This is the twice-per-month electronic newsletter for basic, preclinical and translational research news related to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Please forward freely. Direct comments or questions to Joanna Downer, PhD, in the Office of Corporate Communications (410-614-5105, jdowner1@jhmi.edu).
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*** 100+ Women Professors Symposium Nov. 1, Turner Auditorium. ***
IN THIS ISSUE:
+ Phytochemicals May Protect Cartilage, Prevent Pain in Joints
+ New Institute Taps Computer Power to Advance Medical Research
NEWS BRIEFS:
100 Women Professors Symposium Nov. 1
Brain Sciences Symposium Nov. 11
Writing a Research Paper Workshop Nov. 11
Hopkins, SUNY-Buffalo Get Nano-Tech Grant
Landau To Study Spatial Problems of Williams Patients
AWARDS AND HONORS:
Dietz Named AAAS Fellow
Poynton Named Reviewer for U.N. Group
Amey Named to Board of Government Relations Council
IN THE NEWS:
Aravinda Chakravarti in Business Week
John D. Gearhart in the Baltimore Sun
Raimond Winslow in the Washington Post
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Do you have an interesting research finding about one month from publication or presentation? Send manuscripts to Joanna Downer at jdowner1@jhmi.edu or fax to 410-614-8951. Information about awards and honors received by laboratory personnel and others is welcomed also.
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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS:
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9/27/05
Phytochemicals May Protect Cartilage, Prevent Pain in Joints
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that plant-derived compounds known for their ability to protect tissue also appear to block the activity of COX-2, an enzyme that triggers inflammation in joints. The discovery is described in the Sept. 27 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team's findings could lead to new arthritis treatments and better methods of making artificial cartilage, says Konstantinos Konstantopoulos, PhD, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and Agarwal-Masson Faculty Scholar.
The researchers discovered that soaking human chondrocytes in a soup of so-called phase 2 enzymes reduced damage to the cells caused by shear stress.
"The beneficial phase 2 enzymes somehow seemed to prevent the activation of the inflammatory COX-2 enzyme," says graduate student Zachary Healy, lead author of the journal paper. "The phase 2 enzymes inhibited the inflammation and the apoptosis -- the cellular suicide we'd observed."
http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home05/oct05/arthritis.html
PNAS 27 Sept. 2005;102(39):14010-14015.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/39/14010
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10/12/05
New Institute Taps Computer Power to Advance Medical Research
The Institute for Computational Medicine, launched Oct. 12 at The Johns Hopkins University, will address important health problems by using powerful information management and computing technologies to produce a better understanding of the origins of human disease.
Researchers within the institute plan to use this approach to identify disease in its earliest stage and to look for new ways to treat illnesses.
"Our mission is to develop a new field that we call computational medicine," says Raimond Winslow, PhD, director of the institute and a professor of biomedical engineering. "We want to immediately tackle the challenges of how we can use advanced computational methods to analyze and model disease mechanisms. We want to be able to understand, quantitatively, how diseases progress. We want to be able to predict who is at risk of developing a disease and how to treat it more effectively."
"We are far behind in extracting biological information from the '-omic' sciences and in applying them to human medicine," adds the ICM's co-director, Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD, Henry J. Knott Professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and director of the school's McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine. "We think that with the close collaboration of basic and clinical sciences at Johns Hopkins, we have a unique environment to do this here."
The Institute for Computational Medicine is administered by the university's Whiting School of Engineering, but will involve a close collaboration with researchers in the School of Medicine.
http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home05/oct05/compmed.html
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NEWS BRIEFS:
100 Women Professors Symposium Nov. 1 -- At a symposium Nov. 1, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will be celebrating the promotion of more than 100 women to the rank of Full Professor since its founding in 1893. All are invited to the celebration, which will include a day of scientific lectures by internationally acclaimed women scientists including a keynote address by the co-recipient of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Linda Buck, and a panel discussion including Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Cokie Roberts, ABC News. Registration is free and required. To review the program and to register, visit:
http://100womengala.onc.jhmi.edu/
Brain Sciences Symposium Nov. 11 -- "Discovery and Hope: A Celebration of the Brain Sciences," is a continuing medical education symposium being held at Johns Hopkins Nov. 11 to commemorate a century of research in the brain sciences at Hopkins. Speakers confirmed for the day are Nobel Laureates Richard Axel and Eric Kandel, and leading neuroscientists Cori Bargmann, Roger Nicoll, Carla Shatz, William Newsome III, Fred Gage and Huda Zoghbi.
http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/hope.asp
Writing a Research Paper Workshop Nov. 11 -- The Professional Development Office (PDO) is offering their "Writing a Biomedical Research Paper" workshop from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Nov. 11. This workshop is designed for new or junior faculty and postdoctoral fellows. The $750 registration fee for the workshop is payable via tuition remission for faculty; the fee for postdoctoral fellows is $375, payable with a Material & Services Request Form. Starting Dec. 6, the PDO is offering its multi-day grant writing workshop for new or junior faculty. For more information or to register for these workshops, email jhmipdo@jhmi.edu .
http://jhuniverse.hcf.jhu.edu/~pdo/Classes%20for%20Faculty.html
Hopkins, SUNY-Buffalo Get Nano-Tech Grant -- SUNY Buffalo and Johns Hopkins University have been awarded $3.5 million over 5 years for a project to develop multifunctional nanoparticles for imaging and therapy of pancreatic cancer. The grant was funded by National Cancer Institute's National Nanotechnology Initiative. Anirban Maitra, MBBS, assistant professor of pathology in the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at Johns Hopkins, is co-investigator of the grant. A Hopkins team led by Martin Pomper, MD, will conduct state-of-the-art small animal imaging experiments described in the grant proposal.
Landau To Study Spatial Problems of Williams Patients -- Barbara Landau, PhD, a professor of cognitive science, will be principal investigator of a five-year, $1.7 million grant recently awarded by the National Institutes of Health to support research into the cognitive problems experienced by people with a rare genetic disorder known as Williams syndrome. The grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke will fund her team's investigation of the origins of spatial impairments suffered by people with Williams. People with the syndrome have difficulty with tasks such as assembling simple puzzles, copying basic patterns and navigating their bodies through the physical world.
http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home05/sep05/landau.html
AWARDS AND HONORS:
Dietz Named AAAS Fellow -- Harry C. Dietz III, MD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor in the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the organization announced on Oct. 27. Dietz was recognized by AAAS for his "identification of the genetic basis of Marfan syndrome and the influence of nonsense mutations on gene expression." Dietz is also director of the William S. Smilow Center for Marfan Syndrome Research at Johns Hopkins. George Rose, PhD, a professor of biology at The Johns Hopkins University, and Peter Agre, MD, were also named fellows of AAAS this year.
Poynton Named Reviewer for U.N. Group -- Sarah Poynton, PhD, associate professor of comparative medicine and of Art as Applied to Medicine, has been appointed a Regional Aquaculture Reviewer by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. She will prepare a review on the current and future status of aquaculture in North Africa and the Near East and will co-chair expert workshops in Egypt and Oman in November.
Amey Named to Board of Government Relations Council -- Michael Amey, associate dean in the Office of Research Administration, has been selected to the board of the Council on Governmental Relations, an association of research universities. He also serves on the council's Costing Policies Committee and the Workgroup on Human Research Protections.
http://www.cogr.edu
IN THE NEWS:
Aravinda Chakravarti on the results of the HapMap Project in Business Week. "A New Road Map for Genetics," by Catherine Arnst, Business Week, Oct. 26, 2005.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20051026_861912.htm
http://www.jhu.edu/clips/2005_10/27/news.html
(Must be at a Hopkins computer to access this page.)
John D. Gearhart on the climate for stem cell research in the Baltimore Sun. "Ehrlich Backing Stem Cell Work," by Tricia Bishop and David Nitkin, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 19, 2005.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.stemcell19oct19,1,3111455.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
http://www.jhu.edu/clips/2005_10/19/ehrlich.html
(Must be at a Hopkins computer to access this page.)
Raimond Winslow on the new Institute for Computational Medicine in the Washington Post. "Hopkins forms disease analysis institute," the Washington Post, Oct. 17, 2005.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/16/AR2005101601171_3.html
http://www.jhu.edu/clips/2005_10/17/metro.html
(Must be at a Hopkins computer to access this page.)
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Find "Change" and "Basics" online from a Hopkins computer:
http://www.insidehopkinsmedicine.org/change
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For more news from Hopkins, see:
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Upcoming lectures and seminars:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/faculty_staff/scicalendar.html
Find other news stories about Hopkins at:
http://www.insidehopkinsmedicine.org and click on "News Clips"
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--JHMI--
