicate a new chemoprevention gene therapy (CGT) for preventing and treating pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal and treatment-resistant forms of cancer. Read more.
The American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) has selected Mary Jo Grap, Ph.D. for the 2009 Distinguished Research Lecture award. Dr. Grap is a professor in the VCU School of Nursing's Department of Adult Health and Nursing Systems. AACN presents this annual award to a nationally recognized nurse researcher. Read more from VCU School of Nursing.
Jeffrey C. Delafuente has been appointed to a four-year term on the Commonwealth Council on Aging. Read more.
This fall, VCU graduate students return to 25 nationally ranked programs — including the Department of Nurse Anesthesia. Read more.
The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has named Sarah Spiegel, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, a recipient of the Avanti Award in Lipids. Read more.
Female health care workers from developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Indian subcontinent attended the 13th International Congress on Infectious Disease held in June in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) researchers Kevin Ward, MD, Robert Diegelmann, PhD, and Gary Bowlin, PhD, this week received the Award for Excellence in recognition of their outstanding contributions to combat casualty care from the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Combat Casualty Care Research Program. The three invented WoundStat(TM), a ground-breaking hemostatic agent for control of bleeding in high-pressure arterial wounds, which are a common combat injury. The award was given to the group "in recognition of their hemorrhage control research, and the resultant development of WoundStat, a product that will significantly increase survival of the combat wounded."
Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center researchers have set up the first in a series of public meetings to discuss a clinical study that could be conducted in Richmond and involve paramedics treating patients before they arrive at the hospital. Public input on the study must be obtained before the study is approved. Read more.
Two Virginia Commonwealth University professors have been awarded a grant through the 2008-2009 Alzheimer's and Related Diseases Research Award Fund (ARDRAF).
Shijun Zhang, Ph.D., department of medicinal chemistry, and Tailiang Guo, Ph.D., department of pharmacology and toxicology, were awarded a $40,000 grant to support their research “Bivalent ligands targeting amyloid-ß-peptide and lipid rafts.” Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center recently opened a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored, phase II clinical study for certain sub-types of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Read more.
Faculty and staff from the Schools of Pharmacy, Nursing, and Medicine are recognized. Read more.
Virginia Dels. Harvey Morgan and S. Chris Jones were honored at a School of Pharmacy-sponsored reception Aug. 18 at Paul A. Gross Conference Center. Read more from the School of Pharmacy.
Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Radiation Sciences will honor Allisha Ashford as the inaugural recipient of the 2008 Janet Harvey Trivette Radiation Therapy Memorial Scholarship. Read more.
Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center will partner with two other leading cancer centers in a prestigious, $11.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to advance research and treatment in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Within the larger Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant, which is led by investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center’s James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, the NCI awarded a five-year component SPORE grant to Steven Grant, M.D., Massey’s associate director for translational research. Dr. Grant is internationally recognized for his work in hematologic cancers including leukemias, lymphomas and multiple myeloma.
“Through this grant, the NCI recognizes the leadership capabilities of the three partner institutions in lymphoma research and entrusts us to investigate critical scientific mechanisms of lymphoma,” said Gordon D. Ginder, M.D., director of VCU Massey Cancer Center. “It further validates our focus on translational research – the important area of bringing discoveries safely from laboratories to patients in the form of clinical trials,” he adds. “By collaborating with other cancer centers around the country, we have the opportunity to speed the development of better treatments for cancer.”
Dr. Grant is the principal investigator of a project designed to improve the effectiveness of the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib, known as Velcade – an established lymphoma drug – with other targeted therapies to improve its effectiveness in patients with diffuse lymphocytic B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Previous studies have shown that certain types of lymphoma, such as mantle cell lymphoma, often regress in patients treated with bortezomib, but that other forms of lymphoma, such as DLBCL, tend to be resistant to this agent.
Dr. Grant and his colleagues will work with Jonathan Friedberg, M.D., director of hematological malignancies clinical research at the Wilmot Cancer Center, in these studies. Each of the three collaborating centers anticipates participating in future clinical trials emanating from this project.
The Wilmot Cancer Center is the lead institution of the $11.5 grant, under the leadership of Richard I. Fisher, M.D., director of the Wilmot Cancer Center, and the Arizona Cancer Center at the University of Arizona also a key partner. These institutions will participate in three other projects within the SPORE that will:
Only four other cancer research centers have been awarded SPORE grants for lymphoma, including Johns Hopkins University; University of Iowa, City of Hope, and Baylor College of Medicine.
Other Massey Cancer Center collaborators with Dr. Grant include Paul Dent, Ph.D., department of biochemistry; Yun Dai, Ph.D., Girija Dasmahapatra, Ph.D., and Mohamed Rahmani, Ph.D., all of the department of internal medicine.
About Lymphoma
Nearly 75,000 new cases of various forms of lymphoma are diagnosed in the United States each year, resulting in nearly 20,000 deaths.
Lymphoma represents a group of cancers that originate in the lymphatic system, which helps the body fight infection and disease. The NCI has a strong interest in exploring the causes of and treatments for lymphomas, as their incidence has grown by nearly 80 percent in the last 30 years.
About the VCU Massey Cancer Center
The VCU Massey Cancer Center is one of 63 National Cancer Institute-designated institutions that leads and shapes America’s cancer research efforts. Working with all kinds of cancers, the Center conducts basic, translational and clinical cancer research, provides state-of-the-art treatments and clinical trials, and promotes cancer prevention and education. Since 1974, Massey has served as an internationally recognized center of excellence. It offers more clinical trials than any other institution in Virginia, serving patients in Richmond and in four satellite locations. Its 1,000 researchers, clinicians and staff members are dedicated to improving the quality of human life by developing and delivering effective means to prevent, control and ultimately to cure cancer. Visit Massey online at www.massey.vcu.edu or call 1-877-4-MASSEY.
Despite threats made by Hurricane Hanna, the class of 2012 officially became members of VCU School of Pharmacy Sept. 6.
By the time the White Coat Ceremony began at Greater Richmond Convention Center, the hard, steady rains had given in to a blustery, sauna-like afternoon.
Read more from VCU School of Pharmacy.
Read coverage from the Richmond Times Dispatch.
Named in honor of alumnus Dr. W. Baxter Perkinson, the $20 million, 55,000 square foot addition situated on Leigh Street will provide more classrooms, clinics, and laboratories to meet the current and future oral health needs of Virginians. The additional space will allow the school to educate PhD students and generate new knowledge through research in collaboration with VCU's Massey Cancer Center and School of Engineering. The space also permits expanded patient care and increased enrollment in its dental and dental hygiene degree programs.
It turns out that anti-depressants discriminate when it comes to gender — and that's not the only difference between men and women when it comes to treating depression, according to a new Virginia Commonwealth University study.
Virginia Commonwealth University is getting a $1.75 million grant to help improve employment opportunities for high school- and college-aged youth with autism.
The grant comes from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.
Virginia Premier recognized for program to increase breastfeeding among African American Women
The Virginia Premier Health Plan, Inc., has been awarded the “Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural Health Care Award” by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for efforts to reach across cultural and language barriers and provide health plan members in the Commonwealth of Virginia with services that meet their unique needs. Read more.
President Trani delivers final Convocation address
Virginia Commonwealth University honored four distinguished faculty members during the 26th Opening Faculty Address and Convocation ceremony in the Hermes A. Kontos Medical Sciences Building on Tuesday. Read more.
Study Conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and Elsewhere Confirms that CT Colonography Could Serve as Screening Option for Colorectal Cancer
Computed Tomographic (CT) Colonography, also known as virtual colonoscopy, is shown to have high accuracy in its ability to detect cancer and precancerous polyps using conventional colonoscopy as the gold, or reference, standard and could serve as a primary screening option for colorectal cancer, according to the results of the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) National CT Colonography Trial. Read more.
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have uncovered how sodium is able to control specific potassium ion channels in cells, according to new study findings published online this week in Nature Chemical Biology. Read more.
Dr. Jacqueline McGrath has been selected for the Distinguished Service in Neonatal Nursing Award from the National Association of Neonatal Nurses (NANN). Read more from the School of Nursing.
Kai "Annie" I. Cheang, assistant professor in the school’s Department of Pharmacy, won a top award at the university’s Fourth Annual Women’s Health Research Day. Read more from the School of Pharmacy.
More about VCU Institute for Women's Health, A National Center of Excellence.
The following School of Medicine Endowed Professors and Chairs are recognized:
Working Mother magazine today named the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System one of the nation’s 100 best companies of 2008 for working mothers, marking the fourth time the health system has received the honor.
The VCU Health System gained recognition for several initiatives, including the region’s first on-site adult day care program, a postpartum doula program to ease the transition of bringing a new baby in the family, tuition waivers for staff and their dependents and an Employer Assisted Housing Program. Read more.
One of the legends in Dental Hygiene, Dr. Esther Wilkins, visited faculty, students and alumni on September 19 to kick off events leading up to the 40th Anniversary Celebration of Dental Hygiene at VCU this Reunion and Alumni Weekend.
Dr. Wilkins, a dental hygienist, dentist and periodontist is the author of The Clinical Practice of the Dental Hygienist also known as “the hygienist’s Bible.” Now in its tenth edition the book has served as the primary textbook for generations of dental hygiene students. Read more from the School of Dentistry.
Three Virginia Commonwealth University child mental health experts were each presented with Heroes in the Fight awards for their dedication and leadership in the mental health field.
Aradhana Bela Sood, M.D., Robert Cohen, Ph.D., and Brian Meyer, Ph.D., were recognized by the Voices for Virginia’s Children, in partnership with NAMI Virginia, the Virginia Federation of Families, the Virginia Association of Community Services Boards (VACSB), Psychiatric Society of Virginia and Mental Health America Virginia. Isaac Abraham, Ph.D., department director with the VTCC Administration, received a nomination for a Heroes in the Fight Award. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine presented its 10th annual Faculty Excellence Awards during a ceremony and reception that celebrated faculty members’ achievements while looking ahead to the school’s future.
The awards recognize and reward faculty members for excellence in the achievement of the School of Medicine’s educational mission. Read more.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System today received a Consumer Choice Award for providing quality healthcare services, based on an independent survey of central Virginia residents. This is the sixth time the health system has received the award.
The National Research Corporation announced the award after compiling the results of the company's annual Healthcare Market Guide Study, which measures consumer perceptions of overall quality and reputation.
Consumers across the country were asked to rate their local hospitals on a variety of factors including overall quality of patient care, quality of doctors and nurses and overall image and reputation. The VCU Health System and Henrico Doctors' Hospital are co-winners for the Richmond market.
"We are gratified to know that our patients and their families appreciate our dedication to the highest standards of patient care," said Sheldon Retchin, M.D., VCU Health System CEO and vice president for VCU Health Sciences. “This and our previous five Consumer Choice awards demonstrate that our commitment to quality healthcare is consistent and ongoing.”
Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Molecular Medicine and VCU Massey Cancer Center researchers have discovered how a gene, melanoma differentiation associated gene-9/syntenin (mda-9/syntenin), interacts with an important signaling protein to promote metastasis in human melanoma cells, a discovery that could one day lead to the development of the next generation of anti-metastatic drugs for melanoma and other cancers.
Metastatic disease is one of the primary challenges in cancer therapy. When cancer cells are localized in the body, specialists may be able to surgically remove the diseased area. However, when cancer metastasizes or spreads to sites remote from the primary tumor through the lymph system and blood vessels to new target sites, treatment becomes more difficult and in many instances ineffective.
Study is first to look at a medicine's ability to regenerate discs
With the most common chronic pain in the back, Virginia Commonwealth University researchers are testing whether injections of a sort of "biological putty" can help people suffering chronic lower-back pain.
The substance, a growth factor called osteogenic protein 1 or OP-1, which can help regenerate or repair damaged discs, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for investigational and humanitarian use.
"This is this first study of its kind where we are actually looking at a medication's ability to repair a disc, help regenerate it and reduce painful symptoms," said Dr. Michael J. DePalma, medical director of the VCU Spine Center. DePalma is principal investigator for the study at VCU, one of seven sites where the industry-funded research is being conducted.
Candidates for the research study "are typically patients whose lifestyle has been really altered because they can't function," DePalma said. "They can't do things on a daily basis they really need to do. They are missing time from work. They can't take care of chores. They can't sleep at night because of the back pain."
Moms-to-be take part in checkups, discussion sessions
Nurse-midwife Margie Rickell posed a question to the group of seven or eight women, seated in a circle, all pregnant and all due this month:
What kind of birth did they want?
The women, their belly baby bumps obvious, stood up and lined up along an imaginary spectrum. On one end were a few who wanted to try to have a totally natural birth, closer to the other end were those who would have the anesthesiologist's number on their phone's speed dial if they could.
Most clustered closer to the middle. The exercise started a discussion that exposed differences in philosophies of giving birth. In the end, they sort of settled on the notion that there was no right way or wrong way. For each woman, it was about having the type of birth she wanted and having a healthy baby.
What brought the women together at VCU Women's Health Center is a concept of prenatal care called CenteringPregnancy that seeks to empower women with knowledge and support to make those things happen.
Read more from the Richmond Times-Dispatch
.The VCU National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities is requesting applications for Pilot Projects to provide the center with a means of seeding emerging research areas in minority health or health disparities relating to adverse pregnancy outcomes in African Americans. Interested investigators should submit a one-page abstract and a detailed budget. For more information, visit http://www.healthdisparities.vcu.edu.
Start date for Pilot Projects is May 1.
Applications must be completed and forwarded to Scott W. Walsh, VCU Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, P.O. Box 980034, Richmond, VA 23298-0034, or e-mailed to Dr. Walsh at swwalsh@vcu.edu.
Application deadline is Thursday, Oct. 30.
Examination of safety net system to help Virginia policy-makers
Cathy J. Bradley, Ph.D., a health economist at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, received funding from the American Cancer Society to conduct research on disparities in cancer diagnosis, treatment and cost based on insurance coverage in Virginia.
Bradley’s study spawned from the Institute of Medicine’s report, “Insuring America’s Health: Principles and Recommendations,” which highlighted the sub-par health care of the approximately 43 million uninsured persons in the United States and called for a universal health insurance program. Currently, the U.S. relies on a safety net system to treat uninsured patients, including patients with chronic, life-threatening and costly diseases such as cancer.
Bradley’s grant, which awards $350,000 over two years, will use patient data to analyze the performance of the safety net system in caring for individuals with cancer. The analysis is expected to help Virginia policymakers make informed decisions aimed toward covering the uninsured. The commonwealth has nearly one million uninsured residents, with the highest percentage concentrated in Central Virginia.
“In the absence of specific knowledge on the performance of Virginia’s safety net system, policymakers may attribute differences between the uninsured and insured to mean that an expansion of the safety net, instead of comprehensive coverage, can ameliorate differences,” said Bradley. “Our analysis will allow us to make significant strides toward expanding and refining the role that health insurance plays in cancer diagnosis and treatment, and the cost resulting from the absence of health insurance.”
Read more from VCU Massey Cancer Center.
Visit VCU Massey Cancer Center on-line at: http://www.massey.vcu.edu
Virginia’s only hospital devoted solely to critical care was dedicated today at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, launching a new era in how seriously ill and critically injured patients receive treatment.
The 15-level, 367,000 square-foot facility increases critical care capacity at the medical center with intensive care units for surgical trauma, neonatal, burn center, cardiac, neuroscience, medical respiratory and oncology patients. It also features new operating rooms and expanded emergency care.
“The Critical Care Hospital is distinctive in its evidence-based design and architecture that is focused on quality care and patient safety. It is a state-of-the-art facility that combines decades of experience and research of our staff and faculty with the newest technology,” said Eugene P. Trani, Ph.D., VCU president and president and chair of the VCU Health System. “This is an enormous addition to medical and surgical care offered to the citizens of the Commonwealth.”
The $184 million Critical Care Hospital is the largest capital construction project in the history of the VCU Medical Center. It houses 232 adult patient beds, increasing the medical center’s ratio of private to semi-private beds from 37 percent to 70 percent.
The private rooms average 250 square feet – large enough to accommodate patients’ families and multidisciplinary medical teams. The rooms also provide specialized features, such as built-in, ready-access dialysis portals and mobile headwalls, which reduce the need for patient moves, therefore lessening exposure to infection and risk of injury.
“The Critical Care Hospital fills a tremendous need in the region for highly specialized care that involves advanced and complex procedures and treatment for seriously ill and injured patients,” said Dr. Sheldon Retchin, VCU Health System CEO and VCU vice president for Health Sciences. “The new hospital is yet another demonstration of the VCU Medical Center’s dedication to practice innovation and ensuring the best patient care possible.”
Read more and view dedication photos.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center’s Evans-Haynes Burn Unit, the oldest civilian burn unit in the country, is expanding in size and scope with the opening of the new Critical Care Hospital.
The new facility, which occupies the entire eighth floor of the Critical Care Hospital, will expand from a 12-bed unit to 16, and feature eight, single, general burn-care beds and eight burn-intensive beds, specifically designed for patients who require specialized care.
According to Andrea Pozez, M.D., professor and chair of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the new burn unit facility is unique across the country in planning and architecture.
“The planning for this unit has been going on for about five years and my predecessor, Dr. Austin Mehrhof, spent a great deal of time going to other burn centers throughout the country to be certain that what we designed would be the very best,” Pozez said.
This unit provides the best comprehensive care for anyone injured by a burn in the region, regardless of the patient’s age,” she said.
Features of the new unit include hose reels hung from the ceiling for flushing wounds and specialized lighting for the treatment and examination of burns. Specialized water purification devices installed in each room will help prevent infection in some of the most susceptible patients.
Further, patients will not have to be moved as often, nor will they need to share a single procedure room. Instead, patients who may have infections can be treated from the comfort of their own rooms with hydrotherapy equipment and comprehensive monitors readily available.
The mobile headwall located in each room gives doctors and nurses the flexibility to move strategically around each patient, while still keeping all the tools they need at hand.
In the former burn center, the space was smaller, with patients in double rather than single rooms and just one small area for larger scaled procedures and debridement – the process of removing damaged or infected tissues.
Quiet floors, private rooms and the most modern medical equipment for newborns all contribute to a safe, comfortable environment in the new Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Critical Care Hospital.
Created with input from VCU Medical Center staff and based on years of research into the developmental needs of premature and critically ill newborns, each room of the 40-bed NICU sets the stage for a positive healing environment for patients and their families.
“I call these ‘single-family’ rooms because it is integral in the care of any critically ill newborn to get the family engaged from the start,” said Sharon Cone, RN, nurse manager of the neonatal ICU. “We wanted to create an environment that was not only functionally efficient for medical staff, but also would encourage interaction between parents and their baby in a calm and comforting way.”
.A team that includes an internationally known architectural firm has been selected to design the $138 million School of Medicine building on the Virginia Commonwealth University medical campus.
The VCU board of visitors yesterday approved a $10 million architectural and engineering contract with the team of Ballinger, a Philadelphia-based architecture and engineering firm, and I.M. Pei Cobb Freed & Partners of New York.
The new 12-story School of Medicine building will replace the art deco A.D. Williams Clinic at the corner of 12th and Marshall streets.
I.M. Pei Partners is known for its work at the Louvre in Paris and the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington. It worked with Ballinger on plans for a new building for St. Vincent's Hospital in New York's Greenwich Village.
VCU is signing the contract with Ballinger, but Pei Cobb Freed will primarily be responsible for the architectural look of the building that will replace the A.D. Williams Clinic.
Some historic features from the old building will be integrated into the new design.
The demolition of the nine-story clinic is scheduled to begin in March 2010, with construction expected to be completed by 2013, Brian Ohlinger, associate vice president for facilities management, told the board.
The cost of "decanting" A.D. Williams will come to $21 million. The work includes demolition and transfer of personnel and equipment from the facility, which houses clinics, laboratories and faculty offices.
A 1992 agreement between VCU and the state Department of Historic Resources authorizes the demolition of both A.D. Williams and the 17-story, art-deco West Hospital. A.D. Williams connects to the West Hospital, at 12th and East Broad streets. No timetable has been set for its demolition.
Dr. Sheldon Retchin, vice president for health sciences and CEO of VCU Health System, said the new building will allow the medical school to grow from 750 to 1,000 students and will include instructional labs that will revolutionize training.
"It will change the way we train medical students to become physicians," he said.
Suzanne Havasy thought it was an honor just to be nominated for the Dorris Douglas Budd Award. Little did she know she would be the 2008 winner.
Peers, previous recipients and award finalists recognized Havasy as the 2008 winner on Tuesday. Havasy, coordinator of the Master in Health Administration program in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Health Administration, has been a member of the VCU Service Awards Committee since 2001. In that time, she has been very involved and a committee member to count on.
John F. Duval, CEO of MCV Hospitals, has been elected to the Accreditation Council for the Graduate Medical Education’s Board of Directors.
This is the first term for Duval, who is currently serving a three-year term on the governing council of the American Hospital Association’s section of Maternal and Child Health.
As hospital CEO, Duval is responsible for the overall management of the hospital, including administration, financial operations, patient care services, support services, clinical services and medical affairs.
Duval has a Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine.
The ACGME is a private, nonprofit organization that assesses and advances the quality of resident physicians' education.
Visit ACGME on-line at: http://www.acgme.org/acWebsite/home/home.asp
A standing room only crowd packed the auditorium of VCU's Medical Sciences Building on Friday, October 3rd as family, friends and faculty, gathered for the school's 9th annual White Coat Ceremony. As he welcomed the crowd, Dean Hunt commented, "It's not a bad thing to have outgrown the space for such an occasion."
In her remarks, parent, alumna, and guest speaker, Dr. Sheila Vacendak, reminded students of the unique skills and abilities that would be required of them as they treat patients in the clinics now, and in practice after graduation. She also reminisced about her years at the school and encouraged students to take advantage of the many learning opportunities.
Joseph Ornato, M.D., professor and chair of Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Emergency Medicine, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.
Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.
“The Institute of Medicine's deliberations and recommendations on health issues are pivotal to shaping national health care,” said Ornato. “It is truly an honor to be elected to this prestigious organization.”
Ornato is among 65 new members and five foreign associates, whose names were announced today in conjunction with the IOM’s 38th annual meeting.
With their election, members make a commitment to volunteer a significant amount of time as members of IOM committees, which engage in a broad range of studies on health policy issues.
"This honor is confirmation of Dr. Ornato's achievements in a long and distinguished career,” said Dr. Sheldon Retchin, VCU vice president for Health Sciences. "He has been a pioneer in resuscitation after cardiac arrest, and has made lasting contributions that have saved countless lives through the years."
Visit the Department of Emergency Medicine at: http://www.vcu.edu/mcved/.
Visit the Institute of Medicine at: http://www.iom.edu/.
A Virginia Commonwealth University researcher has received a National Institute on Drug Abuse education grant totaling more than $2 million to train the next generation of researchers studying the underlying causes of substance use behavior.
The five-year grant will bring together predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows from multiple academic backgrounds to develop and apply statistical genetic methods that can be used to analyze data on substance use, abuse and dependence. They will test hypotheses about the risk for substance abuse. These new methods will then be put into practice with the goal of preventing addiction and improving its treatment.
Scientists and researchers require statistical methods implemented in computer programs to identify genetic and environmental factors that influence risk for the misuse of drugs. There currently is a shortage of individuals qualified to analyze the very large amounts of data being generated by genetic studies.
“We aim to make the most of the new data being collected by developing novel statistical methods and applying them to uncover complex genetic and environmental pathways that lead to serious substance abuse and addiction," said principal investigator Michael Neale, Ph.D., professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Human and Molecular Genetics.
“We are very fortunate that substance use research at VCU is very broad and deep, spanning multiple departments and institutes,” he said. “The university provides an ideal environment for participants in the research education program to obtain a well-rounded education in this area.”
Neale, who is the associate director of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at VCU, studies the nature and causes of substance abuse disorders and how genetics and environmental factors may lead some people to drug use.
Trained Actors Will Help Determine if Doctors Respond Differently Based on Race and Gender
The National Cancer Institute has awarded two grants totaling more than $4.25 million to a Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researcher for two studies to examine delays and disparities in colon cancer diagnosis.
“African Americans get more colon cancer and die from it more often than their white counterparts,” said principal investigator Laura A. Siminoff, Ph.D., associate director of the Cancer Prevention and Control research program at Massey. “If we can gain a better understanding of how physicians respond to patients who may have colon cancer, as well as how patients respond to their own symptoms, we may be able to develop programs and tools that will lead to earlier diagnosis, which could help to reduce mortality rates from this disease.”
Siminoff, a nationally recognized expert on health communication and decision- making in disease treatment, also chairs the VCU School of Medicine’s Department of Social and Behavioral Health. In these roles, she and colleagues focus on understanding how social, cultural and behavioral factors affect public health, and educating the public to make lifestyle and other changes to improve the standard of health. Their emphasis is on cancer, chronic disease and healthcare disparities among various populations.
The first study will focus on appraisal delays and disparities in timely colon cancer diagnosis. “Appraisal delay” describes patients with difficulty identifying and interpreting their symptoms that can impede their reporting of symptoms to healthcare providers.
The study will examine whether appraisal delay is more prevalent in African American cancer patients. Researchers will interview recently diagnosed patients to identify how patients interpreted their symptoms and acted on them. The study will use cognitive interviewing, the administration of standardized instruments and chart reviews to obtain data.
The NCI will support the study with $1.4 million over three years.
On Wednesday, October 15, 2008, the Division of Health Careers/Education and Special Services for Students (HCE/SSS) at VCU worked with several local partners to bring a Stabilization and Treatment In Place (STIP) Unit to VCU. The STIP Unit is a system that is designed for rapid on-site patient stabilization and treatment during an emergency. Students were introduced to the unit as a “mobile hospital” and had the opportunity to walk through the unit, while learning about the process of setting up such a tent, how the tent is powered, and the volume of patients that such a unit can sustain over a period of time in the event of an emergency. In addition, several VCU students assisted with setting up and breaking down the tent, providing hands-on experience on the process preparing a “mobile hospital” in the event of an emergency.
The STIP Unit was set up as a recruitment event for the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC). The MRC was created on a national level after the president's 2002 State of the Union Address, in which he asked all Americans to volunteer in support of their country in response to the September 11th attacks. Since that time, local MRC units have been developing across the country, with units consisting of health professionals and others with relevant skills who are able to volunteer their time to train for emergency preparedness and public health outreach. Volunteers are provided training and receive certifications in various aspects of emergency training. The Richmond City MRC has been in operation since 2005 and is run by the Richmond City Health District. Currently, through a partnership with the Richmond City Health District, the VCU Department of Emergency Medicine, the Virginia Department of Health, the Central Virginia Health Planning Agency, the City of Richmond Office of Emergency Management and the Virginia Area Health Education Centers. The Richmond City MRC is being extended to the VCU community.
Three Virginia Commonwealth University epidemiologists are downplaying the value of mandatory universal nasal screening of patients for MRSA, arguing that proven, hospital-wide infection control practices can prevent more of the potentially fatal infections.
In a report published in the November issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the team, composed of internationally acclaimed epidemiologists Richard P. Wenzel, M.D., Gonzalo Bearman, M.D., and Michael B. Edmond, M.D., of the VCU School of Medicine, said “hospitals get more bang for their buck with evidence-based infection control prevention.”
Some states, including Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and New Jersey, are mandating nasal screening for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, in some hospitalized patients. MRSA is a strain of Staph bacteria that does not respond to penicillin and related antibiotics, but can be treated with other drugs.
VCU School of Nursing has been selected as one of the 40 Acts of Caring.
Part of VCU's 40th anniversary celebration, 40 Acts of Caring recognizes the many service activities occurring across the University. In August, the School of Nursing's Department of Family and Community Health Nursing co-sponsored back-to-school checkups at Richmond's Fan Free Clinic. Students and faculty offered physical exams and immunizations and completed school entrance forms.
Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Molecular Medicine researchers have traced the evolutionary origin of two genes that serve as primary cellular sensors of infection with RNA viruses, such as influenza, poliovirus, West Nile virus, and HIV, which may ultimately provide researchers with insight into a possible new pathway for the development of innate immunity.
Recent studies by other investigators have provided information on exactly how humans respond to virus infection and the role of innate immunity in protection from viral pathogenesis. Induction of innate immunity is closely associated with the production of type I interferons. Interferons are a class of proteins that are secreted by the body in response to a viral infection such as rhinovirus, the cause of the common cold.
In the study, published online in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of October 20-24, the VCU team reported that melanoma differentiation associated gene-5 (MDA-5) and retinoic acid inducible gene-I (RIG-I) originated specifically in mammals. These genes induce the production of type I interferons.
“Understanding how these unique genes developed and evolved provides a unique opportunity to understand the origins of innate immunity and to develop ways of exploiting this process to develop new types of therapies for pathogenic viruses,” said lead investigator 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.
Cecil Drain, Ph.D., dean of VCU’s School of Allied Health Professions, will receive the Darrell Mase Presidential award from the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions.
The Darrell Mase Award is given to a member of ASAHP who has shown dedication to maintaining the qualities of excellence that characterize a truly professional organization.
“I am really pleased to receive this award and to represent VCU and our highly ranked school,” said Drain. “I am truly in shock. This award is a lifelong achievement.”
Drain will accept the award later this month at the ASAHP annual conference in Baltimore. He also will receive the association’s Bardner Chair and his name will be inscribed on the presidential plaque, a mark of distinction among professionals in the field of allied health.
Drain began his career in the U.S. Army, where he served for 27 years. A chief nurse anesthetist, Drain retired in 1993 as a colonel. He has written multiple books, including the first edition of “The Recovery Room,” a highly regarded resource for post-anesthesia nursing. He has been dean of the School of Allied Health Professions since 1997.
The Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions was chartered in Washington, D.C. in September 1967 as a nonprofit organization that is the leading advocate for allied professions.
Virginia Commonwealth University dedicated historic markers on both the Monroe Park and MCV campuses during ceremonies this week as part of the university’s 40th anniversary celebration.
VCU President Eugene P. Trani, Ph.D., and Dr. Sheldon M. Retchin, vice president for VCU Health Sciences, presided over a ceremony on the MCV Campus on Wednesday for the unveiling of markers that commemorate the history of the St. Philip School of Nursing and the birthplace of cardiac transplantation.
And on Friday, Trani unveiled the Monroe Park Campus’ first two markers at a university-wide celebration that included music, memories, anniversary T-shirts and the presentation of the 40 Acts of Caring. The Monroe Park campus markers commemorate Founders Hall and the former Shafer Court Stage, which for decades stood at the heart of the university.
“Today we begin what I hope will be a project that will continue over years to come — the creation of bronze medallion markers which highlight important pieces of our history on both of our campuses,” Trani said at the MCV Campus event.
During the era of racial segregation, the Medical College of Virginia established the St. Philip School of Nursing for African-American women. It operated from 1920 until September 1962, when the last of its 688 graduates received their nursing diplomas. Five years earlier, in 1957, the MCV School of Nursing admitted its first African-American student.
“Today the St. Philip School of Nursing has taken its place in the MCV Campus history,” said alumna Arlethia Rogers, R.N. “I doubt any of us can express what this occasion really and truly means to us. You have made us an integral part of the MCV Campus. You have made us this day very, very proud.”
The cardiac transplantation marker honors the pioneering basic, clinical and translational research that laid the foundation for successful cardiac transplantation. Dr. Richard Lower performed the first heart transplant in Virginia on May 25, 1968, on the MCV Campus. Modern-day research in transplantation medicine continues to flourish at the VCU Medical Center, as does organ transplantation at the VCU Hume-Lee Transplant Center and cardiac transplantation at the VCU Pauley Heart Center.
One marker on the Monroe Park Campus sits outside Founders Hall, which was built in the 1880s as a private residence. The mansion was purchased in 1925 and served as the first permanent home for the Richmond School of Social Work and Public Health, now VCU. During its history, Founders Hall functioned as a cafeteria, administrative offices, an infirmary, classrooms and a dormitory.
The Division of Health Careers/Education and Special Services for Students run summer programs for students interested in health careers. Summer Enrichment Day Camp, Project Inquisitive Minds, and the VCU Acceleration Program, worked on service-learning projects designed to teach the students valuable lessons while simultaneously engaging in important community service activities. The participants in these programs and their projects were recognized last week at VCU’s 40th Anniversary Celebration as part of the 40 Acts of Caring.
Three activities in particular stood out during the summer of 2008, and were recognized as part of the 40 Acts of Caring. First, students created rice bags for children being treated for various ailments within the VCU Health System. Students learned that various illnesses can cause muscle pain and cramping, and in some cases patients will use ice packs or heating pads to assist in relieving pain that may be associated with such illnesses. In addition, the students learned the importance of appropriately preparing for an emergency. Students then put together “disaster kits” and visited the Daily Planet to donate these kits to people most in need of these supplies. Finally, the younger students worked on a project for ElderFriends, where the students created homemade stationary that volunteers will use to communicate with their homebound elder. Each of these projects created additional learning experiences for the students, and also served as a valuable community service for several local organizations.
Visit the Health Careers/Education and Special Services for Students 40 Acts of Caring on-line at www.40th.vcu.edu/caring/summercamps.html.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Allied Health Professions has received a five-year National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research grant of $1.8 million.
The grant will be used to identify and evaluate current practice and methods in the conduct of minority disability research and to begin to increase capacity in this area.
“The goal of the grant is to advance the state of the science in the conduct of minority disability research and to develop more persons who are passionate and interested in devoting careers to this line of research,” said principal investigator Allen Lewis, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Counseling.
According to Lewis, the project will involve a national survey that examines the experiences of Americans with disabilities from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups, and what research methods, practices and strategies are needed to advance the field in culturally competent research.
In addition, the project will focus on a longitudinal study of post-injury unemployment for minorities with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries; and prevalence and trends in employment discrimination due to disability for different ethnic groups.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Staff Senate has recognized the 2008 Pride Ambassadors from the VCU and VCU Health System communities.
This year’s recipients are Leah B. Czarnecki of University Student Health Services and Donna George of VCU Health System Transplant Surgery. Both were recognized by VCU Staff Senate President Tammy Berwanger at a reception Oct. 16.
“Our two honorees and all of this year’s nominees are highly valued by you, their departments and units, and their colleagues for the important work they do each and every day,” Berwanger said.
The VCU Staff Senate established the award in 2006 to recognize outstanding staff members who are committed to providing professional, responsive and innovative service and dedication while exuding excellence toward faculty, students, staff, patients and visitors of VCU and the VCU Health System.
Bereavement-related depression is similar to that due to other stressful life events, say US researchers in findings that question the exclusion of bereavement from the diagnosis of major depression.
Of stressful life events that could contribute to the onset of major depression, only bereavement was assigned a special status in DSM-III and DSM-IV. Consequently, bereavement-related depression with clinical features indicative of normal grief is considered sufficiently different from other types of depressive episodes that it should not be diagnosed as major depression.
To determine the validity of this exclusion, Kenneth Kendler, from Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School in Richmond, and colleagues examined a large population-based sample of twins interviewed up to four times over a 10-year period.
The participants were administered the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R, and the team assessed whether individuals with bereavement-related depression who also meet the DSM-IV criteria for “normal grief” were qualitatively distinct from other cases of depression.
In all, 82 individuals met the definition for confirmed bereavement-related depression, while 224 had confirmed depression related to other stressful life events, including divorce/separation, illness, and job loss. Individuals with bereavement-related depression were significantly more likely to be older and female at their index episode than other patients, at 35.1 versus 33.0 years, and 72.0% versus 56.3%.
Of those with bereavement-related depression, 28% met the criteria for normal grief, compared with 25% of those with depression related to other stressful life events, which was a non-significant difference. There were also no significant differences in terms of age at onset, number of prior episodes, duration of index episode, number of endorsed major depression criteria, risk for future episodes, pattern of comorbidity, levels of extraversion, and risk for major depression in the co-twin.
However, patients with bereavement-related depression had lower levels of neuroticism, treatment seeking, and guilt than other patients, and higher levels of fatigue and loss of interest. Analysis revealed that there were no unique features of bereavement-related depression compared with depression due to other stressful life events.
The team concludes in the American Journal of Psychiatry: “The similarities of bereavement-related depression and depression related to other stressful life events far outweigh their differences.”
The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center recently was honored with a plaque from the Special Forces to honor the school’s dedication and support of the Special Operations Combat Medic (SOCM) program.
VCU is one of the two sites in America that has a program where Special Operations medics come to have their first clinical experience. The other site is in Tampa, Fla.
Trainees of SOCM program rotate through various areas within the hospital including the Emergency Department and Burn Unit for two weeks, while integrating hands-on assignments and academic lessons.
“After training, soldiers may possibly be deployed within 30 days of arriving to their units, and this is why the program at VCU is so greatly important to our soldiers and our nation,” said Army Master Sgt. Danny Yakel, program administrator for the Richmond, SOCM program and senior instructor at the Joint Special Operations Medical Training Center (JSOMTC) at Ft. Bragg, N.C.
According to Yakel, some of the medics that are not going to go on to be Green Beret medics will leave the VCU Medical Center and return to Fort Bragg for about a week and a half of additional medical training. Following that, they will return to their units and possibly be in a combat theatre within 30 days of arrival.
Virginia Commonwealth University’s Trauma program foundation has received a gift of nearly $11,700 from Gerdau Ameristeel.
Kim Edwards, senior operations administrator for Gerdau Ameristeel, presented the gift to the program this week. The money was raised during a golf tournament that benefited the Trauma program foundation.
Also present during the presentation was Alan Bridgman, an employee of Gerdau Ameristeel, who was injured last year on the job. The VCU Medical Center’s trauma surgery staff treated Bridgman after his injury and as a result, Gerdau Ameristeel wanted to give back to the hospital that has been supportive of one of its employees.
“I don’t know if I can ever put into words how thankful I am,” said Bridgman. “The care I received from trauma was very exceptional.”
Bridgman’s wife, Amber, and daughter, Riley, also attended the presentation.
Members of the Trauma program plan to use the gift in support of other trauma victims and to raise trauma awareness by hosting a fund-raising gala in the spring to benefit trauma support groups and injury prevention programs.
One of only two Virginia hospitals named in Thomson Reuters study
The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center has been identified as one of the top 100 U.S. hospitals that set the nation’s benchmarks for cardiovascular care, according to a Thomson Reuters study. It is one of only two Virginia hospitals named in the study.
The annual study, the 2008 Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success, examined the performance of nearly 1,000 hospitals by analyzing clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with heart failure and heart attacks and for those who received coronary bypass surgery and angioplasties.
“This recognition reaffirms our position as a national leader in advanced cardiac care,” said Eugene P. Trani, VCU president and president and chair of the VCU Health System, who underwent quintuple bypass surgery at the VCU Medical Center this past summer.
“The VCU Medical Center, through its Pauley Heart Center, is at the forefront of developing and implementing cardiovascular procedures and leading the way in regards to high quality and safe patient care,” said Dr. Sheldon Retchin, CEO of the VCU Health System and vice president of VCU Health Sciences.
The study, in its 10th year, focused on short-term, acute care, nonfederal U.S. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of cardiology patients. In making the announcement, the company said that the top hospitals have set the new standard for cardiovascular disease outcomes, process of care, efficiency and lower costs.
“The significance of the Thomson Reuters study is that it really measures patient outcomes, compliance with national guidelines and quality of patient care,” said Dr. George W. Vetrovec, professor and chair of Cardiology. “The study affirms the expertise and dedication of the entire medical staff to the day-to-day management of heart attacks, heart failure and cardiac surgeries and procedures.”
Jeffrey Delafuente, School of Pharmacy professor and associate dean for professional education, is quoted in a story titled “Is Your Parent Over-Medicated?” The story in the December 2008 issue of Prevention magazine, which can be viewed here, was picked up by NBC and now also appears at MSNBC (click here). The article also is available at an MSN Web site, Sympatico, and on a blog called “The Nest.” By the way, with more than 11 million readers, Prevention is the 10th largest magazine in the country. Its Web site attracts 1.6 million unique visitors per month.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Gerry Bertier #42 Foundation has presented the Virginia Commonwealth University Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation and Research Center with a gift of $28,000.
This is the third gift that the department has received from the foundation.
The foundation raised the money last year during a golf tournament and radio telethon in memory of Bertier, a Virginia high school athletic star who suffered a spinal cord injury and later became an advocate for people with disabilities.
“You guys are the heroes, you have patients that may never walk again and you are the people that bring back their smiles,” said Buck Sutton, Bertier’s cousin and executive director of the Bertier #42 Foundation. “You’re the miracle workers, you’re the magic. You’re why we do what we do here.”
William McKinley, M.D., professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, accepted the gift on behalf of the center.
Sutton also recognized Bertier’s mother, Jean Agnew, who was unable to attend the presentation due to her ailing health. Agnew had visited VCU Medical Center in 2007 and last year in support of the foundation and VCU’s efforts in spinal cord injury research.
Bertier was portrayed in the 2000 film “Remember the Titans,” which starred Denzel Washington as the coach of the T.C. Williams High School football team in Alexandria following the school’s desegregation.
In the film, Bertier’s character, an all-star player, is in an automobile accident while celebrating one of the team's victories and is sent to the hospital. While Bertier’s character is unable to play in the final game because of his injuries, the team goes on to win the championship and sets an example for the town.
The foundation has been actively involved with the VCU Medical Center in raising awareness for spinal cord injury treatments.
“We have watched and followed the amazing work that you bring to every one of your patients, and we hope that Gerry was surrounded by a facility and staff like yours,” Sutton said. “All of the money this foundation receives goes to VCU. You are our champions, you are who we support.”
VCU is one of just 20 institutions nationwide to achieve federal designation as a Model Systems of Spinal Cord Injury Care. The goal of VCU’s SCI program is to pursue medical and therapeutic advancements in care and outcomes for individuals with spinal cord injuries. For more information, visit http://www.pmr.vcu.edu/programs/sci/default.aspx.
Virginia Commonwealth University Health Sciences has named Quincy Byrdsong as the new director of research administration and compliance.
As the director, Byrdsong will lead the efforts on the MCV Campus to strengthen research administration and increase compliance with federal and industry research standards. He will also assist other University leadership in identifying best practices for research administration and customizing research administration educational programs for faculty and staff on the MCV Campus.
"We are extremely pleased that Mr. Byrdsong is joining VCU Health Sciences,” said Alan D. Johns, assistant vice president for Health Sciences - Financial and Administrative Affairs. “His expertise in research administration and leadership in the profession will serve to be a tremendous asset to the MCV Campus as we continue to expand our research agenda.”
Byrdsong, who was selected based on his extensive qualifications in research administration and clinical trials management, will work with Johns and others to develop the infrastructure needed to support Health Sciences’ growing and increasingly complex research programs. Byrdsong will also work closely with VCU’s School of Medicine as they continue implementing their research strategic plan.
Most recently, Byrdsong served as the administrative program director for clinical and translational research for the School of Medicine and chair of the Institutional Review Board at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. He has served in several capacities in academic medical centers including director of the Meharry Institutional Review Board, department administrator for neurology and fiscal officer for the Meharry Center for Women’s Health Research. Additionally, he served as a research services consultant for Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Byrdsong earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Middle Tennessee State University, and he is currently working towards a doctorate of education at Tennessee State University.
In a second-floor lab overlooking a parking lot and the side of a brick building, a more healthful America might be taking shape.
Researchers are trying to perfect a mass-market version of a test that can identify the presence of a virus believed to cause obesity.
If they can get the $300 blood test down to a more consumer-friendly $30 to $50 pinprick test, they can make a big splash financially and, just as important, they say, improve the general health of people worldwide.
Then again, they could fail.
That's the risk of medical research.
For every hit, there are countless misses.
For more than a decade, an increasing number of researchers have been swinging away at the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park in downtown Richmond.
"There are wonderful things happening here," said Richard Atkinson, who chose the park as the home for his obesity research firm, Obetech.
While the park originally was envisioned as a home for research on new medicines, the scope has expanded through the years. The work now ranges from the type of science that shows up in best-sellers to organ sharing to cigarette company research.
"If we only depended on companies making new drugs, it would take 50 years to build this park out," said Robert T. Skunda, the president and chief executive officer of the park. "We opted for a more inclusive approach. The mission became life sciences."
The mission included new life for Richmond.
When the park began taking shape in the early 1990s, that swath of the city included the Coliseum, the fringes of Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical College of Virginia and not much else. It wasn't even urban blight; it was just empty, decades after highway construction.
"What I see is a vibrant and growing science park where there wasn't anything here [before that] I'd call workable from an economic standpoint," Skunda said.
An $8 million investment by the state, Skunda said, has led to more than $500 million in development. The bulk of that came in a single project -- $350 million for the Philip Morris research center -- but all of the little pieces have added up, too.
The 34-acre park has nine buildings and more than 1.1 million square feet of space. It also has working agreements with the more space-friendly suburban White Oak Technology Park in Henrico County and the Meadowville Technology Park in Chesterfield County.
In the odd world of science, economic stimulus has been spurred by a project not typically associated with economic growth: human organs.
The ultimate life science -- organ transplantation -- has become the park's face from the interstate.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, which facilitates every organ transplant in the U.S., anchors the west side of the park. Its "Donate Life" logo is what visitors see as they exit Interstate 64/95 onto Third Street.
Walter K. Graham, the executive director of UNOS, said he made "the smartest decision I've ever made as director" six years ago. He accepted an offer to become the research park's first anchor tenant.
"There's great visibility for us," said Graham, who has served on the park's board for the past three years.
The organization also considered an offer from an office park south of the James River.
"We want to be part of a community," he said. "And a community exists in this park."
The community at the BioTech park comes courtesy of Skunda and his staff.
More than 50 companies and other entities call it home. They range from startups working out of cubicles in the park's business incubator to behemoths such as Philip Morris, with its 450,000-square-foot building.
"The most exciting thing is, we have 2,000 people at work," said Skunda, the chief at the park for 12 of its 13 years. "And they are all at work focused on the common mission of life sciences."
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have found that the protein Stat3 plays a key role in regulating mitochondria, the energy-producing machines of cells. This discovery could one day lead to the development of new treatments for heart disease to boost energy in failing heart muscle or to master the abnormal metabolism of cancer.
In the study, published online Jan. 8 in Science Express, researchers reported that Stat3, a protein previously known to control the activity of genes by acting in the cell nucleus, also plays a key role in cellular energy production.
The team examined oxygen consumption in cultured cells and hearts of mice. They discovered that when Stat 3 protein was missing, cells consumed less oxygen and produced less ATP, the key molecular form of cellular energy. The findings revealed that Stat3 is necessary for the function of the mitochondrial electron transport chain that generates ATP. Changes in energy production and expenditure are essential to maintain cellular homeostasis.
“We found evidence that Stat3 is present in the mitochondria and that it serves to control the production of ATP,” said principal investigator Andrew C. Larner, M.D., Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the VCU School of Medicine, and co-leader of the Immune Mechanisms research program at the VCU Massey Cancer Center.
“We have described a new pathway by which generation of ATP is regulated. This pathway could suggest new ways for Stat3 to be therapeutically manipulated to treat a variety of diseases where there are imbalances between energy generation and energy demands such as occurs in cancer and heart disease,” he said.
Next, the team will conduct studies to determine the downstream targets of Stat3 in the mitochondria and identify the physiological role of Stat3 that is localized to the mitochondria in heart disease and cancer.
This work was supported by grants from National Institutes of Health.
Larner worked with an international team including researchers from the VCU School of Medicine; Cleveland State University; Biogen Idec Inc., The Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, Indiana School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and the University of Hyderabad in Hyderabad, India.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry's Pediatric Dentistry Clinic will provide free dental care for underserved patients on Give Kids a Smile Day.
The clinic will be open from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Feb. 6 in Wood Memorial Building, 521 N. 11th St.
The Department of Pediatric Dentistry provides oral health evaluation, education and intervention to children from birth to age 16. The Pediatric Dental Clinic has 14 chairs with two suites for general anesthesia and two rooms for oral sedation. It specializes in dental care for medically compromised and special-needs children as well as otherwise healthy children.
Give Kids a Smile Day is organized annually by the American Dental Association, and in 2008 , it resulted in treatment for more than 480,000 children. Events take place at more than 1,800 locations across the nation, with more than 47,000 dental volunteers providing free services to underserved children.
For more information about Give Kids a Smile, visit http://www.ada.org/prof/events/featured/gkas/index.asp.
Use of antibiotics at U.S. hospitals is rising despite concerns about fueling bacterial resistance, with Wyeth's Zosyn and the older drug vancomycin driving the trend, researchers said.
Use of antibiotics at a group of U.S. academic medical centers rose 7 percent from 2002 to 2006, Ronald Polk of Virginia Commonwealth University and colleagues reported in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday.
"We know from past experience that when we start using any antimicrobial drug excessively, that resistance to that drug eventually appears," Polk said in a telephone interview.
"Given the fact that there are very few new antimicrobial drugs being discovered, the message is that we really need to learn how to use the available drugs better."
The researchers tracked data on anti-bacterial drugs at 22 hospitals around the United States over the full five years.
In 2006, based on information from 35 such university teaching hospitals, the researchers found that 64 percent of patients were given at least one dose of an antibiotic.
As doctors prescribe more antibiotics, experts are alarmed that drugs that once killed the germs no longer do so, meaning an illness may last longer and be more likely to be fatal.
Health care costs also rise when infections defy standard antibiotics. Resistance to drugs can render them useless.
Use of Wyeth's Zosyn, also called piperacillin-tazobactam, rose 84 percent from 2002 to 2006 at the hospitals studied, while use of vancomycin rose 43 percent, the researchers said. Both drugs are given to treat numerous bacterial infections.
Aside from those two, other antibiotic use was stable.
While over-use of antibiotics is a major concern of public health experts, documentation of the problem at U.S. hospitals has been difficult to come by. Polk said the findings at these hospitals probably reflect trends across the United States.
Polk said hospitals need to use antibiotics more judiciously, giving them to patients only when truly necessary. He added that hospitals should operate "stewardship programs" to ensure wise use of the drugs.
Antibiotics generally are safe for patients and cheap.
"It's easy to get into a mind-set of just using them for any trivial condition," Polk said. "We are undoubtedly over-using these drugs. But having a positive impact on that trend of over-use is a tough thing to do."
Patients must understand that when it comes to antibiotics, less is often better, Polk said. He called it a cyclical problem -- more bacterial resistance to one drug leads to use of other drugs, thus causing more resistance to those drugs.
Cedars-Sinai’s C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., discusses heart disease in women
C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., a nationally recognized authority on preventive cardiology and women’s heart health, was recognized today by the Virginia Commonwealth University Pauley Heart Center as the 2008 Dr. Carolyn McCue Woman Cardiologist of the Year.
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.
McCue 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.
“It’s a special honor to receive the first Carolyn McCue award for female cardiologist of the year, and I cannot say enough about VCU for initiating this,” said Bairey Merz. “Acknowledging Dr. McCue’s pioneering passion and commitment is very fitting and I’m deeply honored to accept this award.”
Bairey Merz also presented a Medical Grand Rounds lecture at VCU that covered topics such as heart disease assessment in women, gender differences in cardiovascular disease and the women’s healthcare cost gap.
“Cardiovascular disease is the most costly and most preventable disease in women, yet we spend the least on screening and prevention,” said Bairey Merz, who emphasized the importance of raising awareness and taking advantage of treatment opportunities for cardiovascular disease in women.
Bairey Merz, the Women's Guild Endowed Chair in Women's Health, is director of the Women's Heart Center, director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center and professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.
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 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. The award, which carries a $10,000 prize, is made possible by a grant from the McCue family to encourage and inspire other young women to pursue careers in cardiology.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine has received a $3 million National Institutes of Health grant to test a new intervention that could increase the rate of consent to solid organ donation.
In the United States, the major source of donor organs is from deceased patients, but consent from family members has remained relatively low. No more than 60 percent of the families of donation-eligible individuals consent, and there is a critical need to increase organ and tissue donations.
Laura Siminoff, Ph.D., a nationally recognized expert on health communication and decision making in disease treatment at VCU, will lead the five-year grant designed to test the efficacy of a two-part Early Referral and Request Approach intervention by assessing hospital procurement barriers and by teaching effective communications skills to workers at organ procurement organizations.
The goal of the program is to raise consent rates to solid organ donation from the families of deceased patients at the point where requests are made by organ procurement organizations.
“We hope to make a difference and increase the rates of organ donation by understanding the barriers faced by hospitals in the procurement of organs, and arming those who communicate with families who have lost a loved one with the skills and sensitivity to discuss organ donation,” said Siminoff, who is professor and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the associate director of the Cancer Prevention and Control research program at the VCU Massey Cancer Center.
In the first part of the study, Siminoff and her team will test the effectiveness of a barrier assessment program that would improve the timeliness with which a hospital notifies an organ procurement agency of a potential donor. The second part of the study is designed to teach communication skills to improve the effectiveness of organ procurement organization requests to donor-eligible families. The study will include eight organ procurement organizations, located throughout the United States, and their coordinators who request organ donation.
The team will determine the effect of the training modules on consent rates. Furthermore, they will test organ procurement organization’s implementation of the modules under two conditions - a completely autonomous condition in which an organ procurement organization does not employ any outside assistance to implement the module, and an assisted method whereby trained outside consultants play a role in implementing the modules.
According to Siminoff, the Early Referral and Request Approach is based on 15 years of prior research in the area of obstacles to organ donation.
For more than 25 years, the Richmond chapter of the YWCA has been recognizing outstanding women and their achievements with the Outstanding Women Awards. This year, Robin Foster, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine and director of pediatric emergency services at the VCU Medical Center, was among the honorees.
The Outstanding Women Awards honor women in 10 different categories, including arts, business, communications, education, health and science, human relations, government and politics, law, religion and volunteerism.
This year's winners were selected from more than 80 nominees, based on their impact on the community, their leadership skills, a high level of personal and professional achievement and commitment to the YWCA of Richmond’s mission to eliminate racism, empower women and elevate children.
“This is a huge honor, especially because of the caliber of the other nominees. I just feel truly honored to be included,” said Foster.
An active member in the Richmond community, Foster also serves as the board president for the Richmond Midnight Basketball League, an organization that serves at-risk adolescents.
She also is the cofounder and medical director for the Child Protection Team and serves as the current president of Prevent Child Abuse Virginia. Through her work with the Child Protection Team, Foster was able to partner with Stop Child Abuse Now of Greater Richmond to form the Child Advocacy Center.
Foster is a founding member of Bridging the Gap, a violence prevention program, and is an active member of Reach Out and Read, a program that provides books to children in medical environments.
Foster received her bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary and her medical degree from the VCU School of Medicine. She also participated in a two-year postgraduate fellowship for pediatric emergency medicine at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.
Tadataka Yamada, M.D., offered a clear message as he discussed global health care issues: “If your drive is to improve patients’ lives, you will find the people who need you.”
Yamada, president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program, spoke at Virginia Commonwealth University last week and offered insight into the developing trends in global health care and the work of the Gates Foundation in developing countries.
His lecture, sponsored by the VCU Libraries and the University Student Commons & Activities, addressed a broad range of topics, including HIV treatment and prevention, monetary investments in medicine and emerging medical trends in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yamada, a former resident with the School of Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, urged the audience to understand the health situation in Africa, and how it affects not just Africa, but humanity as a whole.
“The life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is less than 50 years,” said Yamada. “There are over 1,500 medicines sold worldwide, and only 30 are directed toward two-thirds of the world. This is a moral tragedy, keeping people back from reaching their full potential.”
Yamada went on to describe “the lasting consequences of inequity,” stressing that only one preventable disease is needed to cripple societies. He cited tuberculosis, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic and the pandemic flu as examples of potential outbreaks due to poor health care practices that could cause an international crisis.
“In times of economic crisis, emerging markets pull up our markets, so take care of them,” said Yamada.
Yamada stressed that HIV remains the worst of all the medical problems he cited. He compared HIV to polio to illustrate the importance of creating a vaccine.
“Polio was a burden,” Yamada said. “Hospitals were created just to house the iron lungs some patients needed to breathe. Millions of dollars were spent on treatment. The March of Dimes was created, and people were outraged that instead of spending money on treatment, the March of Dimes collected money for a vaccine. Well, they got the vaccine, and the cost was pennies per patient.”
He compared this to HIV, which had afflicted about 3 million patients at the onset of 2009. The world is falling behind every year, according to Yamada, and a vaccine must be developed. Unfortunately, he said, HIV research is emblematic of the pitfalls of medical research. Without completing nearly all of the research, researchers do not receive grants, and if researchers challenge dogma they do not receive money, according to Yamada.
“We must address these issues proactively,” Yamada said, criticizing the peer-review system currently in place. “Innovation is needed, and innovation has no peers.”
Yamada discussed the work of the Gates Foundation and its distribution of medicines in Africa.
“We have a two-person board,” said Yamada, referring to Bill and Melinda Gates. “We can respond immediately to opportunities or situations. We are apolitical, so our money comes without an IOU attached. We are willing to take risks and fail.”
Bahia pokes her head into classrooms to see how patients are doing and receives a warm welcome from the staff and patients at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center’s Virginia Treatment Center for Children.
Bahia is a consummate professional with the patients, never raising her voice, or in this case, her bark. She is a specially trained facility dog who works with patients at the VTCC as part of their therapy.
“She has the ability to love absolutely everyone,” said Tess Searls, her handler and a nurse clinician at VTCC. “Some of our children are intimidated by adults, but a dog normalizes their hospital experience.”
Bahia, who will turn 2 years old in March, is one of six facility dogs in Virginia, according to Searls.
Searls applied for a facility dog through Canine Companions for Independence two years ago. After nearly a year and a half of training for Bahia and two weeks of full-time training for Searls, Bahia arrived at the VTCC in January. The application process is lengthy to ensure a proper fit for the facility dogs and to prepare the dogs to work well with sometimes difficult patients.
“Bahia doesn’t raise her voice, she doesn’t bark or bite,” said Searls. “She simply shows stress by closing her eyes and turning her head. As soon as her vest comes off, she relaxes and runs all over the place, but while the vest is on she’s as calm as can be.”
Searls related one incident where a patient was having trouble communicating his need to leave the room.
“He couldn’t vocalize his desire,” she recalled. “We calmed him down, and then I brought Bahia over. I explained how, since Bahia can’t speak, she stands by the door to indicate that she needs to go out.”
The lesson worked, said Searls, and she stressed that Bahia is never placed in dangerous situations. Instead, Bahia is brought in after the patient calms down to help empathize with the patient and communicate a lesson or work through a problem.
“She’s absolutely wonderful,” Searls said. ”The patients love her.”
Part of the VCU School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry, the VTCC provides mental-health services to the children, adolescents and families of Virginia. The center offers a wide range of psychiatric services and works to improve mental health through patient care, education and research.
Virginia Commonwealth University has launched a new summer fellowship program to support research by undergraduate students.
The VCU Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship Summer Fellowship Program will take place this summer and is designed to encourage an interest in active learning.
To participate in the program, students must form a relationship with a faculty mentor in the student’s field of study or from another department. The student and mentor will collaborate on a summer research project. Interested students should visit http://www.research.vcu.edu/vpr/ugresources/forstudents.htm for tips on how approach a potential faculty mentor.
Participants will receive a $3,000 stipend, and participating faculty members will receive $500. The scholarships are open to all full-time, undergraduate freshmen, sophomores and juniors in all departments. Up to 14 research projects will be selected.
“We’re looking for serious people who are going to follow through. They need to be ready to commit to 20 to 40 hours a week for a 10- week period over the summer,” said Earl Dowdy, Ph.D., department of psychology.
Dowdy is part of a faculty advisory committee created by Provost Stephen D. Gottfredson and Francis L. Macrina, VCU’s vice president for research. The committee created the summer fellowship program in response to VCU’s 2020 strategic plan.
“What we are hoping for is that a student goes through this summer research opportunity and it changes their lives,” Dowdy said. “We want them to make a commitment to scientific research or other forms of creative work.”
Application materials and more information can be found at http://www.research.vcu.edu/vpr/fellowship.htm. The deadline for applications is March 6. Successful applicants will be announced on April 15.
The Virginia Commonwealth University schools of medicine and nursing have achieved significantly higher rankings in medical research funding over the past year - medicine moved up six positions and nursing into the top 20 -- according to data recently released by the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH data show that the VCU School of Medicine moved from No. 59 in 2007 to No. 53 for 2008, out of 126 ranked schools of medicine, and the VCU School of Nursing moved from 23 in 2007, to No. 19, out of 82 ranked schools of nursing - higher than any nursing schools in Virginia.
The VCU School of Medicine in 2008 was awarded nearly $63 million from the NIH for medical research, with significant funding in neurosurgery, pharmacology and toxicology, human and molecular genetics, anatomy and internal medicine research.
"The increase in federal support for biomedical research reflects the creativity and dedication of our faculty and validates the importance and quality of their scholarship as viewed by their peers," said Jerome F. Strauss III, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Medicine. "The increased funding has yielded already significant advances, which are documented in scientific publications in high impact journals, patents and patent applications.
"Most importantly, the research is being translated into improved clinical care," Strauss said.
The VCU School of Nursing was awarded $2.2 million in 2008 for research that largely is focused on the development of the science for improving the health of the nation.
"The faculty has a major concentration on bio-behavioral clinical research that improves the quality of care and therefore the quality of life of people experiencing critical illnesses," said Nancy Langston, Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Nursing.
Langston said it is part of the school's strategic plan to be ranked consistently in the top 20 Schools of Nursing in the nation in NIH funding.
"Both of these schools have nationally prominent faculty that are contributing enormously to their fields," said Sheldon Retchin, M.D., vice president for VCU Health Sciences. "We are extremely fortunate to have recruited such talented individuals to VCU."
The NIH annually computes data on funding provided by NIH grants, cooperative agreements and contracts to universities, hospitals and other institutions.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
Video and audio are available at http://www.news.vcu.edu/news.aspx?v=detail&nid=2732.
The most recent Virginia Commonwealth University Life Sciences survey shows that support for embryonic stem cell research has remained steady over the past few years at 57 percent of adults favoring the research.
New scientific developments have changed the landscape of stem cell research. Seven-in-10 adults favor stem cell research when it does not involve human embryos, down slightly from 75 percent just after the November 2007 announcement that human skin cells can be used to create stem cells or their near equivalents. Support for embryonic stem cell research is similar to past years: 57 percent of adults favor embryonic stem cell research, while 36 percent oppose.
The 2008 VCU Life Sciences Survey was conducted by telephone with 1,005 adults nationwide, from Nov. 24 to Dec. 7, 2008. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. The VCU Life Sciences Survey is conducted for VCU Life Sciences and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences by the VCU Center for Public Policy.
The survey also found that eight in 10 adults nationwide favor making genetic testing easily available to all who want it, and 54 percent say that the benefits of conducting genetic research outweigh the risks.
Public concerns about genetic research are varied with a plurality of 38 percent saying their main concern is that too little is known about how to conduct such research safely. About three in 10, or 28 percent, say their main concern is that genetic research will be used in ways that violate moral principles, while 21 percent are most concerned about discrimination. A majority of the U.S. public is skeptical that government regulation will protect the public from any risks associated with genetic science.
Other survey findings:
* Support for government spending on scientific research, especially when it promises immediate benefits. Despite the economic downturn, there is considerable public support for spending on scientific research. Nearly a quarter of respondents, 23 percent, say that government spending on scientific research should be a top priority. Fifty-nine percent say it should be important, but not a top priority. Only 15 percent of adults say that government spending on scientific research is not too or not at all important. Support for spending on research with immediate benefits is stronger than for basic science research. Fifty-four percent of adults say that spending on research with immediate benefits is important, while 38 percent say that spending on research that advances knowledge even if there are no immediate benefits is important.
* Which is more important: nature or nurture? When asked the more important influence on behavior -- the environment or genes -- a majority of respondents, 57 percent, said the environment. Similarly, most take the position that environmental factors and living practices can alter a person's likelihood for disease. Two-thirds of Americans disagree that "a person's likelihood for disease is pretty much set from birth and cannot be greatly increased or decreased by their environment and living practices."
* Science and society. Fully 83 percent of Americans say that new developments in science have helped make society better. Forty-six percent say science has helped make society a lot better, while 36 percent say it has helped make society somewhat better. More than six in 10, or 61 percent, agree that scientific research is essential for improving the quality of human lives. Some ambivalence in public sentiment continues to surface when it comes to how science matches up with moral principles. A majority of the public, 53 percent, says that scientific decisions should be based primarily on an analysis of the risks and benefits involved rather than the moral and ethical issues involved, cited by 32 percent. At the same time, a majority, 56 percent, agrees that scientific research doesn't pay enough attention to the moral values of society.
* Cloning and therapeutic cloning. Opinion about therapeutic cloning is more divided. Fifty-two percent of adults favor and 45 percent oppose using cloning technology for the development of new medical treatments. When cloning is not restricted to therapeutic purposes, about eight in 10, 78 percent, oppose the use of cloning technology in humans. Opinion on both issues has been fairly stable since the first VCU Life Sciences Survey on public opinion about science and biotechnology was conducted in 2001.
A PDF of the survey report is available at http://www.news.vcu.edu/doc/VCU-Life-Sciences-Report-2008.pdf. Current and past survey reports will be available at http://www.vcu.edu/lifesci/centers/cen_lse_surveys.html.
A team of Virginia Commonwealth University researchers is studying the underlying causes of brain tumors in children to pinpoint the genetic changes that take place in healthy cells and transform them into cancer.
Through the VCU Medical Center's Pediatric Brain Tumor Research Program, Timothy E. Van Meter, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the VCU Department of Neurosurgery, and Gary Tye, M.D., a pediatric neurosurgeon at the VCU Medical Center's Harold F. Young Neurosurgical Center, are looking at the full spectrum of genes that play a role in pediatric brain tumor progression - the leading cause of death from childhood cancer.
Van Meter, Tye and the VCU team have been collaborating with investigators with the Labatt Brain Tumor Center at the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto, Canada, on several projects. Using a variety of molecular techniques, the team has been able to look globally at the tumor-specific changes that lead to transformation of normal brain cells into cancerous cells.
"Ultimately, we hope to develop tests that will tell us, based on the patterns of gene alteration in a patient, which tailored treatment they will most benefit from and which treatment protocol will most effectively eradicate their tumor. Our large-scale studies are providing the information we need to do just that," said Van Meter.
In a study published online the week of March 9 in Nature Genetics, the international team reported the discovery of a molecular pathway that becomes genetically altered, resulting in the growth of a brain tumor called a medulloblastoma. The findings may one day help researchers develop a therapy to target the specific pathway and block the genetic changes from occurring, possibly preventing tumor growth.
According to Van Meter, a medulloblastoma typically originates in the cerebellum and can be extremely aggressive. This area of the brain is responsible for the coordination of voluntary movement and helps maintain balance and muscle tone. Medulloblastomas can cause pressure in the brain and may block the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. Unfortunately, treatment options such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy can cause severe developmental and cognitive deficits in patients.
"Conducting research in pediatric brain tumors is challenging because statistically meaningful, clinically relevant studies require more patient samples than most centers have available to study," said Van Meter. "Therefore, scientists such as myself form large collaborative networks - like the one we formed for this study - pooling resources and patient materials."
In this study, the team examined approximately 200 medulloblastoma specimens and characterized alterations in DNA on chromosomes. The VCU team consulted and provided medulloblastoma clinical samples and data.
Van Meter said that the team continues to examine this large cohort of patient material with other genomic technologies as well, to look at gene expression and other chemical and biological processes at play.
This research involves faculty from the VCU Department of Pathology in the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory and the Department of Biostatistics.
This work was supported by the American Brain Tumor Association Cherise Fleming Translational Research Grant Award from the Childhood Brain Tumor Foundation and the VCU School of Medicine Harold F. Young Neurosurgical Center.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and School of Dentistry have honored two faculty members with the 17th Annual Women in Science, Dentistry and Medicine (WISDM) Professional Achievement Award for their special contributions and accomplishments in the schools of Medicine and Dentistry.
The award recognizes those women who have served as strong role models and mentors for the professional development of women faculty.
This year's honorees are Mary Helen Hackney, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine's Division of Hematology and Oncology, and Kim Isringhausen, M.P.H., assistant professor in the School of Dentistry's Division of Dental Hygiene.
President of the WISDM Executive Council, Hackney is a medical oncologist who specializes in breast cancer.
According to Kelsey E.S. Salley, M.D., associate program director for Women's Health, Hackney's compassionate approach to patient care, combined with her leadership abilities and mentoring relationships with residents, students and fellows are among the many qualities that make her an ideal role model deserving of the prestigious award.
"I've been on the committee to select past recipients of this award and have always been in awe of them," said Hackney, who held her cell phone close by so that her mother, who was unable to attend the ceremony, could hear her daughter accept the award. "I'm very humbled to be standing here at this time."
Hackney's primary practice focuses on systemic treatment for all stages of breast cancer. This includes chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, new drugs and clinical trial participation. She also offers counseling regarding risk reduction for breast cancer and is the local primary investigator for the national breast cancer prevention trial.
Hackney also sees patients with other hematology and oncology problems through the Rural Cancer Outreach Program, and another focus is cancer education for non-oncology medical professionals and for the lay population.
Isringhausen received the School of Dentistry Award. She became a School of Dentistry faculty member in 2002 and in 2005 became director of the Division of Dental Hygiene. During that time, she completed a master's of public health degree at VCU.
Although she is not a dentist, because of her public health education and her accomplishments as a division director, Dean Ron Hunt asked Isringhausen to take on additional leadership responsibilities as the director of the preceptorship programs for the dental school.
"I've attended the WISDM conference for a number of years and have had the opportunity to see many honored for their achievements," said Isringhausen. "I'm truly honored to be among their ranks.
"It inspires me to be a role model and mentor," she said. "Today's recognition is as much a tribute to those who have mentored me, and I hope to continue achieving good things and continue inspiring others the way they have inspired me."
Isringhausen's teaching and leadership abilities also have been recognized by students and professional organizations. She recently was honored as Dental Hygiene Faculty Member of the Year and Best Student Advocate. In addition, her preceptorship program won a 40 Acts of Caring Award for service to the community during VCU's 40th anniversary celebration last fall.
Isringhausen also has been recognized by the American Dental Education Association, including selection into the ADEA Allied Dental Faculty Leadership Development Program and the ADEA/GlaxoSmithKline Teaching Fellowship.
The WISDM Professional Achievement Award is presented annually by the Women in Science, Dentistry, and Medicine Faculty Organization, VCU School of Medicine, MCV Campus.
The award was established in 1993 to acknowledge the special contributions and accomplishments of women faculty in the School of Medicine and to recognize those women for their special contributions, dedication, leadership, mentorship and accomplishments in the schools of Medicine and Dentistry.
The WISDM faculty organization solicits nominations annually. For more information, visit http://www.womeninmedicine.vcu.edu/APAA.html.
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers have discovered that adult animals with hearing loss actually re-route the sense of touch into the hearing parts of the brain.
In the study, published online in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 23, the team reported a phenomenon known as cross-modal plasticity in the auditory system of adult animals. Cross-modal plasticity refers to the replacement of a damaged sensory system by one of the remaining ones. In this case, the sense of hearing is replaced with touch.
About 15 percent of American adults suffer from some form of hearing impairment, which can significantly impact quality of life, especially in the elderly.
"One often learns, anecdotally, that 'grandpa' simply turned off his hearing aid because it was confusing and no longer helped. Our study indicates that hearing deficits in adult animals result in a conversion of their brain's sound processing centers to respond to another sensory modality, making the interpretation of residual hearing even more difficult," said principal investigator Alex Meredith, Ph.D., a professor in the VCU Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology.
"Whether this becomes a positive feedback cycle of increasing hearing difficulty is currently under investigation, but these findings raise the possibility that even mild hearing loss in adult humans can have serious and perhaps progressive consequences," Meredith said.
The findings provide researchers and clinicians with insight into how the adult brain retains the ability to re-wire itself on a large scale, as well as the factors that may complicate treatment of hearing loss with hearing aids or cochlear implants.
The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Meredith worked with postdoctoral fellows Brian L. Allman and Leslie P. Keniston, both in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology.
VCU School of Pharmacy alumni, Nancy and Ron McFarlane, class of 1980, have donated $250,000 to the school for an endowed professorship in pharmacy practice.
The couple has previously established two scholarship funds for pharmacy students - the Phi Delta Chi Scholarship and the Nancy L. and Ronald H. McFarlane Scholarship.
"The school is doing a lot of great things," said Ron McFarlane. "We are happy to be able to help them achieve and grow their mission."
The McFarlanes live in Raleigh, N.C., where they own MedProRx Inc., an accredited specialty infusion pharmacy that focuses on treatments for people with bleeding, autoimmune, neuromuscular and rheumatologic disorders and other complex medical conditions. According to Ron McFarlane, MedProRx, which opened in 2002, is one of few such pharmacies left on the East Coast.
In addition to their education, another reason the McFarlanes have such a strong connection with the School of Pharmacy is that they met here. The couple has three children and will celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary this November.
Although they moved to North Carolina in the mid-1980s, Nancy McFarlane says the school has always been an anchor for them in Virginia.
"I am thrilled that we are in a position to help the school that helped us," said Nancy McFarlane.
The futures of 174 fourth-year medical students were determined last week as the tradition of Match Day revealed the much-anticipated locations of their residencies.
Match Day, a national tradition since 1952, occurs on the third Thursday of March each year. It is the culmination of a grueling and tiresome process in which fourth-year medical students receive sealed envelopes containing the residency program to which they have been matched. The process of applying and interviewing begins in December and January.
As friends, family and faculty members gathered in support, the students anxiously awaited hearing their name called.
"I was extremely excited and a little emotional. It's the end of a long process," said Kevin Lee, who matched with Fairfax Family Medical, his first choice.
"I was nauseous all morning," said Claire Rezba, who also matched with her first choice - the University of California, San Diego Medical Center.
According to Chris Woleben, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and adviser to residency hopefuls, the process can be stressful not only for the students, but for faculty as well.
"I can finally sleep tonight," said Woleben. "I felt like I was going through the process all over again."
The event, which was held at the Woman's Club of Richmond, Bolling-Haxall House, featured a "bon voyage" theme. Attendees sported leis and Hawaiian shirts and ties and enjoyed food and beverages as everyone celebrated the students' success.
The matching process is coordinated by the National Resident Matching Program. Established in 1952, the National Resident Matching Program matches thousands of graduating medical students from all over the United States and Canada with various hospital internship and residencies.
Both the students and hospitals select and rank their top choices. Based on this information the National Resident Matching Program then matches the students with their residencies.
This year VCU School of Medicine exceeded the national average with 96 percent of the students matching with their No. 1 choice, many of whom matched in highly competitive fields. VCU had 17 students match in radiology, 20 in anesthesiology and 56 in primary care.
"They are all such bright and talented students," said Woleben. "The caliber of our students keeps going up every year and with our matching rate, we expect that to continue."
This spring, Virginia Commonwealth University's Acceleration Program is graduating its first group of students.
Launched in the summer of 2005 with an inaugural class of 24, the Acceleration Program is designed to help students whose previous K-12 educational environment might have limited their ability to acquire the math and science skills necessary to pursue a career in the health sciences.
During their freshman and sophomore years and during two summer immersion programs, the acceleration students are required to live together in a residence hall. The students take a specific set of courses together throughout the first year. There also are mandatory requirements for tutoring sessions, study groups and health-related internships and volunteer hours.
"This is a unique program opportunity for undergraduate students because it infuses support services and leadership opportunities in the health sciences curriculum," said Cheryl Chesney-Walker, executive director of health careers/education and special services for students. "The VCU Acceleration Program spans the summer before entering undergraduate studies at VCU through admission into health care programs on the medical campus, and finally employment."
Chesney-Walker founded the program along with Seth Leibowitz, Ed.D., director of pre-health sciences advising. This was the first program that brought together the Division of Health Careers/Education and Special Services for Students on the MCV Campus with the Pre-health Advising Department on the Monroe Park Campus.
"The VCU Acceleration Program is a vital component of the overall VCU Health Careers Pipeline. Increasing the diversity of our health care work force is a national priority to reduce health disparities," said David C. Sarrett, D.M.D, associate vice president for health sciences.
Students who participate in the program begin during the summer session prior to their first year at VCU. The summer includes participation in the four-week student enrichment curriculum, which consists of non-credit undergraduate academic coursework, professional skills development, cultural competency workshops, realistic goal setting and exposure to various specialties in the health professions.
The summer program is designed to help students prepare for pre-health sciences core course work, chemistry and math placement tests.
"The success of the program and the students is clearly evident with the increase each year of applicants," said Chesney-Walker. "It has reached a peak of becoming a very competitive program to enter here at VCU and has gained momentum to attract and retain highly qualified students who are pursuing a health career."
The VCU Acceleration Program has 134 students. The program will graduate 16 students this month. For more information, visit http://www.vcuhealthsciences.vcu.edu/sassdss.
Read press release at: http://www.news.vcu.edu/vcu_view/pages.aspx?nid=2919
Hundreds of scientists, science educators and students from across the state will converge on Virginia Commonwealth University for the annual meetings of the Virginia Academy of Science and the Virginia Junior Academy of Science.
The meetings will be held from May 26 through May 29, with speakers, research presentations and networking opportunities throughout the four-day event. About 700 members from the groups are expected to attend, and a large number of them will stay on campus.
The Virginia Academy of Science furthers science and scientific research in all of its branches, and the Virginia Junior Academy of Science promotes scientific aptitude among students in grades seven through 12. The students, considered among the best and brightest in the sciences, are selected by their teachers to present research to their peers for judging and will have the opportunity to speak with the senior scientists attending the concurrent meeting.
"VCU is excited to again host this important meeting of Virginia scientists," said Thomas F. Huff, vice provost for Life Sciences. "VCU remains at the forefront of life sciences education, integrating all the branches of science under an interdisciplinary umbrella for excellence in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, medical sciences, physics, psychology and statistics."
The VJAS meeting features a lecture by Kevin Whaley, M.D., with the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on "Postmortem Identification of Mass Disaster Victims."
Both groups will attend the George W. Jeffers Memorial Lecture, "Necessity is the Mother of Invention: The Story of the SwiPM3," with inventor Sheldon Retchin, M.D., vice president for Health Sciences and CEO of the VCU Health System.
And the senior group will attend the Academy Conference and Sidney S. Negus Memorial Lecture, "Woundstat: From Bench to Bedside and Beyond," with Kevin Ward, M.D., a VCU emergency physician and associate director of the VCU Reanimation Engineering Shock Center (VCURES); Robert Diegelmann, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry, anatomy & emergency medicine at the VCU School of Medicine; and Gary Bowlin, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering.
A Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center physician is among the first in the country to treat a patient using an FDA-approved liquid system for treating wide-necked brain aneurysms.
John Reavey-Cantwell, M.D., an endovascular neurosurgeon and assistant professor and Reynolds Chair in the VCU School of Medicine's Department of Neurosurgery, is one of only a few physicians nationwide exploring the use of a liquid embolic system to fill wide-necked brain aneurysms.
A brain aneurysm is a weakness in a major blood vessel that causes a portion of the vessel wall to balloon out. According to Reavey-Cantwell, this abnormality puts an individual at risk should the aneurysm break open and bleed.
"A wide-necked brain aneurysm occurs in about 25 percent of patients with brain aneurysms," said Reavey-Cantwell. "Wide-necked aneurysms can be difficult to treat surgically, which requires removal of bone and manipulation of the brain.
"However, by using a new liquid treatment called Onyx HD 500, we are able to use a minimally invasive endovascular procedure to treat the aneurysm from within the blood vessel," he said. "Wide-necked aneurysms that were previously untreatable may now be treated with this new agent."
Typically, the surgeon will navigate a small catheter from the groin to the brain aneurysm and fill the aneurysm with metallic coils, causing the aneurysm to clot. However, there is the possibility that the clot may dissolve, resulting in a recurrence of the aneurysm. In addition, some wide-necked aneurysms have such a large opening that the coils may not stay inside the aneurysm sac.
By filling the aneurysm sac or pocket with the Onyx liquid, which solidifies in approximately five minutes, blood flow into the aneurysm is blocked, helping to prevent the aneurysm from rupturing or increasing in size.
"The potential benefit of the liquid embolic system may be the complete blockage of the blood supply to the aneurysm," said Reavey-Cantwell. "This would make a recurrence of the aneurysm less likely than seen with current treatment methods and it may also help to correct or lessen some symptoms."
The release of the liquid treatment was preceded by a lengthy period of education and training for a small group of leading U.S. neurovascular specialists. VCU is one of about 25 hospitals in the United States to perform this procedure as an alternative to conventional surgery.
To date, there have been no research studies conducted to show whether this new liquid system is effective for treating wide-neck aneurysms, but initial clinical results are encouraging, according to Reavey-Cantwell.
The new Onyx liquid treatment has been approved under a humanitarian device exemption from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, which allows physicians to use the liquid to treat the condition, which affects fewer than 4,000 individuals in the United States per year and for which no comparable device is available.
"We are very fortunate to have recruited a person of Dr. Reavey-Cantwell's skills and abilities," said Harold F. Young, M.D., chair of the Department of Neurosurgery.
"It takes a team effort to be able to accomplish what we have done and the support of the VCU Medical Center has helped place us in a leadership position to provide the best cutting edge research, treatment and technologies for our patients."
The VCU Medical Center also is the first in the mid-Atlantic region to have a fully equipped hybrid operating suite dedicated to the full spectrum of treatments for neurovascular diagnoses, such as stroke, carotid disease, aneurysms and other vascular malformations.
For more information on brain aneurysms, visit http://www.ninds.nih.gov or http://www.strokeassociation.org.
A 33-year-old male is brought to the emergency room complaining of severe stomach pains after an evening of partying with friends in a nearby corn field. He appears rather disoriented, mumbling over and over that he is "feeling sick." The medical team assigned to his care quickly springs into action, asking him questions and checking his vitals. His pupils are dilated, his blood pressure is up and he begins to convulse.
"What next? What's the diagnosis?" a voice behind them asks. They stop what they are doing and begin to discuss the next course of action.
In a true medical emergency, time is of the essence -- but in this scenario, the "patient" is a fully wireless, portable patient simulator that closely mimics the anatomical workings of the human body. The team is a group of third-year medical students from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
In this setting, they have the luxury of time. They can talk through the clinical scenario, bounce ideas about diagnosis and treatment off each other and get important feedback about their performance or approach. Through hands-on simulation training, they have room to make mistakes and learn from them.
Those are just a few of the benefits of simulation training and the reason why in recent years it has become a growing trend in medical schools across the country. Simulation has added a new dimension to the adage in medicine, 'See one, do one, teach one.'
"We know that adults learn best when they are challenged. They learn best, in a sense, from games where they have a complex situation and they have to navigate through it. It engages them and forces them to think," said Alan Dow, M.D., assistant dean of clinical curriculum and assistant professor of internal medicine at the VCU School of Medicine.
"Here we can provide students with educational experiences that are not possible during the inner workings of a typical day," he said.
During the week of April 28, the class of 163 third-year students participated in the School of Medicine's Workshop Week. This was the first time simulation activities were included -- in past years the schedule consisted of mainly lectures. The new VCU Center for Human Simulation and Patient Safety was the central location for much of the activity.
"At this point, the third-year students have learned the medical language and have had a lot of patient encounters. They've seen that medicine is not so black and white -- there are a lot of shades of gray and lots of difficult situations," Dow said. "Medicine is not an A, B, C or D multiple-choice test and the students really have to think through things and make some complicated decisions."
The students were given the opportunity to hone their procedural, diagnostic and communication skills through four hands-on simulation activities.
Three of the four activities were stationed at the VCU Center for Human Simulation and Patient Safety, including placing central venous catheters; listening to the heart of a cardiopulmonary simulator called "Harvey" that realistically simulates 30 cardiac conditions; and diagnosing possible conditions for a simulator called iStan.
A fourth workshop focused on communication skills and included faculty from the theater department. Students and faculty were given the opportunity to role play and learn about their strengths and weakness in communication -- a skill some critics believe many physicians do not do very well.
"I think that this year's workshop week and working through the simulation center are examples of where we are headed in the future in medical education. It's a chance for us to be innovative, try some new things, and think about medical training in a different way," said Dow.
"Our goal is to take this form of training and continue to build it. We see we have some really exciting opportunities in medical training to make people better doctors; make them more effective at procedures, more effective communicators, more effective at making diagnoses. All these things are key for us as we look at our goals for the next generation of physicians," said Dow.
Virginia Commonwealth University recently celebrated a research partnership with the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division that has helped change and shape the quality of drug addiction treatment and recovery services in the Richmond area.
During a ceremony on May 12, Ned Snead, program director for the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division, and program staff members were honored with a plaque for their commitment to improving outcomes for substance use patients in the surrounding area by integrating evidence-based practices into "real life" drug-abuse treatment.
Snead and his team have been involved with three National Institutes of Health, multi-site national studies on a variety of topics, the latest of which featured HIV counseling and testing for individuals with alcohol and other drug problems.
For more than a decade, the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division has had a partnership with researchers from across VCU's campuses and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Together, they have been able to take the knowledge gained from a variety of collaborative research projects and apply the findings to the standard practice at the Chesterfield Community Services Board Substance Abuse Division.
The research is supported by the Clinical Trials Network through the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Faculty from the VCU School of Medicine, the VCU Colleges of Humanities and Sciences and the VCU School of Social Work contributed to the Mid-Atlantic Node of the Clinical Trials Network. Additional support has come from the VCU Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies, the VCU AWHARE Program or Addiction and Women's Health: Advancing Research and Evaluation, and the Addiction Technology Transfer Center.
Awards ceremony presenters included Dace Svikis, Ph.D., principal investigator for the VCU portion of the grant; John Clore, M.D., associate vice president for Clinical Research at VCU; and Roy Pickens, M.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry.
Named for VCU alumnus and former Rector W. Baxter Perkinson, Jr.
Virginia Commonwealth University today dedicated a $20 million addition to the VCU School of Dentistry, Virginia's only dental school. The new building is named in honor of alumnus and former Board of Visitors Rector W. Baxter Perkinson, Jr., D.D.S.
The four-story, 55,000 square-foot structure connects the existing School of Dentistry's Wood and Lyons buildings and enables the school to increase student enrollment in dentistry and dental hygiene, to expand research and to improve patient access to care.
"This new building represents the renaissance at the VCU Medical Center - modernizing our educational, research and clinical facilities, and along with that, expanding and improving our academic, research and clinical programs," said VCU President Eugene P. Trani. "State-of-the-art education will be offered here, as well as interdisciplinary and translational research and high-quality patient care."
The new facility includes dental and periodontics clinics and an off-street drop off and pick up area for patients. The addition enables the School of Dentistry to increase enrollment in its DDS program from 90 to 100 students and in the dental hygiene program from 20 to 40 students annually. The new building also increases the school's laboratory space for the Philips Institute of Oral and Craniofacial Molecular Biology.
"The Perkinson Building will have a significant impact on VCU's research program, with new space for head and neck cancer research as well as tissue bioengineering," said Dr. Sheldon M. Retchin, vice president for VCU Health Sciences. "Researchers in the Philips Institute will work in collaboration with faculty at the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the School of Engineering."
Studies increasingly demonstrate the link between oral health and overall systemic health. VCU School of Dentistry Dean Ron Hunt said that the increased space, clinics and classrooms mean that more dentists and dental hygienists can be educated - providing better access to dental care for all Virginians.
"The VCU School of Dentistry's mission has always been about meeting the oral health care needs of Virginians," Hunt said. "The learning, patient care and scientific discovery that will take place within the walls of this new building will continue to bring that mission to life, inspiring future generations of dental professionals."
VCU officials commended Perkinson and his family for their ongoing support of the university and the School of Dentistry. Perkinson, a 1970 graduate of the VCU School of Dentistry, is founder of Virginia's largest dental practice. He recently retired as an adjunct faculty member of the school, a position he held since he graduated. He also serves as a member of the VCU Health System Authority board of directors.
"Because of this building, we're leading twenty-first century dentistry with state-of-the-art facilities and outstanding faculty," Perkinson said.
Perkinson has received numerous honors from VCU, including the Presidential medallion, the MCV Dental Faculty Award and the School of Dentistry Medallion. He also received the American Dental Association's first-ever Golden Apple Award for Outstanding Leadership in Mentoring.
The VCU School of Dentistry offers programs in dentistry and dental hygiene, as well as graduate programs in advanced general dentistry, endodontics, pediatric dentistry, periodontics, oral surgery and orthodontics.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, CMS, recently released a report that compares hospitals across the country on heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia mortality rates. In this particular survey, the VCU Medical Center had a 3 percent higher mortality rate for heart attacks than the national average.
Drs. George Vetrovec, Chair, Cardiology, and Ron Clark, Chief Medical Officer, explain that the difference lies in the Medical Center's mission to treat the most acutely ill patients with complex cases.
What It Turned Out to Be Might Have Killed Him
Roger Luchs recalls feeling intense gratitude when he finally got an accurate explanation for the pulsating sound in his ear.
By Sandra G. Boodman
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The noise, an incessant loud whooshing in his left ear, was driving Roger Luchs crazy -- literally.
For six months the real estate lawyer who lives in Bethesda had struggled to cope with a problem relieved only by sleep. The emergency room physician who examined him shortly after the problem surfaced in August 2000 had assured him that the noise, inaudible to everyone but Luchs, would probably clear up on its own. Three otolaryngologists had told Luchs he had tinnitus, a harmless but annoying condition typically characterized by a ringing sound, less often by the pulsating noise Luchs heard.
That was not reassuring. To Luchs, then 49, the prospect of living with his own private version of "The Telltale Heart," the classic Edgar Allan Poe story about a man who cannot escape the relentless sound of a phantom beating organ, had caused him intense anxiety and depression, driving him to see a psychiatrist.
All his doctors gave him the same advice: There's no cure for tinnitus, nothing else is wrong, find a way to live with it.
Which is why Luchs was shocked when a Richmond ear, nose and throat specialist, after listening with a stethoscope, informed Luchs that he, too, could hear the noise, which had a much more ominous cause than simple tinnitus.
"It was very impressive," recalled Aristedes Sismanis, formerly chair of the department of otolaryngology at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Medicine. A constant barrage of noise, Sismanis adds, can be very distressing; some tinnitus sufferers have committed suicide because they could not bear the constant din.
Luchs vividly remembers feeling a rush of gratitude so intense it initially trumped his fear about its underlying cause. "I can't believe no other doctors thought to put a stethoscope on the source of the problem," he said. "But they didn't."
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His problem began one morning while he was taking a large dose of tetracycline to treat the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers. Luchs awoke shortly before 6 a.m. and began vomiting violently, a probable reaction to the antibiotic.
Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his neck and a loud noise inside his left ear that sounded like a pulse. A few hours later, the pain began to subside; the noise did not. Alarmed, Luchs went to a Maryland emergency room.
A physician took his blood pressure, ran a CT scan and told Luchs she could find nothing wrong. She assured him that although she wasn't sure what was causing the noise, the sound would probably go away in a few hours.
It didn't. A day or so later Luchs consulted an otolaryngologist. He couldn't find anything wrong, either, and told Luchs the vomiting and pulsing noise were unrelated. A second ENT thought the problem might be a blocked eustachian tube, which the doctor cleaned out. When that failed to diminish the noise, the physician prescribed a corticosteroid, which helped briefly. But soon the noise returned as loud as ever.
Next stop was a third ENT. He suggested Luchs try a low-salt diet; that sometimes diminishes tinnitus, which can be caused by exposure to loud noise, aging or medication. The diet had no effect, nor did the over-the-counter remedies the doctor prescribed. Because imaging studies, including CT scans and MRIs, had ruled out a stroke, bleeding in the brain, atherosclerosis or malformed blood vessels, the otolaryngologist, who Luchs said had started avoiding his calls, told him he would need to learn to live with the condition that might be pulsatile tinnitus.
Dissatisfied, Luchs said that at his request the third ENT referred him to Sismanis, a prominent tinnitus expert whose name Luchs had found in a medical book.
Although he had bought a "white noise" machine that enabled him to sleep, Luchs said, he was constantly aware of the whooshing sound while awake. "I could maybe forget it for five minutes if I got involved in work," he said. "It's a horrible thing to have to listen to." He was acutely aware that other people thought he was imagining or exaggerating the noise audible only to him.
Sismanis asked the third ENT to order an MRI angiogram, called an MRA, to check Luchs's head for blocked blood vessels or other problems. Records show that the radiologist reported that the exam, performed two weeks before Luchs saw Sismanis, was normal -- a finding that would soon be called into question.
On Feb. 1, 2001, Luchs drove to Richmond to see Sismanis. The first thing the doctor did was take him into a quiet exam room and place a specially amplified stethoscope against Luchs's head, just below the left ear. The sound, recalled Sismanis, who has retired from VCU and now practices in his native Athens, Greece, was unmistakable: Luchs had been listening to his own heartbeat.
After telling Luchs he could hear the noise, Sismanis told him "most likely it was a vascular problem in his head. It's an alarming thing for a doctor to find. But the moment you can tell a patient you can hear it, that relieves their anxiety."
Sismanis suspected that the cause of the noise was a dissecting left carotid artery. The large vessel that brings blood to the brain had somehow torn, causing the area to fill with blood and resulting in a dangerous narrowing of the artery, which placed Luchs at high risk for stroke.
A 2008 article in eMedicine, an online medical textbook, reports that dissection can occur as a result of trauma from a high-speed motor vehicle accident, sports injuries or even after yoga or overhead painting. Such dissections are among the most common causes of stroke in people younger than 50; a quarter of patients with a dissecting artery report pulsatile tinnitus.
One of the best ways to detect a dissection is through an MRA. Although the first MRA was found to be normal, an angiogram performed a few weeks later at VCU clearly showed the problem.
What caused it?
Sismanis said he believes Luchs suddenly hyperextended his neck while vomiting, tearing the artery. The neck pain he reported to the ER physician is characteristic of such an injury, as is pulsatile tinnitus.
Once the diagnosis was confirmed, Luchs faced the daunting task of sorting out conflicting recommendations from specialists. Some thought the best treatment involved placing one or more stents to open the nearly closed artery, while others worried such a procedure might trigger a stroke.
Two months after meeting Sismanis, Luchs underwent a cerebral angioplasty at Inova Fairfax Hospital. A neuroradiologist inserted two stents in his carotid artery, which fixed the problem. The noise disappeared.
A month after his operation, Luchs wrote to the Washington ENT who had told him he had done all he could and urged the lawyer to learn to live with the constant whooshing.
"Unfortunately you never treated my case as a vascular problem," he wrote, "and did not do the simplest test that would have revealed that, i.e., placing the stethoscope behind my ear to determine if you could hear an unusual pulsation."
A few weeks later he received a form letter from the doctor.
"I appreciate you bringing this information to my attention and also appreciate your viewpoint on the subject," the letter said. "I hope that all goes well with you on your disorder."
By Tammie Smith
Published: July 1, 2009
Virginia Commonwealth University's new Parkinson's initiative will be led by a veteran researcher who believes no single thing triggers the disease that causes debilitating, gradually worsening tremors.
While much of Dr. James P. Bennett Jr.'s research focuses on the role of the energy-producing components of cells called mitochondria, those working with him are pursuing a range of theories and possible treatments -- even a type of low-level light therapy studied so far in cells in laboratory dishes.
"Biologically, there is not going to be one thing wrong," Bennett said. "It's going to be very complicated and multifactoral that could be quite different across individuals. There is no reason to assume there will be a single cause" of Parkinson's, a condition associated with aging.
Bennett, 60, starts today as chairman of the neurology department at VCU and as director of VCU's new $10 million Parkinson's disease research and treatment initiative.
The ambitious effort aims to raise VCU's profile in research and patient care for such neurological conditions as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's diseases.
Bennett has spent the past 29 years at the University of Virginia, where he brought in millions of dollars in research grants.
Lest anyone think VCU "stole" him from U.Va., Bennett sent the first e-mail, contacting the medical school dean after reading about the initiative on the VCU Web site and saying to himself, "Hey, I can do that."
"I responded to that e-mail within five minutes of getting it," said Dr. Jerome Strauss III, dean of the VCU School of Medicine.
"I knew he was one of the leading figures in the field. I was just thrilled he was interested in exploring the opportunity," Strauss said.
. . .
Bennett cites multiple reasons for coming to VCU.
He said he liked Strauss' vision of VCU becoming a "translational powerhouse" where researchers work toward discoveries that can be moved to the market sooner as therapies for patients.
He also liked the university's overall "very positive, forward-thinking vision for the future," he said.
The thing that helped seal the deal, however, was the interactions with a group of Richmond-area men who humorously call themselves the Movers and Shakers.
"They are a highly passionate, devoted, astute group of individuals who have been working together for years to make something happen without a director, without a designated space," Bennett said.
"It was all an idea. They kept to that idea. I met with them a couple of times. Each time, I was more impressed with their commitment."
The Movers and Shakers, including group member Charles F. Bryan Jr., were featured in a 2006 story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
"My attitude is, Parkinson's is the enemy. I am fighting it tooth and nail," said Bryan, diagnosed five years ago. "I try to reach out to those who have it and help them in every possible way. I like to say when I am gone, Parkinson's is going to be so glad I am gone."
News stories about the Movers and Shakers caught the eye of Strauss at VCU, who met with them to talk about a possible research initiative.
In the 2006 story, Bryan had described how as a veteran he was able to get comprehensive, multidisciplinary care for his Parkinson's at McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center, but there was nothing similar in the community for nonveterans.
"Since [Strauss] announced he would create such a center, my colleagues and I have been very active in raising money," Bryan said. "It's a $10 million effort." Strauss committed $5 million from the VCU School of Medicine, and the Movers and Shakers are matching that through fundraising.
"We are about $8.4 million toward the full $10 million. . . . It's not the best time to be raising money. I think despite that, we have done well. We have picked up two $1 million gifts and a goodly number of six-figure gifts," Bryan said.
The funds raised so far include $1 million for an endowed chair in neurodegenerative diseases made possible through a gift from FitzGerald and Margaret Bemiss. Bennett will occupy that chair. Interest on the endowment will support his salary.
. . .
At U.Va., Bennett is director of the Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research. The center is one of 14 such facilities named for the congressman who died from the disease in 1998 and funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.
An exclusive list of universities have such centers, including Harvard, UCLA, Northwestern and Johns Hopkins, where Bennett earned his medical degree, a Ph.D. in pharmacology, and also did postdoctoral study in neuropharmacology. Funding for the centers comes in five-year allotments, averaging about $1 million a year for each institution.
Bennett said he will submit an application this fall for continued Udall Center funding for 2010 and beyond. Initially, Bennett said he will travel between VCU and U.Va., where his lab will remain until spring when the current Udall grant ends, and then the program relocates to VCU with him.
At VCU, Bennett will do research, teach and see patients. VCU's research initiative will work closely with the Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center at the McGuire VA Medical Center, where some VCU researchers also have appointments and are looking for clues to what causes the disease.
An estimated 500,000 people in the U.S. have Parkinson's disease. With the aging of baby boomers, the number diagnosed is expected to increase. Medications can control symptoms, but there is no cure, and over time drugs may stop working.
The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine has received a Department of Health and Human Services grant totaling more than $250,000 to help students who might otherwise be unable to attend medical school take a step closer to achieving their goals.
The scholarships, totaling $10,000 each, will be awarded to 25 medical students whose entire family income is equal to or less than twice the national poverty level for the number of family members. Students can be at any level of their medical school careers to be eligible.
According to Glenda Palmer, Ph.D., assistant dean for student affairs and financial aid in the School of Medicine, most medical students nationwide borrow at least some of the money to complete their education and end up $150,000 or more in debt by graduation. In 2008, 91 percent of medical students at the VCU School of Medicine had to borrow some of the money for education, she said.
"For all students this is a tremendous financial burden, but for students from families that are already strapped, borrowing is an absolute necessity and a particularly difficult burden," said Palmer.
"Families with greater financial assets often help their students to some extent so they can borrow less. Receiving this grant for financially disadvantaged students will enable them to borrow less this year," she said.
A group of Virginia Commonwealth University occupational therapy graduate students recently returned from two weeks in Ghana, West Africa, as part of a study aboard course called "Disability Culture in West Africa."
The course focused on understanding Ghanaian disability laws, the experiences of those living with disabilities and the influence of Ghanaian culture and the environment on the development of children with and without disabilities.
The team of five was led by Stacey Reynolds, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy.
"For the students, the trip provides an opportunity to grow as professionals and stretch themselves beyond their Western comfort zone," Reynolds says. "One two-week trip is not going to have a lasting impact in the country, but our goal at VCU is to develop and cultivate ongoing relationships that may help provide better services for people with disabilities in the future."
By partnering with Sovereign Global Missions, a non-governmental organization, the students had service and educational experiences in the country and even before take-off.
Prior to departure, students collected book donations and were able to ship more than 500 pounds of books to the SGM community library. Phi Theta Epsilon, the OT student honor society, raised funds for shipping the books.
Once in Ghana, students and faculty helped professional painters paint the interior and exterior of the community school building, which is scheduled to open to children in the Adoteiman community this fall.
This service project was a continuation of the efforts initiated by the VCU School of Social Work, which has worked to clear the land and build both the SGM Adoteiman School and library.
The team members also used their occupational therapy skills to provide consultation and evaluation to village and street children with disabilities and their families. They provided training to staff at a school for children with developmental disabilities, conducted an in-service for teachers and aides on safe transfer techniques and adapted school, self-care and play materials for children with disabilities.
Students also interviewed community leaders on the perception of disabilities in Ghanaian culture and the role a new disability law will play in changing the conditions for people with disabilities in Ghana. In addition, the team visited an orphanage for children with special needs, including HIV/AIDS, and a government sponsored rehabilitation center in the city of Accra.
Read the article and learn more about the study abroad experiences.
A team of Virginia Commonwealth University researchers is studying cells found in the heart to determine the underlying causes of abnormal heart rhythms - those acquired and those due to genetic factors.
Gea-Ny Tseng, Ph.D., professor of physiology and biophysics in the VCU School of Medicine, hopes that her work may help researchers develop drugs that can target specific molecular regions in heart cells to treat patients with acquired or congenital arrhythmias.
Tseng and a VCU research team, together with investigators from Columbia University in New York, Shiga University of Medical Science in Japan and Tonji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, have been working to better understand how ion channels in heart cells function and regulate the heart.
In the human heart, the slow delayed rectifier channel, or IKs, is one of the major ion channels responsible for regulating the organ's action potential configuration and duration.
According to Tseng, heart cells constantly go through excitation-resting cycles. In the resting phase of the cycle, the heart is in a relaxed state and the chambers are being filled with blood. In the excitation phase of the cycle, the heart is in a contractile state to pump the blood into vessels.
"Action potentials are responsible for initiating the excitation/contractile state. The shape or configuration, and the duration of action potentials need to be tightly regulated by hormones, neurotransmitters and many other factors, so that the heart can exert appropriate force to pump the blood in a synchronized fashion," explained Tseng.
In a study published in the June 12 issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry, the team reported that cells in the heart may dynamically regulate the current amplitude of the IKs channel in response to their changing environment so that they can produce appropriate electrical and mechanical outputs to support the rhythmic activity and pump function of the heart. This is achieved by IKs regulating the action potential configuration and duration.
Tseng said that the team continues to build on this research. They are investigating how conditions of the heart such as aging, chronic hypertension and myocardial infarction can impact the ion channels. They are also studying the molecular mechanisms of these ion channels, and specifically where these proteins bind to each other. The team plans to build 3-D molecular structures of the ion channels, which will be helpful in the drug discovery process and help determine potential target compounds that can interrupt interactions of these channels and potentially prevent arrhythmias.
This work was supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Students at Cosby High School in Midlothian have a particularly interesting - and potentially rewarding - opportunity in the school's Health Science Specialty Center.
Since Cosby's center was established in September 2007, its teachers and administrators have worked closely with VCU faculty to offer programs for students who want to prepare for and pursue careers in the health-care industry. The School of Pharmacy's representative is Thomas Reinders, associate dean for admissions and student services.
Beginning in the spring of 2008, each of the MCV Campus schools have offered modules as part of a course coordinated by Seth Leibowitz, director of pre-health sciences advising for VCU University College, and Donna Jackson, director of outreach for the School of Medicine. The course includes in-class exercises, lectures and lab experiences for the high-school students.
Reinders says the pharmacy module consists of didactic and experiential approaches to educating students about the role of pharmacists in healh care.
During the spring 2009 module, Ron Ballentine, associate professor of pharmacy and assistant director of admissions and student services, and Tyler Stevens, assistant professor of pharmacy, served as lecturers. The session was followed by special laboratory exercises in the R. Blackwell Smith Jr. Building. Trish Horning, instructor of pharmacy; Donna Francioni-Proffitt, assistant professor of pharmacy; and about 15 SOP students assisted Stevens and Ballentine.
When the center opened, Cosby Principal Brenda Mayo noted that the opportunities to visit local health-science facilities and to work with college students and health professionals in a "real-world environment" would be the program's most important components.
Every Chesterfield County high school has a specialty center; the topics range from the arts to technology.
