News Briefs

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Welsh leads new UI research institute

Michael Welsch, MD Portrait

Michael Welsh, MD

Michael Welsh (’71 BS, ’74 MD, ’77 R), professor of internal medicine and molecular physiology and biophysics, has been named founding director of the UI Institute for Biomedical Discovery.

His primary leadership responsibilities will be to recruit outstanding scientific leaders to head the institute’s various areas of primary focus: neurosciences, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, imaging, and regenerative medicine. He also will help define and promote the culture and vision for the institute throughout the UI community.

The institute is to be built next to the Carver Biomedical Research Building on the health sciences campus. It will house laboratories and office space dedicated to cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary research in the biomedical and life sciences, involving scientists from across the entire campus. This is part of a larger University effort to bring together scientists from multiple disciplines in research leading to new treatments, while offering new educational opportunities and lifting Iowa’s economy through new jobs and business partnerships.

Welsh, who holds the Roy J. Carver Chair in Internal Medicine and Physiology and Biophysics, is director of the UI Cystic Fibrosis Research Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

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Technology monitors hand hygiene

Using wireless technology, UI researchers have created a way to monitor health care workers’ hand hygiene compliance, which is essential for infection control in hospitals.

The system automatically tracks the use of hand hygiene dispensers when health care workers enter and exit patient rooms. Small beacons are placed inside the rooms and other designated locations; workers wear small, pager-sized badges that log the time, length of use, date, and dispenser ID number. In a pilot study, the automated monitoring system correctly identified more than 90 percent of study subjects entering and exiting patient rooms when the subjects remained in the room for 30 seconds. When the time in the room increased to 60 seconds, the monitoring system approached 100 percent identification of subjects entering and exiting patient rooms.

The new method was highlighted in March at the annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Further testing in a variety of hospital settings is necessary, said the study’s lead investigator, Philip Polgreen, MD (’00 R, ’02 F, ’04 F, ’07 MPH), assistant professor of internal medicine and an epidemiologist in the College of Public Health.

The technology behind the study was developed in collaboration with UI computer scientists, led by Ted Herman, PhD, professor of computer science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Funding was provided by an award to Herman from the National Science Foundation, an NIH career grant awarded to Polgreen, and a grant from the UI.

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$2.3 million supports research into free radicals

A $2.3 million gift commitment from the McCord Research Foundation of Iowa City will support UI research into the role of free radicals in the mechanisms of aging and wound healing, plus provide fellowship support for students in the Biosciences Program of the UI Graduate College. The endowment also aims to advance continuing research with a focus on wound care and quiescent cells. The funding will support projects of researchers in the UI Free Radical and Radiation Biology Program of the UI Carver College of Medicine: Nukhet Aykin-Burns, PhD, assistant research scientist; Josh Madsen (’06 PhD), postdoctoral fellow; and Ehab Sarsour (’06 PhD), assistant research scientist.

The McCord Research gift underlines the goal of the state’s “Generation Iowa” initiative, a program that works to keep young Iowans in Iowa, and attract other young adults to move to or return to Iowa for the long term.

“This not only gives (young scientists) the opportunity to explore and promote pioneering science ‘at home,’ but the fruit of these very promising researchers’ efforts may help attract more science-based business to the state,” said Paul Rothman, MD, dean of the UI Carver College of Medicine.

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National Academies honor Andreasen

Nancy Andreasen (’70 MD), PhD, professor of psychiatry, was named a national associate of the National Research Council, part of the National Academies.

Andreasen, who holds the Andrew H. Woods Chair of Psychiatry at the UI, has chaired or served on many committees of the National Academy of Sciences or the Institute of Medicine, also part of the National Academies. In the past three years, she chaired two influential committee reports, one on “Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research” and another on “Veterans Administration Compensation for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.”

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NIH grant is 8th renewal for cardio research center

Nearly $10.4 million was awarded to a long-standing research program that has helped reduce death from heart disease.

This is the eighth consecutive five-year grant renewal from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for the “Integrative Neurobiology of Cardiovascular Regulation” program, established at the UI in 1971. With nearly $80 million in National Institutes of Health support, the program is one of the longest continuously funded research programs under the direction of the same principal investigator, Francois Abboud, MD (’61 R), professor of internal medicine and molecular physiology and biophysics who holds the Edith King Pearson Chair of Cardiovascular Research.

The new funding will help support ongoing studies to understand how and why errors in the brain and nervous system cause heart and circulatory problems, including heart attacks, high blood pressure, heart failure, stroke, and obesity. Past studies have contributed to new approaches for treating high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, and also have shown that patients with sleep apnea have a risk for very high blood pressure during sleep. Studies also have contributed to the development of animal models of cardiovascular disease, helping scientists understand heart conditions and chemicals that can treat such conditions.

In 1975, the initial support of the grant helped create the UI Cardiovascular Research Center, which Abboud founded and now heads. In addition, several new cardiovascular research programs emerged within the center with independent, yet cohesive, leadership.

The program was the first major interdisciplinary research program in the UI Carver College of Medicine and has involved dozens of basic scientists and clinician-scientists from such areas as internal medicine, pediatrics, molecular physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry, and obstetrics and gynecology as well as the departments of psychology and exercise science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The number of personnel annually involved in the grant has ranged from 30 to 50 employees.

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Match results: 24% stay in Iowa, half to primary care

Nearly a quarter of the College’s 2009 graduates will take first-year specialty training in Iowa. Of the 34 graduates staying in-state, 23 will start their residencies at UI Hospitals and Clinics.

This year 138 UI medical students participated in the National Resident Matching Program. Three students secured residencies through the armed forces, and two opted to defer residency training.
After Iowa, the most popular states for residency assignments are California (13), Missouri (8), and Ohio and Texas (7 each).
Nearly half the class members— 67 graduates—are entering the primary care fields of pediatrics (19), internal medicine (19), family medicine (17), obstetrics and gynecology (9), and the combined programs of medicine-pediatrics (1), medicine-primary care (1), and medicine-dermatology (1). The two top nonprimary care specialties are emergency medicine (11) and anesthesiology (10).

To see matches for the College’s class of 2009, go to www.medicine.uiowa.edu/osac/MatchResults.html.

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Cancer Society grant to biochemistry research

Kris DeMali, PhD, assistant professor of biochemistry, received a four-year, $720,000 American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award to study how a protein that helps hold cells together might be involved in cancer metastasis.

When protein interactions that keep neighboring cells “glued” together are disrupted, metastasizing tumor cells can escape and spread to other parts of the body.

DeMali, a member of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the UI, studies vinculin, a protein involved in cell-to-cell adhesion. A better understanding of how cells stick to one another could uncover new approaches to fight cancers with abnormal cell-to- cell bonds.

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Leslie succeeds Niebyl as ob/gyn head

Kimberly Leslie, MD Portrait

Kimberly Leslie, MD

Kimberly Leslie, MD, is the new head of obstetrics and gynecology in the UI Carver College of Medicine and UI Hospitals and Clinics. She replaces Jennifer Niebyl, MD, who has stepped down after serving as department head since 1988.

Niebyl continues in her appointment as professor of obstetrics and gynecology and as director of the department’s residency program. She also continues her patient care activities.

Leslie comes to the UI from the University of New Mexico, where she was professor of obstetrics and gynecology and chief of obstetrics, as well as director of maternal-fetal medicine. Her patient care specialization includes maternal-fetal medicine, fetal echocardiography, cancer in pregnancy, cholestasis (an estrogen-induced disease) during pregnancy, and operative obstetrics. Her research interests include molecular biology of estrogen and progesterone receptors, anti-estrogens in the female reproductive tract, endometrial cancer, interactions between epidermal growth factor and hormone receptors, and cholestasis.

She is a graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.

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Premature aging disease, effects of smoking linked

A UI study makes a connection between a rare, hereditary premature aging disease—Werner’s syndrome—and cell damage caused by smoking.

The investigation found that a key protein lost in Werner’s syndrome is decreased in smokers with emphysema, and this decrease harms lung cells that normally heal wounds. The findings appeared in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (Feb. 6).

Kimberly Leslie, MD Portrait

Individuals with Werner’s syndrome begin aging rapidly after adolescence and typically succumb to cancer or heart disease in their 40s or 50s. They carry a genetic mutation that affects a protein that normally helps repair DNA damage and heal wounds. Smoking does not appear to cause the same mutation, but it does decrease production of the related protein.

Investigators, led by Toru Nyunoya, MD (’04 F), assistant professor of internal medicine and a pulmonologist with UI Hospitals and Clinics, compared cells taken from lung tissue of healthy nonsmokers and patients with a heavy smoking history and severe emphysema. Cells from the smokers with emphysema had lost their ability to divide or grow, confirming that smoking habits cause cell aging. When the scientists applied cigarette smoke to nonsmokers’ lung cells, they suffered similar effects.

The study results point to possible therapeutic targets for smoking-related diseases. Researchers found lung cells that overexpressed the protein could better resist the damaging effects of cigarette smoke.
Nyunoya’s work was based in the lab of senior author Gary Hunninghake, MD, the Sterba Professor of Internal Medicine and a researcher with the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The study was supported in part by grants from the VA Merit Review, National Institutes of Health, Parker B. Francis Foundation, Carver Trust collaborative pilot grant, Clifford V. Bowers Emphysema Research Fund, and an NIH General Clinical Research Centers Program.

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Orthopaedics tops NIH funding; Callaghan to AAOS board

The Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation garnered $4,723,076 in funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2008, more than any other orthopaedics program in the nation, according to a report from the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.

Blue Ridge (http://www.brimr.org/) is a nonprofit organization that compiles tables of NIH funding for basic and clinical medical school departments. Though the NIH does not provide comparative funding data, NIH data for individual institutions is available at http://report.nih.gov/award/trends/FindOrg.cfm.

John Callaghan, MD (’83 R), professor of orthopaedic surgery and bioengineering, has been elected to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ (AAOS) board of directors. He will serve the academy as first vice president.

Callaghan, who holds the Lawrence and Marilyn Dorr Chair for Hip Reonstruction and Research, specializes in adult reconstruction, specifically hip and knee replacements. Among his numerous honors and accolades are the John Charnley Hip Society Award given by the Hip Society, and The Insall Award on behalf of the Knee Society.

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Brain structure benefits men on spatial tasks

Men consistently outperform women on spatial tasks, including mental rotation, which is the ability to identify how a 3-D object would appear if rotated in space. A UI study found that brain structure is linked to this gender difference.

“This study represents the first time we have related specific structural differences in the parietal lobe to sex-linked performances on a mental rotation test,” said neuroscience graduate student Tim Koscik, who led the study. “It’s important to note that it isn’t that women cannot do the mental rotation tasks, but they appear to do them slower.”

Men and women have different thickness and surface area in the parietal lobe, the brain region that controls skills like mental rotation. Using magnetic resonance imaging, researchers found men to have about 10 percent greater surface area in their parietal lobes. This translated directly to better performance in mental rotation tasks.

When tested on mental rotation tasks, 38 men in the study averaged 66 percent correct compared to 53 percent correct for the 38 women. All test subjects were similar in age, education, IQ, and socioeconomic upbringing.

Koscik said more surface area in the parietal lobe likely means an increase in the number of processing units in the cortex. While it may account for the men’s higher performance rate, scientists still have one question to answer: Is it nature or nurture?

“If we eventually see both a strong performance and parietal lobe structural difference in children, it would support a biological, not just environmental, effect,” said Peg Nopoulos (’85 BS, ’89 MD, ’93 R, ’94 F), a study co-author and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics.

The study was partially funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and was published online by the journal Brain and Cognition (Nov. 5).

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Cancer could kill more Iowans than heart disease

The number of cancer deaths (6,300) and new cancer cases (16,000) in Iowa is projected to remain the same as last year, but cancer could soon exceed heart disease as the leading cause of death in the state, according to a UI expert upon the release of the annual “Cancer in Iowa” report.

“Both cancer and heart disease deaths are declining in the state, but heart disease mortality has been declining faster for a longer period of time. If these rates continue, cancer may be the number one cause of death in Iowa by the end of the decade,” said Charles Lynch (’79 MD, ’79 MS, ’84 PhD, ’86 R), UI professor of epidemiology and medical director of the State Health Registry of Iowa.

Early cancer detection and improved treatments have helped reduce cancer mortality, and lifestyle changes can make a difference. Breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers account for more than half of all cancer deaths in Iowa. However, pancreatic cancer is becoming a more common cause of cancer death, due largely to declining prostate cancer mortality.

The “Cancer in Iowa” report, based on data from the Iowa Department of Public Health and the Iowa Cancer Registry, includes county-by-county statistics. The report is available online at http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/shri/ in the “publications” section.

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U.S.News rates College programs highly

College’s Physician Assistant Program ranks No. 1 in U.S.News & World Report’s guidebook, America’s Best Graduate Schools 2010.

The following College programs were listed. The first number is the ranking against other public universities. The second number compares the College programs to those at both public and private universities.

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McKnight award enables further study of brain pH

UI researchers studying changes in the human brain’s pH (level of acidity)—which have been connected to psychiatric and neurological disorders in animal models—received a three-year, $300,000 McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award.

The funding supports their development of imaging techniques that measure and understand the influence of pH in normal brain function and disease.

Vincent Magnotta, MD and John Wemmie, MD, PhD

Vincent Magnotta, MD and John Wemmie, MD, PhD

The award supports work by John Wemmie (’96 MD/PhD), associate professor of psychiatry and neurosurgery, and Vincent Magnotta, (’94 MS, ’97 PhD), associate professor of radiology, psychiatry, and biomedical engineering and a member of the Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging. They are developing magnetic resonance imaging-based strategies to measure pH in mouse and human brains, and apply those techniques to investigate changes in brain acidity during fear responses. Recent studies, including research from Wemmie’s lab, have used animal models to identify acid-sensing ion channels as key players in anxiety disorders, stroke, seizures, and multiple sclerosis.

The new study focuses on the role of pH in anxiety, fear responses, and memory. Magnotta’s expertise in developing imaging protocols for psychiatric studies will help the team investigate whether findings from Wemmie’s mouse studies on fear behavior are also observed during anxiety-provoking protocols in people. If the study is successful, the research could lead to new ways to diagnose, monitor, and treat psychiatric and neurological illnesses.

“The ability to monitor local pH changes in the brain could also be useful for early detection and mapping of affected regions in stroke and multiple sclerosis—diseases where acidic pH might be one of the earliest and very salient indicators of risk and damage,” said Wemmie, a staff physician and researcher at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center.