AUGUST 2024 NEWSLETTER
The newsletter of the Feinberg School of Medicine Research Office
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Maximizing the Power of T-cells |
| Today, CAR T-cell therapy is most used to treat lymphomas — cancers that form in the lymphatic system — including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, an aggressive form of B-cell lymphoma. CAR T-cell therapy is also used to treat multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells, and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), in which bone marrow produces too many lymphocytes and can spread to other organs. |
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Summer Research Program Trains Future Clinician-Scientists |
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When rising second-year medical student Rhea Sharma first learned of Feinberg’s T35 Summer Research Program, she jumped at the chance to gain foundational skills for her future career as a clinician-scientist. Now wrapping up her time in the program, Sharma said the experience has been invaluable. |
Faculty ProfileDeveloping New Methods to Detect Cancer and Other Diseases EarlierBrian Joyce, PhD, is a research assistant professor of Preventive Medicine in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention. His research employs epidemiologic methods to identify epigenetic biomarkers of health-related environmental exposures and behavior, for social determinants of health, with age-related chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. |
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Staff ProfileGrowing in a Career that Supports ResearchAlice Camacho is associate director of finance administration in Feinberg’s Basic Science Administration. Camacho has been with Northwestern and working to support the research enterprise at Feinberg since 2004, when she served as program coordinator and then manager of research administration. |
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Student ProfileWhen Global Experiences Inform Basic Science ResearchJiexi Chen is a fifth-year PhD student in the Driskill Graduate Program. Currently in the laboratory of Karla Satchell, PhD, the Anne Stewart Youmans Professor of Microbiology, Chen studies the biological mechanisms underlying host-pathogen interactions in infectious disease. |
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Campus Events |
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Research in the NewsHealthDay, August 6 Washington Post, July 30 New York Times, July 25 |
NUCATS CornerMentoring Relationships Series Begins October 10The 2024-25 NUCATS Series on Developing and Enhancing Mentoring Relationships, is a set of monthly 90-minute workshops exclusively for faculty. Registration for each session is made available a month prior. This year, all workshops will be held in-person on the second Thursday of the month from 9 to 10:30 a.m. beginning October 10. Additional details on the upcoming series can be found on the NUCATS website. Please email Morgan Barrowman with any questions. |
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Sponsored ResearchTitle: Multi-Institutional Phase 2/3 Trial of Valproic Acid in Patients with Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury
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Sponsored ResearchTitle: Integrated Proteomic and Metabolomic Determinants of Left Atrial Dysfunction
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Breakthroughs PodcastHow to Measure Biological Age with John Wilkins, MDA team of Northwestern Medicine scientists think it is possible to slow down biological aging and are conducting a new longitudinal cross-sectional study to investigate. In this episode, John Wilkins, MD, associate director of the Human Longevity Laboratory at the Potocsnak Longevity Institute, shares details of the study, which will eventually include a variety of interventions aimed at slowing down the aging process. |
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New FacultyCaroline Thirukumaran, MBBS, MHA, PhD, joined Feinberg on August 1 as associate professor in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Medical Social Sciences. Previously she was an associate professor in the Departments of Orthopaedics and Public Health Sciences, and in the Center for Musculoskeletal Research at the University of Rochester, New York. She is the PI of the OrthoPOD (Orthopaedic Policy, Outcomes, and Disparities) Lab, and a health services researcher by training. Thirukumaran completed her medical education and Masters in Hospital Administration in Mumbai, India; and pursued her PhD in Health Services Research and Policy at the University of Rochester, New York. |
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Galter LibraryAI Resources for Systematic ReviewsSystematic reviews are known for being both rigorous and time intensive. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which can be employed to perform and streamline tasks, have the potential to expedite elements of the review process. |
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High Impact ResearchPeigh G, Zhou J, Rosemas SC, Roberts AI, Longacre C, Trinh K, Nayak T, Soderlund D, Passman RS. Association of Atrial Fibrillation Burden and Mortality Among Patients With Cardiac Implantable Electronic Devices. Circulation. July 2024; 150(5):350-361.Peruzzi JA, Gunnels TF, Edelstein HI, Lu P, Baker D, Leonard JN, Kamat NP. Enhancing extracellular vesicle cargo loading and functional delivery by engineering protein-lipid interactions. Nature Communications. July 2024; 15(1):5618-5618. Rajani RM, Ellingford R, Hellmuth M, Harris SS, Taso OS, Graykowski D, Lam FKW, Arber C, Fertan E, Danial JSH, Swire M, Lloyd M, Giovannucci TA, Bourdenx M, Klenerman D, Vassar R, Wray S, Sala Frigerio C, Busche MA. Selective suppression of oligodendrocyte-derived amyloid beta rescues neuronal dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease. PLoS Biology. July 2024; 22(7):e3002727-e3002727. Rodriguez GM, Parikh DA, Kapphahn K, Gupta DM, Fan AC, Shah S, Srinivas S, Teuteberg W, Seevaratnam B, Asuncion K, Chien J, Moore K, Ruiz SM, Patel MI. Coaches Activating, Reaching, and Engaging Patients to Engage in Advance Care Planning: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Oncology. July 2024; 10(7):949-953. |
Featured CoreAnalytical bioNanoTechnology Equipment Core (ANTEC)The Analytical bioNanoTechnology Equipment Core (ANTEC) houses research equipment for evaluating materials and biological preparations, and offers 3D printing and 3D scientific illustration services. The core serves Northwestern University researchers, visiting scientists, and local industry researchers. Equipment
Service
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NIH NewsFeedback Sought on Implementing Recommendations to Re-envision the Postdoctoral Experience NIH is dedicated to improving the postdoctoral experience to ensure the biomedical research enterprise can retain and attract the nation’s brightest scientific minds and remain globally competitive. The NIH seeks your input regarding setting time limits of postdoctoral scholar funding, revising the K99/00 mechanism to focus on potential and ideas, and promoting training and professional development opportunities for postdoctoral scholars and their mentors. Any specific suggestions, evidence-based strategies, and relevant data or related experiences will help inform our potential strategies to implement the ACD (Advisory Committee to the NIH Director) recommendations. Feedback will be accepted electronically until October 23, 2024. Unlocking the Potential of Data Reuse: Award Challenge for Researchers Biomedical research has generated millions of datasets and the NIH have issued a $500,000 challenge to get the most out of them. The 2024 DataWorks! Prize, a partnership between the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), invite you to conduct a secondary research analysis project that generates new scientific findings from existing datasets. Data reuse plays a critical role in advancing biomedical research by making it possible to test new hypotheses without duplicating data collection efforts, and this challenge aims to highlight innovative and impactful secondary analysis projects. The DataWorks! Prize will be open for submissions on August 14. Participants must complete the first round of submissions by October 23. Visit Challenge.gov for more information and to apply. |
Funding OpportunitiesNeuropathological Interactions Between COVID-19 and ADRD (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
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Thank You For ReadingWe welcome your feedback. Please share it with us via email. |
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