Gregory Sharp, M.D., Professor and Chief of Pediatric Neurology in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH).

Dr. Sharp has held numerous clinical, academic and hospital leadership posts since first joining the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Neurology in 1990. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996 and to Professor in 2006. He has served as Chief of Pediatric Neurology since 2007 and also led the section in 1998-2003.

Key leadership roles have included Chief of the Medical Staff at ACH since July 2017 and Vice-Chief of Medical Staff for two years prior to that. He has served since 2017 on the ACH Board of Directors and numerous ACH leadership committees including the Medical Staff Executive Committee, Child Health Practice Council and ACH Board Quality and Safety Committee.

Dr. Sharp has served as Medical Director of the Neuroscience Center and Neuroscience Inpatient Unit at ACH since 1998. He directed the Neurophysiology Lab in 1996-2000 and 2002-2017. Dr. Sharp was Co-Director of the Arkansas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program in 1990-1995. He has held the John H. Bornhofen Endowed Chair in Child Neurology at ACH since 2008.

Dr. Sharp received his medical degree from the UAMS College of Medicine in 1984. He completed his residency in pediatrics at UAMS and ACH and served as Chief Resident in 1986-1987 before continuing his training with a pediatric neurology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1987-1990.

By Ben Boulden

Dec. 13, 2018 | UAMS researcher Clint Kilts, Ph.D., was named an Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) Fellow at a news conference today at the State Capitol.

Kilts was presented with a certificate by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, ARA CEO Jerry Adams and UAMS Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA. ARA Fellows from university campuses receive a $75,000 grant.

“Dr. Kilts is applying technology to real world problems like drug abuse and prevention, responses to sexual trauma, and dealing with health issues like schizophrenia,” Patterson said. “His research has been groundbreaking providing opportunities to take technology into the community and have a direct impact on people here in Arkansas and across the United States. Clint, congratulations on your accomplishments, and we are so proud of you for being the next ARA Fellow at UAMS.”

Kilts is the founding director of the Brain Imaging Research Center at the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute, an associate director of the institute and a professor in the UAMS Department of Psychiatry in the UAMS College of Medicine. He holds the Wilbur D. Mills Endowed Chair in Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention.

The ARA Fellows program, launched in 2014, recognizes research leaders who are currently working in Arkansas at one of the state’s five research campuses. The program was created to advance the mission of ARA by supporting world-class researchers whose work strengthens the competitiveness of the state through research.

ARA Fellows focus on innovations in biomedical engineering, plant biochemistry, nanoscience, microbiology, nutritional improvements, electronics research and more, often resulting in a direct impact on the state’s economy.

Kilts said he will likely use the grant as seed money for a project to study brain maturation responses in pre-school students served by Head Start as well as a second project.

“I started a community science initiative about a year and a half ago with the idea of having the community direct science,” Kilt said. “If they responded to a broad poll, what would they want us to study? I may use the grant for a community-responsive, community-directed initiative.”

In 2009, Kilts joined the faculty at UAMS. He has a long record of National Institutes of Health-funded research, most recently in functional, molecular and connectivity imaging of the living brain to explore the neural network processing basis of human behavior.

With a focus on drug abuse and addiction, Kilts’ clinical research focuses on the use of neuroimaging technology to define the brain basis of psychiatric disorders and their treatment. His goal as director of the center is to extend magnetic resonance imaging-based technology and human neuroscience to areas of clinical problem-solving in psychiatry and related disciplines.

Kilts received his postgraduate training in psychopharmacology and neurochemistry in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Michigan State University. He continued his training in neuropharmacology, analytical neurochemistry, and human psychopharmacology in the Biological Sciences Research Center at the University of North Carolina. Kilts has been a member of the faculty and worked as a researcher at Duke University and Emory University School of Medicine.

The other five new ARA Fellows recognized at the news conference and joining the existing ARA Scholars and Fellows are: Nitin Agarwal, Ph.D., University of Arkansas at Little Rock, distinguished professor in the Information Science Department; Jingyi Chen, Ph.D., University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Steven Foley, Ph.D., National Center for Toxicological Research, deputy director of the Division of Microbiology; Xiuzhen Huang, Ph.D., Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, professor in the Department of Computer Science; and Mansour Mortazavi, Ph.D., University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, professor and vice chancellor.

Previously named ARA Fellows from UAMS are Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute; Michael Owens, Ph. D., a professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology; and Mark Smeltzer, Ph.D., professor in the UAMS Department of Microbiology and Immunology and director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses.

By David Robinson

Dec. 7, 2018 | Nearly everyone in the audience raised their hand when Curtis Lowery, M.D., asked if they used their smartphones for banking or making purchases. In welcoming UAMS’ first Digital Health Conference on Nov. 30, he told the 80-plus attendees the health care industry has been frustratingly slow to follow the banking industry’s embrace of digital technology.

“It is unacceptable for me in women’s health to have maternal deaths that are preventable,” said Lowery, a nationally recognized pioneer and innovator in the use of telemedicine who chairs the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the UAMS College of Medicine. “We can do something about it.”

The conference gave researchers and health care providers an overview of the fast evolving digital health technologies and a chance to learn more specifically about the current lag in policies and regulations, and the endless opportunities this technology brings to providers and patients.

Digital health includes interactive video (telemedicine, telehealth), wearable devices, implantable devices, smartphone applications, robotics, augmented intelligence and machine learning.

UAMS digital health researcher Carolyn Greene, Ph.D., associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, said the day-long conference was a valuable use of her time.

“I loved that there was an opportunity to think about research and the promise of digital health in the future, but also we got a chance to hear about all the incredible digital health work that’s happening right now across the UAMS campuses and across the state,” she said. “As a clinician, you want to know about the shiny objects – you know, the exciting stuff – but sometimes your ability to really use it depends on being able to get reimbursed for it. I thought the conference did a good job of discussing some of those practical aspects also.”

The conference’s keynote speakers were Penny Mohr from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where she is senior advisor for Emerging Technology and Delivery System Innovation Research Initiatives; and Mei Wa Kwong, J.D., executive director of the Center for Connected Health Policy, the federally designated National Telehealth Policy Resource Center.

“I really enjoyed hearing Mei Wa Kwong talk,” said Sarah Rhoads, Ph.D., D.N.P., a former UAMS faculty researcher and now a professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis. “She did a great job simplifying and explaining the payment for mobile health and telehealth and telemedicine and the issues surrounding remote patient monitoring. It’s very important to know what the payers are willing to pay for when it comes to implementing technology.”

Rhoads also said she enjoyed Mohr’s perspective on what PCORI can and cannot fund. “It just provided a lot of clarity for me,” she said.

Health systems are behind other industries in adopting digital technologies in part because government policies haven’t kept pace with the advances, said Anita Walden, M.S., a conference organizer and instructor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the UAMS College of Medicine.

“Patients are looking forward to using digital technologies, and the industry companies and the payers are moving forward with trying to implement it,” Walden said. “They need the providers to catch up.”

Despite the challenges, Lowery said that UAMS, with the strong support of Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA, will lead the state in adoption of digital health technologies.

“I think over the next few years we’re going to build the most modern, connected health care delivery system in the nation because we’re the only teaching hospital in the state and we have a lot of really rural and poor hospital systems everywhere,” he said. “I think all of us are committed to changing that.”

In the next five years, he predicted, the same percentage who are banking on their phones today will be receiving health care through their mobile devices.

John Paul Nolan, a research participant and Community Advisory Board member for a UAMS research study, urged Lowery and other UAMS leaders to take the lead in digital health care. Holmes, a veteran, said an expansion of telemedicine is desperately needed in rural communities. In small towns, residents notice whose vehicle is parked at a mental health clinic. Because of the stigma, people who need help often don’t get it. If mental health services could be provided via interactive video to a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, that scenario could be avoided.

“UAMS is poised to provide care,” Nolan said. With smartphones and other mobile devices, “In that moment of crisis, they don’t have to get out of the house. Those are the things we need to be looking at. UAMS brings a very powerful chip to the table because of its infrastructure, its national and international partners and the way that it is set up to study and to disseminate the information to make the public more aware of what’s going on.”

The Digital Health Conference was sponsored by the UAMS Office of Interprofessional Education, with support from the UAMS Center for Distance Health, the Department of Biomedical Informatics, South Central Telehealth Resource Center, and the UAMS Translational Research Institute.

By Spencer Watson

Nov. 28, 2018 | To most people, ultrasound is associated with taking pictures of babies in the womb. But it has become part of a technology revolution that is helping physicians provide better care for all types of patients.

More than 100 students from the UAMS College of Medicine as well as other medical schools in Arkansas recently gathered on the 10^th floor of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute for a Saturday of learning about the clinical applications of ultrasound technology.

The event, called Ultrafest, was intended to give students exposure to and hands-on experience with a variety of point-of-care ultrasound applications, from obstetrics to applications in cardiovascular and ophthalmic exams to ultrasound-guided procedures. Ultrafest was first started at the University of California Irvine in 2012. The idea for the event has since spread to several medical schools across the country. This was the first event of its kind in the Arkansas region.

“Bedside ultrasound, or what we call point-of-care ultrasound, has completely changed the way physicians care for patients,” said Brian Russ, D.O., a UAMS emergency medicine resident who helped organize the event. “As ultrasound technology gets more portable with machines becoming smaller, cheaper and better, it’s become a go-to method to make diagnoses more rapid and more accurately guide procedures at the bedside so that physicians can make better decisions and perform safer procedures in caring for patients.”

“It’s kind of a theory that bedside or even ‘pocket’ ultrasound is going to replace the stethoscope as the staple tool of the physician,” agreed John Martindale, a third-year medical student who helped organize the event.

Following a keynote address from Creagh Boulger, M.D., emergency medicine faculty and associate director of ultrasound at Ohio State University, the morning was spent with medical students learning from instructors, who demonstrated ultrasound techniques and applications on volunteer “patients,” models who were recruited from nearby universities. During lunch, students had the opportunity to form teams and compete in a fun and friendly ultrasound competition, further testing their skills and reinforcing concepts.

“We had 20 college student volunteers, most of them pre-med, who were themselves hoping to get some experience and learn some interesting things about ultrasound,” said Russ. “It was really neat for them. I was teaching the pulmonary station, and the student who was my model at the station was pointing out structures and lung artifacts, helping to teach by the end of the day.”

Of course, the volunteer patients weren’t the only ones there to learn. Medical students who attended also befitted tremendously, said Martindale, who is part of the UAMS Ultrasound Student Interest Group leadership team. Organizing the event was a significant undertaking by the  student group and faculty mentors involving needs such as room and audiovisual reservations, recruiting faculty instructors and volunteer patients, advertising to students, catering and inviting industry vendors of ultrasound equipment to have enough machines for the event. Students had the opportunity to use some of the “latest and greatest” machines marketed towards point-of-care ultrasound users.

“This is technology we’ve had for decades, but the computing capacity is what’s changed. And just like any other field with computers, what we can do with that technology now is continuing to change very quickly. It’s important to stay on top of it,” Martindale said. “As a medical student, getting exposure early on, just like with anything else, makes you more proficient down the line, so when you get into residency and you’re seeing a hundred patients a day, that’s one less thing you have to learn.”

Perhaps surprisingly, many medical students don’t get consistent exposure to ultrasound during their medical education, even with its growing importance in patient care, Russ said.

“Right now, only about 25 percent of the medical schools in the United States have an integrated ultrasound curriculum, and those that do vary in degree in which the ultrasound is integrated,” he said. “We’re lucky here at UAMS. The students do get a fully integrated ultrasound curriculum during their first and second years. But what we’re doing through Ultrafest is building on their ultrasound foundation and teaching them the clinical applications and how they can make a difference for patients, with the focus on hands-on scanning time.”

Both Martindale and Russ said, with this year’s success, they plan to make Ultrafest into an annual event.

“Bedside ultrasound is quickly becoming a depended-upon resource in the medical field. Everyone is familiar with traditional uses of ultrasound in medicine — looking at babies in the womb, but the way we use it at the bedside is what has made it such as powerful tool,” Martindale said.

“We’re empowering these medical students to be the leaders in this point-of-care ultrasound revolution and to continue the change in medicine that started about 20 years ago and has continued to accelerate because of the improving technology available,” Russ said. “It’s been described as a disruptive technology in medicine because it really is changing how we provide patient care.”

By Spencer Watson

Nov. 27, 2018 | A variety of solutions with which to attack the ongoing national opioid epidemic took center stage at the 22^nd Showcase of Medical Discoveries, held Nov. 14 in the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

The series is intended to foster scientific collaboration by sharing research through social receptions with poster presentations. It is sponsored by the College of Medicine and Division of Research.

“One thing I learned in my time of being an investigator is you need a variety of approaches to solve a problem,” said Lawrence Cornett, Ph.D., UAMS associate vice chancellor for research. “That’s why team science is so valuable and why collaborations are so valuable. You want to have diverse viewpoints thinking about the problem and how to solve it. If you only take a single path to the solution, a lot of times you’re going to fail.”

The research on display included exploring viable medications to use as an alternative to opioids, to treatment of addiction as well as withdrawal, to studying emerging illicit opioids to understand their effects on abusers. That work included not only presentations from UAMS researchers, but researchers from the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, which adjoins the UAMS campus.

“I think you need to take every possible approach to this problem,” said Rick Owen, M.D., associate chief of staff for research with Veterans Affairs (VA) and a professor of psychiatry in the UAMS College of Medicine. “My background is in implementation science and health services research, so the fact that there are a few posters on actually implementing change and how to approach that is very impressive.”

Among those was the work of student researcher Mary Thannisch, who presented work done in collaboration with Benjamin Teeter, Ph.D., of the UAMS College of Pharmacy, on finding ways to increase prescription of overdose prevention medication naloxone among pharmacists.

“Last year, Arkansas passed a law allowing pharmacists to prescribe naloxone to the public instead of going to a physician. But since that’s happened, the prescription rate has not been very high. There’s a certain stigma attached to naloxone, because most people think it’s only for addicts,” Thannisch said. “However, in addition to addicts, our research also targets the accidental overdoses that might happen, such as in older patients on multiple medications” or in households with very young children.

Thannisch said the work included studying ways for pharmacists, who in many cases – particularly in independently owned pharmacies – know their patients personally, to start a conversation about prescribing naloxone with opioids as a preventative measure. However, their surveys showed many pharmacists don’t quite feel they have the right training to begin those conversations.

“So what we came up with were conversation guides, a laminated sheet of paper they can keep in the pharmacy for each target patient they would be looking at.”

Ravi Nahata, M.D., a UAMS assistant professor and staff psychiatrist with the VA, presented work that gauged the acceptability and interest of opioid-addicted patients to using naltrexone, a medication often used to treat heroin addicts. Nahata said he and fellow researchers hypothesized opioid users would be hesitant to explore the medication for fear of stigma, but found exactly the opposite reaction in surveys.

“Our hypothesis was that people exposed to methadone or Suboxone would be less interested in naltrexone, but our finding was actually the opposite. People with exposure were likely to consider it,” he said.

The survey also collected data from those who were not interested in naltrexone. Their reasons included fear of needles, potential side effects, prohibitive cost and simply not being ready to end opioid use.

While there is still much work to do in combating the multifaceted problem of opioid use throughout the United States, events such as the showcase not only help further research by fostering collaboration, they demonstrate the vital role academic research centers like UAMS play in finding solutions.

“I think the public recognizes that academic research centers are where research is done to improve human health, so I think they expect us to take the lead. If not us, then who else is going to do it?” said Cornett.

“This is the kind of problem that really hits home when you know people who have been affected by it,” said Owen. “You know people who have become addicted or have been in treatment or you know of families that have had a family member overdose. People can identify with that.”

Poster presentations at the showcase included:

Management of Infants Exposed in utero to Opioids

Researchers: Jeanette Lee and Jessica Snowden

The Effects of P-glycoprotein Inhibition on Norbuprenorphine-induced Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS)

Researchers: Paloma Salazar, Williams T. Higgins, Lisa Brents

Morphine 6-O-Sulfate is a Novel Mixed µ/δ Opioid Therapeutic for Diabetic Neuropathy: Pharmacology, Pharmacokinetics, and Blood Brain Barrier Permeability

Researchers: Jai Shankar K. Yadlapalli, Zaineb Albayati, Benjamin M. Ford, Amit Ketkar, Anqi Wan, Narasimha Penthala, Robert Eoff, Paul L. Prather, Howard Hendrickson, Maxim Dobretsov and Peter A. Crooks

Improving Opioid Use Disorder Treatment Outcomes with the L-type Calcium Channel Blocker Isradipine

Researchers: A.H. Oliveto, J. McGaugh, J.B. Guise, J. Thostenson and M.J. Mancino

A Survey of Treatment Preferences for Opioid Use Disorder

Researchers: R. Nahata, M.J. Mancino, J. Thostenson, A. Oliveto

Community Pharmacists’ Perceptions of Their Role in the Opioid Epidemic

Researchers: Benjamin Teeter, Geoffrey Curran, Bradley Martin, Patricia Freeman, Karen Drummond, Katharine Bradley, Mark Edlund

In vivo Abuse Liability Assessment of Novel Fentanyl Analogues: Science to Guide Drug Policy

Researchers: William E. Fantegrossi, Kyle R. Urquhart, Saki Fukuda, Jyoti Gogoi, Timothy Flanigan and Takato Hiranita

A Comparison of the Antinociceptive Effects of ZZ204G, an α9α10 nAChRs Antagonist and Morphine in a Rodent Model

Researchers: Anqu Wani, Jai Shankar K. Yadlapalli, E. Kim Fifer, Maxim Dobretsov, Zaineb Albayati and Peter A, Crooks

In vivo Dependence Liability Assessment of Novel Fentanyl Analogues: Science to Guide Drug Policy

Researchers: Kyle R. Urquhart, Saki Fukuda, Jyoti Gogoi, Timothy Flanigan, Takato Hiranita and William E. Fantegrossi

Development of G-protein Biased Cannabinoid Receptor Agonists as Potential Alternatives to Opioid Treatment of Chronic Pain

Researchers: Paul L. Prather, Narsimha R. Renthala, William E. Fantegrossi and Peter A. Crooks

Evidence Based Quality Improvement (EBQI) for Development and Implementation of Community Pharmacist-Initiated Prescribing and Dispensing of Naloxone

Researchers: Mary Thannisch, Benjamin Teeter, Geoffrey Curran, Duane Jones, Bradley Martin, Nickolas Zaller

By Ben Boulden

A team of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) research scientists recently was awarded a $1.8 million, five-year grant by the National Institute on Aging to investigate common pathways that contribute to the aging of various tissues.

Robert Shmookler Reis, D. Phil, professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Donald W. Reynolds Department of Geriatrics, and Srinivas Ayyadevara, associate professor in same department, are the co-principal investigators leading the study. Co-investigators are Steve Barger, Ph.D., professor in the Departments of Geriatrics and Neurobiology & Developmental Sciences, and Alan Tackett, professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology.

The goal of the research is to identify what different neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease have in common with other age-progressive diseases and conditions such as heart disease, muscle wasting, kidney disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Protein aggregation — clustering or clumping of protein molecules — has long been recognized as a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“We were the first ones to show that protein aggregation happens not just in the brain, but also in the heart, skeletal muscle and kidney with age and age-associated diseases,” Ayyadevara said.  Reis added, “The misfolding of proteins, which contributes to protein aggregation, is promoted by stress and inflammation, accumulating with age.”

Reis said the team has looked at protein aggregation for nearly a decade, funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.  For the last two years, it has also been supported as part of a multi-investigator National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant led by Sue Griffin, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of research at the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging.  Peter Crooks, Ph.D., D.Sc., chair and professor of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the UAMS College of Pharmacy, developed novel derivatives of anti-inflammatory drugs.

As part of the NIH grant, Crooks, Reis, Ayyadevara, and graduate student Samuel Kakraba tested these drugs for their ability to inhibit protein aggregation and to extend life. One drug, PNR502, was the main subject of a recently awarded patent covering several bioactive compounds.

“It not only inhibits further protein aggregation but even appears to reverse it,” Ayyadevara said. “Working with Dr. Barger, we will examine whether it can preserve youthful functions in the hearts and brains of normal mice, and in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s.”

“We have shown that protein aggregation accompanies aging of all tissues, and probably contributes causally to most or all age-associated diseases,” said Reis. “This fundamental molecular process may underlie most of the deterioration that defines aging. It’s a Pandora’s box that holds all the things that go wrong as we get older, so it offers an unprecedented opportunity to finally understand how and why so many disparate factors contribute to aging.”

By Tim Taylor

Teresa Hudson, Pharm.D., Ph.D., an associate professor and director of the Department of Psychiatry’s Division of Health Services Research, was among the guest speakers at the Heartland Summit, an assembly of some of the country’s top minds held Oct. 18-21 in Bentonville.

Sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation, the assembly was organized to bring together business and academic leaders to share ideas and discuss possible solutions for some of the biggest problems facing the nation’s central states.

Best-selling author Deepak Chopra, actress Jennifer Garner, former mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu and Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart Inc., were among the presenters at the event, which was open only to those invited by the Walton Family Foundation. Some 350 entrepreneurs and academic specialists attended the summit, where they were given a taste of local cuisine, live music and contemporary art from a variety of artists and performers.

Hudson was part of a panel of experts on opioid abuse and the challenges facing smaller, more rural states struggling with the crisis of addiction. The discussion included presentations by former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Sandy Winnefeld and his wife, Mary, co-chairs of S.A.F.E. Project US (Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic), a national non-profit committed to eradicating opioid addiction through research and awareness campaigns; Kyle Peterson of the Walton Family Foundation; Joy Sun of Groups, which provides addiction treatment in largely rural communities; and William Simpson, president of DisposeRX, a company offering solutions on the disposal of unused medications.

Many of the event’s presentations dealt with the use of natural resources, from rehabbing older buildings to unique uses of food and agriculture, to build up the economy in smaller communities. Hudson saw the summit as a great opportunity for innovative enterprises to identify the common issues facing the country’s heartland, 20 states including Arkansas in the center of the U.S.

“It was very uplifting to see so many young people wanting to invest in the heartland with creative solutions,” she said, noting that many of the attendees were in their 30s. “I found it very gratifying that there was so much interest in the heartland.”

By Linda Haymes

UAMS College of Medicine researchers have received a $604,208 grant to study how an abnormal protein found in ovarian cancer and some brain tumors helps tumors grow.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded the three-year grant to Karen Abbott, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Neurosurgery. Abbott is principal investigator for the grant, and Rodriguez is co-investigator.

The pair are researching glycosylation changes, which are found in both ovarian cancer and glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. Glycosylation is the enzymatic process that attaches glycans (a series of carbohydrates, including the sugars) to proteins, or other organic molecules.

In her previous research, Abbott developed an antibody that targets glycosylation on proteins covering the surface of ovarian cancer cells. The new project involves adapting that protein into a new type of therapy for the disease and examining if it also could serve as an effective therapy for glioblastoma, which shares the same type of glycosylation.

“This research can help us understand the proteins that carry this glycosylation change and how this change promotes signals to keep cancer cells alive. Studying those pathways may lead to new methods to kill the cancer cells but leave the normal ones alone,” said Rodriguez, a neurosurgeon and researcher.

“With this grant, we will be developing a new type of therapeutic by modifying the current antibody to allow destruction of the cancer cells,” Abbott said.

In their work, Rodriguez’s lab, which focuses on glioblastoma, will provide tumor samples from patients to test this novel therapy.

Rodriguez and Abbott, whose labs are next door to each other, decided to team up after learning of each other’s research and discovering it intersected.

“We decided it would be a good idea to join forces and work on something together,” Rodriguez said.

By Tim Taylor

Nov. 6, 2018 | LITTLE ROCK — G. Richard Smith, M.D., has been named chairman of the Department of Psychiatry in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and director of UAMS’ Psychiatric Research Institute.

Smith served as chairman of the Department of Psychiatry from 2001 to 2013, during which he oversaw the design and construction of the Psychiatric Research Institute, which opened in 2008. He was named dean of the UAMS College of Medicine and executive vice chancellor in 2013, a position he held for two years before stepping down to become a professor of psychiatry, medicine and public health.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to once again work with the faculty and staff of the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute and the Department of Psychiatry,” said Smith. “There are many exciting challenges and opportunities in our field today and it is a privilege to join with these outstanding professionals to bring the best treatment to our patients and their families, train the next generation of clinicians and scientists, develop new knowledge in our field, and to be of service to our state.”

A native of Jonesboro, Smith received his bachelor’s degree in chemical biology from Rhodes College in Memphis. He graduated from the UAMS College of Medicine in 1977. He completed his residency in psychiatry at UAMS and continued his training with a fellowship in psychiatry and internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, before joining the UAMS faculty in 1981.

“Dr. Smith has dedicated his career to UAMS and ensuring the very best psychiatric care for Arkansans,” said Christopher T. Westfall, M.D., executive vice chancellor of UAMS and dean of the College of Medicine. “His visionary work to integrate research, education and clinical care in the Psychiatric Research Institute has had a profound impact on the patients we care for today as well as those who will receive even better care by the psychiatrists and scientists we train for the future. Dr. Smith is an exceptional leader and ensures continued strong momentum for our psychiatric programs.”