Abstract
Harvard Medical School (HMS) will establish a new Department of Biomedical Informatics. The Department is scheduled to open on July 1, and will build on the existing center in biomedical informatics, which was established in 2005. Isaac S. Kohane, MD, PhD, co-director of the current Center for Biomedical Informatics, will serve as the inaugural chair of the new department. Faculty members in the new Department of Biomedical Informatics will come from a variety of disciplines, including statistics, physics and computer science. The Department will be focused on developing and implementing quantitative approaches to address medical decision-making, including the creation of a comprehensive information database to assist clinicians in treating their patients.
Stem Cell Fellowships Established at the University of Southern California
The Hearst Foundations have given a gift of $250,000 to support stem cell research at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of Southern California (USC). The fellowships will provide a startup package, including salary and benefits for a full year, to outstanding junior postdoctoral fellows pursuing stem cell research. Fellows will have access to vital resources throughout the USC Stem Cell community to position them to compete successfully for additional awards and fellowships at the national level. In May of last year, USC received a $2 million gift from The Broad Foundation to support senior postdoctoral fellows pursing stem cell research.
Stanford Receives $50 Million Grant to Support Vaccine Discovery
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $50 million grant over 10 years to Stanford University. The grant will support efforts to expedite vaccine development and will establish the Stanford Human Systems Immunology Center. Work at the Center will be focused on understanding how the immune system can be harnessed to develop vaccines for infectious diseases such as HIV and malaria. The grant will promote collaboration among researchers from a variety of disciplines at Stanford as well as other institutions to identify and prioritize the most promising vaccine targets for clinical trials. Researchers will also aim to understand why some people have better natural immunity than others. The center will be led by Mark Davis, PhD, a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology in Stanford's School of Medicine, and will also include faculty from the School of Engineering.
University of Cincinnati Receives $1.3 Million Gift for Pancreatic Cancer Research Endowed Fund
The University of Cincinnati (UC) received a $1.3 million gift from the family of Steven Goldman through the Greater Cincinnati Foundation (GCF) to establish the Steven Goldman Memorial Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund. The fund will support pancreatic cancer research and bolster recruiting and retention of top faculty at the UC Cancer Institute. The Fund was established at GCF in 1985 by the family of Steven Goldman, a Cincinnati native who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 35, and the foundation has invested and managed the assets since that time. Mr. Goldman was an alumnus of the UC College of Law and practiced law in Cincinnati.
Through this funding mechanism, UC Cancer Institute will solicit grant applications from research faculty for the Steven Goldman Memorial Pancreatic Cancer Research Grant. Applications will be accepted annually and will undergo peer-review by a panel of researchers appointed by the leadership of the UC Cancer Institute. The strongest application will be awarded a minimum of $50,000, with potential for additional funding if deemed appropriate by leadership.
Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center Receives Gift from Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation
The Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation made a gift of $250,000 to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center of the University of Miami (UM/Sylvester). The gift supports the Momentum2: The Breakthrough Campaign for the University of Miami and will fund lymphoma research. Anthony Rizzo, a 25-year-old Major League Baseball player for the Chicago Cubs, is a seven-year survivor of lymphoma who was treated at UM/Sylvester. In recognition of the gift, the waiting room at the Hematology Oncology Clinic at Sylvester will be named the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation Hematology Oncology Waiting Room.
Ebola Vaccine Trial Led by Liberia-NIH Partnership Opens in Liberia
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the opening of the Partnership for Research on Ebola Vaccines in Liberia (PREVAIL) study, a phase 2/3 study to assess the safety and efficacy of two experimental vaccines to prevent Ebola virus infection. The study is designed to enroll approximately 27,000 healthy men and women aged 18 years and older and is led by a Liberia-U.S. clinical research partnership sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH. The trial seeks healthy volunteers and individuals who have a higher risk of Ebola infection, such as health care workers and members of burial teams.
The vaccine candidates being tested are cAd3-EBOZ and VSV-ZEBOV. Scientists at the NIAID and GlaxoSmithKline co-developed the cAd3-EBOZ vaccine, which delivers genetic material from the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus using a chimpanzee-derived cold virus. The interim results from a Phase 1 trial of this vaccine are available online at www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Pages/EbolaVaxResults.aspx. The VSV-ZEBOV vaccine was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and licensed to NewLink Genetics Corporation through its wholly owned subsidiary BioProtection Systems Corporation. The VSV-ZEBOV vaccine delivers an Ebola virus gene segment via vesicular stomatitis virus, an animal virus that primarily affects cattle. The phase 1 trial results of this vaccine have not yet been published but were made available to the regulatory bodies reviewing the study.
PREVAIL is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial and is expected to span a twelve month trial period. Participants will be assigned at random to one of three equal-sized groups. One group of volunteers will receive a placebo injection of saline. The other two groups will receive a single injection of either the cAd3-EBOZ vaccine or the VSV-ZEBOV vaccine. All participants will be advised on how to minimize the risk of becoming infected with Ebola virus. Study staff will initially follow up with participants approximately a week after the injection and once monthly thereafter for the duration of the study. The trial is co-led by Stephen B. Kennedy, MD, MPH, secretary-general of the Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons; Fatorma Baloy, PhD, director, Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research, and H. Clifford Lane, MD, NIAID's deputy director for clinical research and special projects. The NIH has posted “Questions and Answers: PREVAIL Phase 2/3 Clinical Trial of Investigational Ebola Vaccines” online at www.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/Pages/EbolaVaxResultsQA.aspx. Additional information about the study is also available at ClinicalTrials.gov. The study identifier is NCT02344407.
Indiana University School of Medicine Receives $3 Million Bequest from Alumnus
Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine received $3 million scholarship fund from the estate of alumnus, Ralph Eugene Faucett, MD. A decorated U.S. Navy officer, Dr. Faucett earned his MD at the IU School of Medicine in 1943 and subsequently served as a Navy physician throughout his 32-year career. Born in 1916, Dr. Faucett grew up working on the family farm near Milton, IN. He stipulated as the only requirement of the scholarship that the recipient must be an Indiana native.
Dr. Faucett served with the 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division as a surgeon during World War II. He provided care for soldiers throughout the Mariana Islands and Okinawa campaigns and during the post-war occupation of Japan, and his unit was deployed to Nagasaki after the atomic bombings to serve as peacekeeper forces. In 1962, he returned to Japan as the chief of medicine for the naval hospital in Yokosuka. After completing Deep Sea Diving School and Submarine School, he served as senior medical officer for a submarine squadron before being named director of submarine medicine at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Laboratory. He retired from active duty in 1974 with the rank of rear admiral. He died on January 17, 2014.
Nih Announces Genomics of Gene Regulation Grant Awards
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced five new three-year grant awards totaling over $28 million as part of the Genomics of Gene Regulation (GGR) program of the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The GGR program is aimed at deciphering how genes are regulated. Researchers will work to determine how genomic differences impact human health and disease. Investigators intend for the resulting discoveries to inform the development of therapies to treat diseases affected by impaired gene regulation. The following recipients were announced by the NIH in a press release available online at www.genome.gov/27559930:
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, $3.2 million
Principal Investigators: Christina Leslie, PhD and Alexander Rudensky, PhD
The body's immune system can cause inflammation, which plays a central role in some diseases. The investigators will use a mouse model to study genomic mechanisms underlying immune system activity during inflammation. They will determine what and when genes are turned on and off, and how they are controlled, in the development and activation of two different types of immune cells with opposite functions. One cell type promotes the immune system's response and inflammation; the other dampens these functions.
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, $5.9 million
Principal Investigator: Timothy Reddy, PhD
Researchers will characterize how human lung epithelial cells respond to anti-inflammatory drugs called glucocorticoids (a type of steroid hormone). They will determine what and when genes are turned on and off, and how this process is controlled. They hope to create a model for this type of response, and detail the gene regulation patterns involved. This may allow the researchers to understand how glucocorticoids control both anti-inflammatory and metabolic responses.
University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, $6.1 million
Principal Investigators: Jeremy Luban, MD and Manuel Garber, PhD
Investigators will study a type of immune cell called a dendritic cell as a model with which to explore gene regulation. This cell is part of the innate immune system that, together with the acquired immune system, distinguishes self from non-self and enables the body to react to pathogenic invaders. The researchers will examine the changes that the dendritic cell undergoes when it encounters a pathogen, including the genes that are turned on and off, molecules that are made and receptors that are activated.
Stanford University, Stanford, California, $7.1 million
Principal Investigator: Michael Snyder, PhD
Dr. Snyder and his team will study the development of one type of skin cell (keratinocyte) as it develops from an early stage skin cell into a mature cell. To do this, they will examine the network of genes and pathways that control this developmental change. The results may ultimately have implications for better understanding skin biology and hundreds of skin disorders.
University of California, Los Angeles, $6 million
Principal Investigators: Alexander Hoffmann, PhD and Douglas Black, PhD
Researchers will study the immune system's response to pathogens. They will examine how a type of white blood cell called a macrophage reacts to a bacterial pathogen, which can result in the activation of more than 1,000 genes. This model system will allow the scientists to examine various steps in the gene expression pathway to try to better understand some of the control mechanisms involved.
The grant numbers of the awards are: 1U01HG007893-01; 1U01HG007900-01; 1U01HG007910-01; 1U01HG007919-01; and 1U01HG007912-01.
National Diabetes Education Program Names New Chair
Linda Siminerio, RN, PhD, executive director of the Diabetes Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, was named the new chair of the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP). NDEP is a joint program of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this role, Dr. Siminerio will lead NDEP in its efforts to facilitate the adoption of proven approaches to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes and its complications and will direct NDEP in accordance with its strategic plan. She began her two-year term in January this year, succeeding John Buse, MD, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
Dr. Siminerio is a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and is a leading advocate for diabetes care and education. She also serves as chair of the International Diabetes Federation's (IDF) Bringing Research in Diabetes to Global Environments and Systems program and is a past chair of the IDF World Congress. She also previously served as president of health and education at the American Diabetes Association (ADA). In 2011, she was awarded the Outstanding Educator in Diabetes Award, an annual award given by the ADA.
Niehs Announces Six Outstanding New Environmental Scientist Awards
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced six new grant awards totaling $3 million as part of the Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) grant initiative. The ONES program, initiated in 2006, provides support for emerging scientists whose research is aimed at discovering how human health is impacted by environmental influences. As announced by the NIH, the new awardees are:
Neelakanteswar Aluru, PhD, at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, will use zebrafish models to study how early-life exposures to toxic chemicals may lead to developmental disabilities.
Kara Bernstein, PhD, at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, will study how errors in DNA repair lead to tumor growth, and how at-risk individuals may be more sensitive to DNA damage.
Samir Kelada, PhD, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will use innovative approaches to identify genes and pathways that play a role in the effect of ozone on asthma.
Kun Lu, PhD, at the University of Georgia, will study the interaction between the gut microbiome and arsenic, a widespread environmental pollutant and known human carcinogen.
William Mack, MD, at the University of Southern California, will research how particulate matter exposure can be toxic to blood vessels in the brain, and identify risks to cognitive health in vulnerable populations.
Dana Miller, PhD, at the University of Washington, will explore the long-term effects of toxic substances on basic physiology.