News Capsules 11/09/05

NEWS

Senior Vice President Frank Cerra, Medical School Dean Deborah Powell, Stem Cell Institute Director Catherine Verfaillie, and other University officials celebrated the grand opening last week of the International Stem Cell Institute, a collaboration of the Catholic University Leuven and the University of Minnesota. The event included a leading edge symposium on stem cell research. The University of Minnesota will be hosting a similar symposium in about six months. Cerra said that the ceremony was well attended by Catholic University’s faculty and students. Special guests included the president of the Flemish portion of Belgium and the university’s rector. Cerra said the temporary lab space is completed and the new building is under construction. He also reported on an older relationship between the University of Minnesota and Catholic University Leuven. “Catholic University’s library was burned twice by the Germans—in World War I and World War II. The University of Minnesota helped rebuild it,” Cerra said. “There is a stone in the foundation of the new library with the inscription ‘University of Minnesota.’”

Medical School researchers found that impulse disorders, such as gambling, shoplifting, and pyromania, appear common among psychiatric inpatients. In the first study conducted to examine how common these disorders are, researchers found that one-third of inpatients had at least one impulse control disorder, but only three had been previously diagnosed, suggesting that these disorders frequently go unrecognized.  The study was led by Jon Grant, Department of Psychiatry. For more, go to http://www.ahc.umn.edu/news/releases/impulse110705.

Thalidomide, a drug blamed in the 1950s for causing birth defects, is now showing promise as a safe and effective treatment for women with recurrent ovarian cancer, according to a study led by Cancer Center researcher Levi Downs, Medical School, obstetrics and gynecology. For more, go to http://www.ahc.umn.edu/news/releases/ovarian110305.

Intending to inspire a new generation of students to consider health careers, the Health Careers Center last week hosted high school students, providing them tours of facilities, demonstrations of medical tests, and information about various health professions. AHC health professions students assisted on the effort, which was part of the American Medical Association Minority Affairs Consortium’s Doctors Back to School Program.

Smart. Safe. Secure.Who is wearing their ID badge? Find out by visiting the University of Minnesota Privacy and Security Office Web site at http://www.ahc.umn.edu/privacy/idbadge/spotbadge. Two more weeks remain on the campaign to raise awareness on the importance of wearing employee identification badges. Badge “spotters” are on the lookout for badge-wearing AHC, Boynton, and Duluth Health Services employees on the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses. Randomly selected badge wearers will have their names entered into a weekly prize drawing.

University of Minnesota Physicians recently launched a new clinical Web site for its neurosurgery services. The site provides information about the neurosurgery clinic, services, and physician expertise in an intuitive format for consumers, patients, and physicians. To view the site, go to http://www.minnesotaneurosurgery.com.

More than 90 presenters and participants from as far away as Thailand, England, and Sweden attended the 13th annual Robert J. Gorlin Conference on Dysmorphology, held Oct. 22-23 in Moos Tower. The two-day symposium focused on molecular basis of the facial and oral structures. The conference was the last in a series of 13 annual meetings made possible through the support of Guilan Norouzi and her late father, Hassan Norouzi.

CORRECTION: In the last News Capsules, we inadvertently omitted that Russell Leupker, School of Public Health, epidemiology, is the principal investigator on a $13.8 million NIH grant. The grant will be used to develop a training program for clinical researchers. We regret the omission. For more about the grant, go to  http://www.ahc.umn.edu/news/releases/researchtraining110105.

PEOPLE

The Medical School’s Mark R. Schleiss, Paul Quie, and Phil Peterson were featured keynote speakers at the Chinese Pediatric Neurology Society Biannual Meeting on Nov. 4, in ShenZen, China. Quie, pediatrics, spoke about Toll receptors, Schleiss, pediatrics, spoke about congenital cytomegalovirus infection, and Peterson, medicine, spoke about emerging infectious diseases.

Donna Zimmaro Bliss, School of Nursing, was selected director of the Wound, Ostomy, and Continence Nurses Society’s Center for Clinical Investigation.  As director, Bliss will take on a variety of responsibilities including leading the society’s research initiatives, the development of its small-grant program, and serving as section editor of the Spotlight on Research column. For more, go to http://www.ahc.umn.edu/news/releases/bliss110405.

Amos Deinard, Medical School, pediatrics, received the first Outstanding Community Leadership Award at the inaugural conference of the Minnesota Association of Community Health Centers. The award was presented to Deinard in recognition of his work in advocating for the health-care needs of low-income, uninsured, and special needs patients in  Minnesota.

Robert Gorlin, professor emeritus, School of Dentistry, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Skin Association in recognition of his role in the development of a world center for clinical genetics; his lifetime work in clinical medicine, pathology, craniofacial disorders, and hereditary hearing loss leading to the recognition of many genetic disorders; and, his initial definition and description of the nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome and prodigious research for its therapy.

Linda McLoon, Medical School, ophthalmology, will receive the Lew R. Wasserman Merit Award from Research to Prevent Blindness. The award is given to mid-career scientists actively engaged in vision research by allowing them to advance their research objectives. McLoon has received NIH funding for several years to study muscle diseases of the face and orbit. Her long-term goals are to continue translational research that may someday treat patients.

Julie Ross, Medical School, pediatrics, and associate director for population sciences at the Cancer Center, has been selected by the CureSearch National Childhood Cancer Foundation to lead the Childhood Cancer Research Network, a new North American childhood cancer research registry. For more, go to http://www.ahc.umn.edu/news/releases/registry110805.

Anne Taylor, Medical School, has been selected to receive a Profile in Courage award from the Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers. The award is given to a person or organization who has consistently fought for truth, justice, and the rights of others at professional risk or sacrifice. Among the many accomplishments cited by the association is Taylor’s leadership role in The Heart Truth Women of Color initiative to reach out to women of color about heart disease and her chairing of a national clinical study of heart failure in African-Americans, which led to the first drug targeted to a single ethnic group and “ignited a debate on the relevance of race in determining medical treatment.”

Carrie Wilmot, Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics, will be the 2006 recipient of the American Crystallographic Association’s Etter Award. The award recognizes academic crystallographers, at the early stages of their careers, who  have achieved international recognition for their research scholarship. Wilmot is director of the Kahlert Structural Biology Laboratory.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

“Simulation at the University of Minnesota: Transforming Education” will take place Nov. 28,10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., in the A.I. Johnson Room, McNamara Alumni Center. Robert M. Sweet, Medical School, urologic surgery, and the newly appointed AHC clinical director of simulation programs, will host this free event, which is sponsored by the University  of Minnesota Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and the Office of the Senior Vice President for Health Sciences. Richard Satava, professor of surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center, is the keynote speaker. For more information, contact Cindy Prange at 626-3386.

If you have questions about conducting clinical research using Fairview and UMPhysicians resources, there’s help available online. A new research user’s manual is available at http://www.fairview.org/research under the “Resources” menu option. The manual provides an overview and specific instructions regarding the use of Fairview and UMPhysicians resources for research purposes.

AHC faculty, staff, and students are invited to welcome John Finnegan to the position of dean for the School of Public Health at a Nov. 30 reception hosted by Frank Cerra, senior vice president for health sciences. The event will take place from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Northrop atrium.

The 2006 Winter Public Health Institute will take place January 2-7, in Gainesville, Fla. This offering of courses, field trips, and special events is organized by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions. A limited scholarship fund for University of Minnesota preparedness courses is available for tuition and registration fees. For complete course descriptions, registration details, and scholarship application call 626-4515 or visit http://www.publichealthplanet.org.

The Bio-Medical Library is offering three classes next week:  Beyond Bookmarks--New Tools to Organize your Online Research; MEDLINE Searching--Ovid vs. PubMed; and Refworks. For class descriptions or to register, please visit http://www.biomed.lib.umn.edu/inst/lcclasslistcat.html.

The Bio-Medical Library is conducting a trial of InfoPOEMS, a clinical awareness product designed to answer clinical medicine questions at the point of care.  For more information and access details for the trial, please see  http://www.biomed.lib.umn.edu/admn/didyouknow/dykindex.html?72. The trial runs through Nov. 15. The library, which may subscribe to the product, is seeking feedback.