University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Professor Mark Smeltzer, Ph.D., has been awarded $11 million in federal funding for Phase II of a program that supports microbiology and immunology research.

Phase I of the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant was awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2012 at $10 million. Phase II began May 1 and is $11 million.

The first COBRE grant allowed Smeltzer to establish the UAMS Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses. Its focus is pathogens – bacteria, viruses and microorganisms – and the disease responses they cause in humans.

COBRE grants include funding for individual projects by junior research faculty — those who have just received their first academic appointments. The first grant supported projects on viruses and malaria. The $11 million award continues funding of the center, with individual projects on cancer, Lyme disease, pneumonic plague and chlamydial infection.

Smeltzer co-directs the center along with Richard P. Morrison, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the UAMS College of Medicine.

“Everything that we do, at the end of the day, it’s really about human health,” Smeltzer said. “We’re trying to understand how microorganisms and pathogens cause disease in humans, and if you understand that, you’re that much closer to coming up with useful treatments.”

Additionally, technology purchased through the grant benefits researchers across the state. Researchers from other academic institutions and those from government agencies alike have used technology at UAMS purchased with COBRE funds.

“Scientific technology is always advancing, and the funding for us to be able to keep up with these advances is key,” Smeltzer said.

Smeltzer, who studies staphylococcus aureus, is one of the most-well-funded faculty in the UAMS College of Medicine. He has more than $14 million in current grant funding and has received more than $30 million in external grant funding. His current NIH funding ranks him 46th out of 993 microbiology faculty nationwide.

“With this program, over time, you develop this critical mass of people who can work synergistically with each other,” Smeltzer said. “You build up the technology that is essential to propel research forward. A lot has to slide into place, but the end result benefits more than just these individual investigators – it benefits UAMS as an institution, the state of Arkansas and the future of medicine.”

Three junior faculty in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology completed Phase I – assistant professors Karl Boehme, Ph.D., and Jason Stumhofer, Ph.D.; and associate professor Craig Forrest, Ph.D. Boehme and Forrest study viruses, and Stumhofer’s work is about malaria.

The junior faculty selected to participate in Phase II are Ruud Dings, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology; and Jon Blevins, Ph.D., associate professor, Roger Pechous, Ph.D., and Lin-Xi Li, Ph.D., assistant professors – all in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Their research focuses on cancer, Lyme disease, pneumonic plague and chlamydial infection.

Rhonda L. Anthony is administrative coordinator of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses.

“I am proud of this grant, but I don’t kid myself – it’s about teamwork,” Smeltzer said. “If every single person involved in this hadn’t done their part to make it successful, we would not have been approved for Phase II of funding.”

The COBRE grant also includes funding for training and mentoring at the institution level and from national-level COBRE advisers.

“It certainly tipped the scales for me when I was considering job offers,” Boehme said. “In addition to not having to immediately worry about funding and equipment and whether I could afford staff or take on students, it made the department feel like there was a real strategic plan in place, a forward momentum, and a sense that success was a group effort rather than something that was on my shoulders alone.”

Boehme and Stumhofer were recruited from well-regarded postdoctoral programs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, respectively. Both have now successfully written their own NIH grants to sustain the next chapter of their research – a key marker of success under COBRE parameters.

Stumhofer appreciated the collaborative meetings and mentoring that occurred as often as twice a month as part of the program.

“It keeps you from getting isolated, stuck alone in your own lab with a problem that is keeping you from moving forward. Everyone helps you troubleshoot,” Stumhofer said.

Smeltzer, Boehme and Stumhofer agreed that the grant empowers researchers to explore ideas they may not have otherwise considered if they were immediately left on their own to navigate funding and logistics. They said that over the long haul, such programs create better researchers and higher-quality research.

COBRE grants are only available for Institutional Development Award (IDeA) states where NIH funding has been historically low. They include 23 states and Puerto Rico. UAMS is host to three centers funded by COBRE grants. The Center for Translational Neuroscience, led by Edgar Garcia-Rill, Ph.D., has received $22.5 million in funding and is in its third and final phase. The Center for Studies of Host Response to Cancer Therapy, led by Martin Hauer-Jensen, M.D., Ph.D., has received $10.5 million and is in Phase I.

When Jerad Gardner, M.D., stepped up to the podium to address the UAMS College of Medicine’s Class of 2017 at the college’s Honors Convocation on May 19, the first thing he did was take a “selfie” with the class.

The move wasn’t too surprising for Gardner, who has drawn national acclaim for championing the use of social media, mobile devices and other technologies in medical education and the field of pathology.

The assistant professor in the college’s Department of Pathology, clinical co-director of the musculoskeletal/skin curriculum block for medical students and director of the fellowship for residency graduates training in the subspecialty of dermatopathology has earned raves for his ability to teach and connect through social media.

The class chose Gardner to deliver the address from the faculty at the annual ceremony held the evening before the UAMS Commencement Ceremony. Honors Convocation features numerous awards for students and faculty members. Students don the ceremonial doctoral hoods they will wear at commencement and recite the Hippocratic Oath of the medical profession.

Gardner encouraged the graduating seniors to start their career thinking about the end.

“Start thinking now about what is going to make it meaningful,” he said. “How will you know that it’s worthwhile, that it mattered, that you had the impact that you wanted to have?”

Gardner advised graduates to find innovative ways to help patients and their families. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‘cure’ and ‘healing’ are always the same thing,” he said. “Cure whenever you can, but heal always.”

He urged the class to not lose sight of the loved ones in their lives and how they are impacted by the demands of a career in medicine, and to always show them gratitude.

Gardner also encouraged graduates to become mentors to future aspiring physicians. “You can never pay back your mentors,” he said, borrowing an old adage. “You can only pay them forward.”

Four faculty members received Golden Apple Awards, marking their selection as the most outstanding teacher of the year by a vote of each of the four classes in the College of Medicine. Charles Matthew Quick, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Pathology, received the Golden Apple from the senior class. Golden Apples also went to: Toby Vancil, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine (junior class); Sung Rhee, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology (sophomore class); and Alan Diekman, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (freshman class).

The three-year award brings together researchers from the UAMS Office of Community Health and Research and the UAMS Center for Pacific Islander Health with the Marshallese community to study a culturally adapted diabetes prevention program designed to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes by teaching people who have pre-diabetes how to make modest lifestyle changes that can prevent diabetes.

The Marshallese have some of the highest documented rates of type 2 diabetes of any population group in the world. Health screenings by UAMS found that 41 percent have diabetes, compared to 9.3 percent of the U.S. population. Northwest Arkansas has more than 11,000 Marshallese in the region — the largest community of Marshallese in the continental U.S.

“The goal of this research is to reduce disparities related to type 2 diabetes within the Marshallese community,” said Pearl McElfish, Ph.D., associate vice chancellor for the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus, co-director of the Center for Pacific Islander Health and the principal investigator on this project.

“This particular study was conceived by working with members of the community — largely through churches — to identify the health questions that the Marshallese in Arkansas most want answered,” said McElfish, also an assistant professor in the College of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine.

The study will be implemented within Marshallese churches, comparing the effectiveness of the standard Diabetes Prevention Program Lifestyle Intervention with a culturally adapted Pacific Diabetes Prevention Program Lifestyle Intervention.

“When UAMS first met with members of the Marshallese community, we talked about how diabetes was such a problem for our community, and finding a better way to treat and to prevent diabetes is very important to us,” said Wanna Bing, senior project manager for UAMS.

Bing, who is originally from the Marshall Islands, serves as a liaison between UAMS and local Marshallese churches. “The community has been asking for help with a diabetes prevention program for a long time, and this project is going to make a big difference in peoples’ lives.”

The Walmart Foundation is also supporting this research. In December 2016, it awarded a $125,000 grant to the program.

Since 2014, more than $10 million has been awarded to the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus to reduce health disparities in both Marshallese and Hispanic residents of Benton and Washington counties.

“This study continues the valuable research on diabetes that UAMS is conducting with the Marshallese community,” said Peter Kohler, M.D., former UAMS vice chancellor and a co-investigator on this project who has received PCORI funding for previous research on diabetes and Pacific Islanders.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by Congress to fund comparative clinical effectiveness research.

A University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) educator caught the attention recently of BuzzFeed, a global media company, for using Snapchat to engage his medical students.

“He’s also a good teacher who REALLY tries to connect with his young students by speaking their language,” BuzzFeed noted in a Feb. 25 post that featured several colorful pathology slides Gardner had shared.

Gardner, also a bone and soft tissue sarcoma pathologist and director of the dermatopathology fellowship program, routinely uses social media – including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube – to supplement his courses, work with patients, conduct research and connect with students and professionals interested in medicine from all over the world.

He runs social media for several pathology professional organizations and leads trainings for his peers on how social media can improve their impact as educators.

Reaction to the BuzzFeed article “filled my Facebook timeline for days,” Gardner said, adding that he welcomes the attention it brings to his field, UAMS and the use of social media in education.

“Everyone knows about BuzzFeed,” Gardner said. “Certainly, I’ve never had that kind of exposure or interest in the past. Pathology is kind of an obscure field, and a lot of people don’t even know what we do.”

Pathologists diagnose cancer and other diseases, typically by examining tissue samples from patients microscopically. Many of Gardner’s social media posts are pictures of interesting cases at the microscopic level, especially in his specialty area of rare bone, soft tissue and skin cancers. He shows students how to diagnose different conditions with photos, links and videos.

“I feel like anything you’re trying to do as an educator, you can do it better and more efficiently and more broadly with social media than you could do without it,” Gardner said. “It doesn’t replace any of your normal activities. You still treat patients; you still teach lectures; you still do research and write papers – all of that – but social media can take the things you already do and magnify the impact tenfold.”

The BuzzFeed article highlights Gardner’s most recent efforts to expand his use of social media in education to include Snapchat, which is a photo- and video-based mobile app popular with younger audiences. The article, “This Teacher’s Snapchat Will Make Anyone Who Feels Old Say, ‘This Is So Me,’” begins with one of Gardner’s first snaps, in which he makes a joke about feeling old as he adjusts to the new platform, and then shows some of his other snaps of skin biopsies and normal tissues at the cellular level.

Gardner encourages educators to embrace the feeling of discomfort – including “feeling old” – that comes from adjusting to new social media, urging them to “follow where the people are.”

“It’s a bridge to the younger generation who are going to take over our field one day, and we should have an influence on them and embrace the chance to mentor them,” Gardner said.

He started two discussion groups – one on skin pathology, or dermatopathology, and another on bone and soft tissue cancers (sarcomas). They each now have 25,000 and 18,000 members, respectively, including doctors and students from all over the world.

He volunteers to answer questions in patient support groups, usually helping with things like understanding the language on a pathology report or navigating the medical system from diagnosis to treatment. Gardner said that interacting with patients online has been life changing and he now recommends all medical students do the same.

“Just to sit and listen and learn from patients, I think it creates a tremendous amount of empathy and understanding of their perspective,” Gardner said. “It has made me a better doctor for sure, and it has made me even more committed to educating them and communicating with them in language everyone can understand.”

Gardner has used social media to conduct research, surveying academics about how they use social media in education and gathering data from patient groups about treatment outcomes. His YouTube channel features instructional videos filmed with pathology slides and recordings of his lectures.

Gardner’s social media use has also helped him network and collaborate with other scientists. He has given about 35 invited talks on social media use for professionals in the past three years.

“I think social media is here to stay, so it would be better for us to understand how it’s being used and harness that in a way that would be useful educationally,” Gardner said.

“And if we find out people are turning to social media as a source, then we better make sure that we’re providing reliable content on that source. That’s kind of our wider purpose as educators. I think if we stick our heads in the sand, social media is going to continue without us, but we’ll be left with no say in it, and we will have missed an opportunity to influence the next generation.”

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UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a northwest Arkansas regional campus; a statewide network of regional centers; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute, the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and the Translational Research Institute. It is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 3,021 students, 789 medical residents and five dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including about 1,000 physicians and other professionals who provide care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS regional centers throughout the state. Visit www.uams.edu or www.uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

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