This was the 22nd annual presentation of the DOM Investigator Award, which is presented to members of the Department of Medicine, below the rank of professor, who perform on an outstanding level in the areas of clinical and/or basic biomedical research. The award is generously supported by the Michael Wolk Foundation.
Nicole Sirotin, M.D. (co-PI, WCMC) and Sera Young, Ph.D. (PI, Cornell University, College of Human Ecology, Division of Nutritional Sciences) were granted an intercampus collaborative research grant. The project characterizes food insecurity in HIV-infected and -uninfected lactating women. Specifically, it is evaluating the relationship between food insecurity and maternal B12 and foliate levels, maternal depression and infant feeding practices.
Initiated in 2002, the Fellows Research Award is presented annually to fellows within the Department of Medicine who have presented outstanding research. This year's winners were announced at the June 11 Medicine Grand Rounds (11th Annual).
Each year, senior medical residents submit research abstracts, and four finalists are chosen to present their work during medical grand rounds.
An internationally-recognized leader in the field of hepatitis C, Dr. Ira M. Jacobson (Chief, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology) has been at the forefront of hepatitis C for more than 20 years. His research has included numerous advances regarding therapies, often involving interferon.
For excellence in cancer research, Dr. Lewis Cantley, the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor in Oncology Research and Professor of Cancer Biology in Medicine, received an Inaugural $3 Million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. The award was given to Dr. Cantley for his landmark discovery of the signaling pathway phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K).
The seed grants are an outgrowth of the Department of Medicine's Strategic Plan, intended to catalyze and encourage the pilot-testing of bold, creative and "high impact but high risk" research projects that involve new directions and new interdisciplinary collaboration by the Principal Investigator. The goal is to support the growth of high-impact research in the Department of Medicine that will result in major new support from the NIH.
WCMC investigators, collaborating with national and international scientists, have achieved a milestone in the field of kidney transplantation. For the first time, a human kidney allograft (and/or involving a kidney from a human) has been sequenced for the expression pattern of small RNAs. This original research by Dr. Manikkam Suthanthiran and colleagues has resulted in a landmark paper in Transplantation.
Dr. Ari Melnick led a team of national and international scientists in a first of its kind study in which they decoded the key "software" instructions that drive three of the most virulent forms of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Specifically, they uncovered that ALL's "software" is encoded with epigenetic marks, chemical modifications of DNA and surrounding proteins, allowing the research team to identify new potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
Dr. Kyu Y. Rhee, Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, and a team of physician-scientists applied the technology of mass spectrometry to study the process by which existing antibiotics attack tuberculosis once inside bacterial cells.
