President Kaiser to visit MSB Aug. 18

New Health Science Center President Larry Kaiser will be visiting the Medical School Monday, Aug. 18 for a series of meetings and tours.

“This will be his first formal visit of the Medical School since starting the presidential role,” said Dean Giuseppe Colasurdo. “We are pleased to welcome him and introduce him to our Medical School leadership.”

Dean Colasurdo will hold a Town Hall meeting at noon that day in MSB 3.001. Lunch will be available for the first 150, and a Webcast of the event will be available to LBJ.

To submit questions in advance, please e-mail them to Suzanne Paramore, Suzanne.J.Paramore@uth.tmc.edu or, med.dean@uth.tmc.edu.

-D. Brown

Webber Plaza set to open next week

After four months of closure, Webber Plaza is scheduled to re-open Friday, Aug. 22.

The plaza has been closed since April for a berm remediation project, which corrected the forced main piping under the plaza, which serves as the Medical School’s storm water drainage system into Harris Gully. Walter P. Moore, the engineer of record, paid for the remediation of the piping, which they designed to the incorrect size.

In addition, enhancements to the plaza were made during this time, including pouring 8-inch thick concrete for the sidewalks of the plaza, near Ross Sterling and near the Jesse Jones Library loop.

“We discovered the concrete was just 4.5 inches deep, and it needs to be 8 inches for fire trucks to drive on like a road in an emergency,” explained Judson Lloyd, senior project manager.

Additional problems, such as broken pipe joints and cemented sand in the pipes also were corrected when revealed.

One additional enhancement – redoing the deck – will be completed by Aug. 29.

“The decking will be redone to have spacing between each board so that it will drain properly – we are splitting costs of this project with Vaughn Construction,” Lloyd added.

-D. Brown

Nominees for Nikaidoh award now being accepted

The CHRISTUS Foundation for HealthCare is seeking applicants for the Hitoshi Nikaidoh Memorial Award. The award is given twice a year to third- or fourth-year medical students, medical residents, or physicians in their first five years of practice to perform medical mission work either domestically or abroad.

Past recipients have performed medical mission work with FAME, Texas Medical Misión, and the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative.

Applicants can request an application from Brian Gillen at the CHRISTUS Foundation at brian.gillen@christushealth.org or download one at http://www.christusfoundation.org/ama/orig/Nikaidoh-Application.pdf The next deadline is Sept. 5, and funds will be awarded by the end of September.

 

Researchers to study Lyme-like illness in Texas

Drs. Tao Lin and Steven Norris, both with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, have been named grant recipients of the Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program (ARP) by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. They will receive $150,000 over two years to support their research into conflicting reports about the infectious nature and causative agent of Southern-Tick Associated Rash Illness (STARI) in Texas and other southern states.

Tick-transmitted Lyme disease is a bacterial infection common in northeastern, north central, mid-Atlantic seaboard, and Pacific coastal states. In 2006, 19,931 cases of Lyme disease were reported yielding a national average of 8.2 cases per 100,000 persons, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Typical Lyme disease symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue .and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans. If left untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system.

Patients with STARI, a condition found in southeastern and south central U.S., have a bullseye-shaped rash that is virtually identical to the erythema migrans lesion of Lyme disease. However, no one has been able to detect the spiral-shaped bacteria that cause Lyme disease (called Borrelia burgdorferi) in patients, animals, or ticks from Texas or nearby states.

In this project, Lin and Norris will apply innovative approaches to identify organisms associated with STARI in Texas and other states within the south central United States. They will use techniques such as DNA amplification methods, high throughput DNA sequencing, and novel culture media and conditions in an attempt to identify and culture Borrelia from ticks and patients’ tissues. These approaches are aimed at identifying the organism(s) causing STARI in Texas and may permit the design of specific diagnostic tests and effective therapies, thus resolving the current dilemma faced by physicians and patients when confronted with this disease syndrome.

Lin, the principal investigator on the ARP grant, is an assistant professor of laboratory medicine and pathology and has studied Lyme disease and other infectious diseases for more than 20 years. Lin and his co-workers have isolated and characterized 224 Borrelia strains from five tick species and four species of rodents carrying the disease.

Norris is vice chair for research in the department and is holder of the Robert Greer Professorship in the Biomedical Sciences. He is also on the faculty of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, as well as The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston. He is a pioneer in the research of Lyme disease, syphilis, and other infectious diseases.

Lin and Norris will collaborate with Dr. Pete Teel, a professor and associate department head at the Texas A&M University Department of Entomology and expert in environmental factors affecting tick populations in Texas and other regions. Dr. Edwin Masters, a physician who has studied STARI in Missouri for over 15 years, also will provide valuable patient specimens and information.

The Norman Hackerman ARP was created by the Texas Legislature in 1987 to support basic research at public higher education institutions in Texas. In 2007, there were nearly 2,000 applications for funding and only 121 grants awarded.

-R. Cahill

 

TRC training offered

The Training & Resource Center (TRC), an online training and communication tool available to all employees of the university, is now open and training seminars on the new software have been scheduled. The TRC will provide the university community with a resource to manage and deliver development opportunities and help in the tracking and monitoring of compliance and regulatory trainings.

Throughout the month of August 2008 there will be several TRC “brown bag” information sessions available to all employees. These information sessions will take place from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and will provide a brief overview of the TRC. The overview will predominately focus on general users; however, there will be a demonstration for supervisors that will include instructions for running reports on employee’s various training records, compliance courses, and certifications/licensures.

Medical School training opportunities include:

• Wednesday, Aug. 20, HCPC auditorium
• Thursday, Aug. 28, MSB 3.001

To learn more about the TRC, go to https://MyTRC.uth.tmc.edu and login using your UT ID and password to view personal training records, create interactive team rooms, or search the TRC Course Catalog for a list of training classes available to you. To view a short instructional video about the TRC, please visit http://hr.uth.tmc.edu/TRC/ and click on "TRC Video."

 

Clinical Research Curriculum starts Aug. 27

The Center for Clinical Research & Evidence-Based Medicine will outline the core training program - the Clinical Research Curriculum – 4-5 p.m. Aug. 27, at the Medical School in MSB 2.135.

Topics to be covered include:

• Getting started in clinical research
• Insights into the opportunities for young clinical investigators

The first course for the Clinical Research Curriculum also starts that day with the Biostatistics for Clinical Investigators course – 5-6:30 p.m. Aug. 27 – Dec. 3, 2008 in MSB 2.135.

This course begins with an overview of descriptive statistics and provides students with the tools to perform univariate analyses using parametric and non-parametric methods for paired and unpaired designs. Emphasis is placed on choosing appropriate tests, evaluating assumptions for the tests, understanding the limitations of statistical tests, and appropriate interpretation of test results. Survival analysis and multiple regression techniques are introduced to familiarize the students with the availability and limitations of these tests.

For more information, or to register for the course, please contact Claudette Ocampo at 713.500.6708 or e-mail Claudette.Ocampo@uth.tmc.edu. Space is limited and completion of stata tutorial is required by Aug. 22 so please contact us as soon as possible if you are interested in registering for the course.

Visit the Web page for a complete schedule of all upcoming courses in the Clinical Research Curriculum. http://ped1.med.uth.tmc.edu/neo/center/index.html