Here are this week’s Accolades, a roundup of some of the honors and accomplishments of College of Medicine and UAMS faculty, staff, residents, fellows and students I’ve heard about recently.
Frontiers in Nucleic Acid Research
Dr. Kevin Raney, Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has been invited to share his expertise in the chemistry of nucleic acid enzymes and nucleic acid metabolism in a plenary lecture at the Southeast American Chemical Society Meeting in Atlanta in October. Dr. Raney’s talk, part of a symposium on “Frontiers in Nucleic Acids Research,” will discuss helicase-catalyzed unwinding of double-stranded DNA and G-quadruplex DNA unfolding. Congratulations also to Dr. Raney for recently attaining a milestone in his scholarly work, the publication of 100 scientific papers that are indexed by PubMed at the National Library of Medicine.
On the Forefront of Liquid Biopsy Science
Physician-scientist Dr. Donald Johann, Professor of Biomedical Informatics, recently had his fourth Nature publication, “Targeted DNA-seq and RNA-seq of Reference Samples with Short-read and Long-read Sequencing,” published in Nature Scientific Data. Additionally, his 11th article concerning liquid biopsy science, “Towards Preanalytical Best Practices for Liquid Biopsy Studies: A BLOODPAC Landscape Analysis,” was published in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. Dr. Johann is on the forefront of liquid biopsy science and advanced molecular diagnostics, which are transforming clinical medicine and drug development by allowing routine blood draws to be used for Next Generation Sequencing assays.
New Book Focuses on Childhood Glaucoma
Congratulations to PGY4 Ophthalmology resident Dr. Abdel Elhusseiny on the publication of his new book, “Childhood Glaucoma: Current Trends and Future Prospects.” Dr. Elhusseiny is Co-Editor as well as a contributing author on the book. Published by Springer, the book is a comprehensive overview of the clinical and surgical aspects of childhood glaucoma – a challenging condition that relatively few specialists take on. Dr. Abdel’s contributions will help to save vision in many children now and in the future.
Pediatric Pulmonary Research Presentations
Research by Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine team members, medical students in the Honors in Research program, and others from UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Northwest (ACNW) will be featured at upcoming national conferences. Senior author Dr. Astryd Menendez, Professor of Pediatrics and ACNW Pulmonary Medicine Director, will present a poster discussing a longitudinal assessment of body composition of pediatric patients with cystic fibrosis at ACNW at the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference in Boston. At the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting in Orlando, M3 student Larry Hill will present a poster describing barriers to respiratory virus vaccination in high-risk pediatric populations, based on a multi-year survey at Arkansas Children’s. Dr. Menendez is senior author on the work. Additional coauthors are M3 Hannah Hale and M2 Whitney Skaggs, along with Dr. Hanna Jensen, Assistant Professor of Surgery and Radiology and M2 Cardiovascular Module Course Director.
Odyssey Medal for Research
I was delighted to hear that Dr. Alan Tackett, Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Executive Associate Dean for Basic Research, is receiving a prestigious honor from his undergraduate alma mater, Hendrix College in Conway. Dr. Tackett will receive the Hendrix Odyssey Medal for Research from the college, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry with distinction in 1998. Dr. Tackett, who also serves as Deputy Director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, will be honored at a Sept. 26 ceremony. He is being honored for his research leadership and internationally recognized work to uncover new therapeutic strategies to treat metastatic melanoma and develop the next generation of molecular profiling technologies to identify cancer biomarkers. Last year’s winner of the medal hails from the same UAMS department – Professor and Chair Dr. Kevin Raney.
AAFP Fellow
Dr. Lauren Gibson-Oliver, Assistant Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine and Program Director of the UAMS Little Rock Family Medicine Residency, has been named a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). The designation recognizes AAFP members who have distinguished themselves among their colleagues, in their communities, and through their work to advance the practice of family medicine. Dr. Gibson-Oliver will be recognized during a Sept. 27 induction ceremony at the AAFP’s 2024 FMX Conference in Phoenix.
Leadership through Scholarship
Dr. Wayne Bryant Jr., Assistant Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine and Associate Director of the UAMS Little Rock Family Medicine Residency, has been accepted into the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Leadership through Scholarship Fellowship Program. The yearlong fellowship offers training and mentorship for early-career underrepresented in medicine faculty with a focus on developing scholarly writing skills for academic advancement and leadership.
Predoctoral Fellowship Award
Congratulations to graduate student Katie Deck on receiving a highly competitive, two-year NIH Predoctoral Fellowship grant – her second prestigious national fellowship award this year. Katie, who works in the lab of Dr. Shengyu Mu, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, is using the NIH F31 grant to study the critical mechanisms by which kidney-resistant CD8T cells contribute to hypertension. This phenomenon of “salt memory” drives the progression and recurrence of hypertension. With earlier funding from the American Heart Association, her grant funding now totals nearly $78,000. In addition to Dr. Mu, her mentor and sponsor, collaborators include Dr. Yunmeng Liu and Dr. Yuet-Kin (Ricky) Leung (Pharmacology and Toxicology) and Dr. Lu Huang and Dr. Lin-Xi Li (Microbiology and Immunology).
ENT Surgical Training Video
Medical students, residents and Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery faculty collaborated on a surgical video distributed internationally by CSurgeries, a leading peer-reviewed online platform. Collaborators included M4 students Ashton Rogers and Noah Slater, PGY4 resident Dr. Courtney Hunter, former fellow Dr. Soroush Farsi, Professor and Chair Dr. John Dornhoffer and Assistant Professor Dr. Robert Saadi. The video offers a detailed look the precise techniques involved in cartilage tympanoplasty, a procedure to repair a perforated eardrum. It is a follow-up to a previous video by UAMS team members on graft harvest and formation.