Strobel named commencement speaker

Dr. Henry Strobel, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and associate dean for faculty affairs, will deliver the commencement address for the Class of 2009 May 28.

Strobel joined the faculty of the Medical School in 1972 shortly after the school opened. For 36 years, he has excelled as a teacher of biochemistry and molecular biology and has sponsored international electives through the Medical School at universities around the world. As an assisting priest at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, Strobel’s involvement with and love for the church guides who he is as both an educator and a person.

“We are pleased to have Dr. Strobel address our graduating students this year. He is an eloquent speaker with great knowledge of the Medical School and its people – it will be a very special occasion,” Dean Giuseppe Colasurdo said.

A favorite among students, Strobel is known for the enthusiasm and talent he brings to his educational activities, routinely receiving high marks in student evaluations. In recognition of Strobel’s abilities and dedication as an educator, he was named the 2008 recipient of the TIAA-CREF Distinguished Educator Award and is the frequent recipient of the Dean’s Teaching Excellence Awards. He was honored with the John P. McGovern Outstanding Teacher Award from The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston in 2002 and with the 2006 President’s Scholar Award for Excellence in Teaching from the UT Health Science Center at Houston.

Strobel received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The ceremonies will be held at 7 p.m. at the George R. Brown Convention Center. For details, contact the Office of Student Affairs, 713.500.5160.

- D. Brown

TB breakthrough could lead to stronger vaccine

A breakthrough strategy to improve the effectiveness of the only tuberculosis vaccine approved for humans provided superior protection against the deadly disease in a pre-clinical test, report Medical School scientists in Nature Medicine's Advance Online Publication March 1. Their findings resulted from more than 6 years of research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) provides only partial protection against tuberculosis (TB) in children and is ineffective in adults. As a result, tuberculosis still kills almost 2 million people a year worldwide. “An improved vaccine is widely seen as the best potential method of controlling the disease and is an urgent public health priority,” said Dr. Chinnaswamy Jagannath, lead author and associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine.

BCG is a live but weakened form of a bacterium, M. bovis, which causes tuberculosis in cattle. It is sufficiently related to the human pathogen to stimulate production of specialized immune cells that fight off TB infection when it is injected into a person as a vaccine.

Many attempts have been made to improve the vaccine by incorporating antigens (molecular components of the bacteria) to induce a stronger immune response. However, TB and BCG have evasive mechanisms that prevent the development of stronger immune responses. Investigators at the Medical School investigated mechanisms by which BCG evades immune stimulating mechanisms and devised two means to neutralize them. The scientists used genetically modified organisms and a drug used for organ transplantation to block BCG’s evasive mechanisms, causing it to induce stronger immune responses. Research collaborator on the genetically-modified organisms project was Dr. Subramanian Dhandayuthapani, assistant professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio’s Medical Research Division in Edinburg, Texas.

This dual approach to the BCG vaccine was associated with a tenfold increase in the number of TB organisms killed and a threefold increase in the duration of protection in tests with an NIH-approved mouse model, Jagannath said.

“The breakthrough is that Dr. Jagannath has countered the ability of TB organisms to subvert immunization,” said Dr. Robert Hunter, one of the study’s two senior authors and chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

Tuberculosis hides in cells so the antigens are not recognized by the immune system. The BCG vaccine also does the same thing, as previously reported in The Journal of Immunology in 2006 by Jagannath and Christopher Singh, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

“Dr. Jagannath hypothesized that a drug, rapamycin, which modulates the movement of particles in cells, would cause BCG antigens to enter pathways leading to improved immunization,” Hunter said. “In addition, Dr. Jagannath had previously demonstrated that genetic deletion of the fpbA gene has similar effects.”

Rapamycin is a drug used to fight cancer and inflammation. In 1992, the Organ Transplantation Center at the Medical School was first to conduct rapamycin clinical trials. The UT group led by Dr. Barry Kahan, now professor emeritus, showed that rapamycin significantly reduces the frequency of acute kidney transplant rejection.

“Our findings break new ground in vaccine research in general and make improvements for antituberculosis vaccines in particular, because they provide a simple and powerful strategy to enhance vaccine efficiency,” the researchers wrote in the paper. They now plan to add additional antigens to the BCG vaccine to further improve its effectiveness before clinical trials.

Jagannath’s collaborators include research technician Devin Lindsey of the UT Medical School, Dhandayuthapani and two researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine: Dr. Yi Xu, instructor, and Dr. Tony Eissa, professor of pulmonary medicine.

The study is titled “Autophagy enhances the efficacy of BCG vaccine by increasing peptide presentation in mouse dendritic cells.” This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to Jagannath and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to Eissa.

-R. Cahill

Student wins pediatric neuroscience award

Third-year medical student Ricky Haywood-Watson II recently was honored as the recipient of the Noah Tisdale Award, a one-time award for medical students who are committed to pursuing a career in pediatric neurology or pediatric neurosurgery and who demonstrate compassionate patient care. The award was created to honor the memory of its namesake, Noah Tisdale, a three-year-old boy who died of neurological complications of croup.

Haywood-Watson won this award after submitting an application, which included a required essay about a recent memorable patient experience. Haywood-Watson wrote about working with a pediatric patient who had a brain tumor at only 18 months of age. The award was presented by Dr. James Grotta, chair of the Department of Neurology. Haywood-Watson was congratulated by the Tisdale family at the department’s annual holiday party this past December.

“Haywood-Watson is an outstanding young man who is ‘turned on’ by the prospects of a career using the latest neurosurgical methods to take care of children with brain disorders. Ricky was exactly the sort of person the Tisdales had in mind to support when they set up this award to honor their beautiful baby boy,” Grotta said.

Haywood-Watson, already a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology, spent his first two years in Medical School as a post-doc fellow in the lab of research scientist and assistant professor Dr. Raymond Grill. In Grill’s lab, he studied inflammatory mediators of acute and chronic spinal cord injury. He is currently active in studying neurosurgical techniques with Dr. James Baumgartner and the potential for stem cell based therapies in spinal cord injury with Baumgartner and Dr. Charles Cox Jr.

“Both of these men have influenced my pursuit of a career in neurosurgery greatly,” Haywood- Watson said of Grill and Baumgartner. “My lofty goal is to combine Dr. Baumgartner and Dr. Grill into one person as a pediatric neurosurgeon who does bench- to-bedside research.”

Grill said Haywood-Watson epitomizes what is best in the next generation of physicians. “He is someone who is passionate about providing the best possible care for the population. I can’t think of anyone more deserving of this award,” he said.

This chorus of accolades from distinguished UT physicians, as well as the endorsement of the Tisdale family, is testament to the talent and the passion Haywood-Watson brings to the fields of pediatric neurology and pediatric neurosurgery. Perhaps both of these elements are best explained in Haywood-Watson’s own words, “I have always had a natural connection with children (probably because I am a big kid at heart).”

-D. Heeth

Faculty development leave proposals
due April 1

Proposals for Faculty Development Leave are due April 1 in the Office of Faculty Affairs, MSB G.300. Proposals can be submitted twice a year – Nov. 1 and April 1.

The guidelines can be found at: http://med.uth.tmc.edu/administration/faculty_aff/guidelines-faculty-leave.html. For questions, call Faye Viola, 713.500.5101.

 

Nominations sought for TMC Women’s Health Network Stream award

The Texas Medical Center Women’s Health Network is seeking nominations for the Kathryn S. Stream Award for Excellence in Women’s Health, which will go to a Houston-area researcher, educator, practitioner, or community leader who demonstrates outstanding achievement in the area of women’s health.

Deadline for nominations is April 3, and the group plans to name the recipient at the May 2009 TMC Women’s Health Network program celebrating National Women’s Health Week. The awardee will receive a plaque commemorating the honor. His/her name will be affixed to a plaque on permanent display in the HAM-TMC Library. A $1,000 donation will be made in the awardee’s name to the non-profit organization of his/her choice.

The award honors Dr. Katherine Stream, a founding mother of the organization, who served as vice provost for health affairs from 1998 to 2001 at Texas Woman’s University-Houston, and as senior vice president of the Texas Medical Center Corporation from 2001-2008. In those roles, she facilitated councils and committees to bring people together on all levels – student advisors, chief operating officers, nurse executives, and chief medical officers.

The person selected to receive the 2009 Stream Award will exemplify the core principles of the TMC Women’s Health Network with a record of achievement in advancing women’s health through collaborations in education, research, and/or advocacy. Recognized contributions to these principles may be accrued through professional duties or volunteer service. Selection criteria include:

• Impact on women’s health, through acquisition, and integration of new knowledge, dissemination of information, direct health services, or organizational leadership;
• Accomplishments to date;
• Record of collaborations;
• Demonstration of exemplary leadership

Those who wish to nominate a colleague must complete the nomination form (http://www.whn.library.tmc.edu) and include a letter detailing the person’s achievement in advancing women’s health to the TMC Women’s Health Network.

Those who wish to contribute to the fund that supports the award, or those who need more information about the nomination process may contact either co-chair of the nominations committee: Dr. Kathryn E. Peek, chair of the awards committee, at 713.792.7765 (kpeek@mdanderson.org) or Pat Mitchell, 713.791.6407 (pmitchell@texasmedicalcenter.org).

 

Judges needed for engineering fair

Approximately 800 judges are needed for the 50th Annual Science Engineering Fair of Houston. The Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology is recruiting as many judges from the UT Health Science Center at Houston as possible.

Professionals with expertise in animal science, behavioral and social sciences, environmental science, biochemistry and microbiology, chemistry, medicine, and health are needed.

Judges must be available 8:30 a.m. - noon and 1:30 - 5 p.m., Friday, March 13, at the Brown Convention Center (Hall E) in downtown Houston. If you would like to assist some of the brightest and most creative young people from 16 area counties, please contact Ted.D.Pate@uth.tmc.edu, 713.500.4519. For information on the science fair, visit www.sefhouston.org.

Fighting for a cure

 

 

Location & Contact

6431 Fannin Street,
Houston, Texas 77030

PO Box 20708,
Houston, Texas 77225

713.500.4472