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Highlights:
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A
hundred points of light
The NIH stamp of approval
Georgia Assembly highlights
Bluffton University bus crash, Grady responds
Emory
Midtown
Found
in translation
Milestones |
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A
hundred points of light
Think
small. A nanometer-sized particle is about the size of three or
four atoms.
But the promise of these small, luminescent
particles is large. These quantum dots are covered in a protective
coating to keep them safe from the body’s enzymes and programmed
with antibodies to find cancer cells that have matching antigens.
Theoretically, they can tag hundreds or even thousands of different
proteins.
But so far, the big promise of these
small dots to detect cancers has been limited because clinicians
have lacked the specific
instructions for how to use them. That changed in May when Shuming
Nie and colleagues at Emory and Georgia Tech published clinical
protocols in Nature Protocols on how to prepare, process, and quantify
these tiny particles. Now laboratory physicians have the information
they need to track biomarkers in cells and tissues.
The technology is a variation of immunohistochemistry,
the staining process commonly used by pathologists to identify proteins
in a tissue section from a cancer patient. The scientists have developed
detailed protocols for using the technology, including antibody
conjugation, preparation of tissue specimens, multicolor quantum
staining, image processing, and biomarker quantification. They also
have developed bioinformatics and software for automated feature
extraction and biomarker quantification.
This work, which took 12 investigators
in five academic departments more than two years to complete, resolves
"a major bottleneck" in the use of quantum dot probes
for immunology and histology staining of cancer cells, according
to Nie.
The new guidelines are available at
www.natureprotocols.com. |
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The
NIH stamp of approval
As the steward of medical research in the United States, the NIH
has funded some of the world’s biggest scientific advances,
with impressive results. In the 30 years between 1970 and 2000,
for example, the life expectancy of the average American increased
by six years, and the death rate from stroke and heart disease declined
by more than 70% and 63%, respectively. NIH-sponsored research in
the past decade has prevented 30,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS each year.
NIH designation marks efforts of the
highest scientific integrity and premier research in the country.
Emory has been the beneficiary of many such NIH designations—a
Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network to explore proteins
encoded in the genome, an Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center,
three NIH nanotechnology designations in the past two years that
focus on early cancer detection and DNA damage repair, a Center
for AIDS Research, and Emory’s Collaborative Center for Parkinson’s
Disease Environmental Research, to name a few. The most recent NIH
designations for Emory came this spring with the naming of Emory’s
HIV/AIDS clinical trials unit as a primary site nationally in both
the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) and the HIV Vaccine Trials
Network (HVTN). And Emory is one of six new Centers of Excellence
for Influenza Research and Surveillance.
What do the newest designations mean?
For the clinical trials unit, it translates into more than $7 million
over seven years and participation in a multi-site effort that includes
HIV/AIDS clinical trials units on five continents. Many of the treatment
guidelines now in place for HIV infection have been established
through ACTG trials, and the HVTN is testing some of the more promising
AIDS vaccines.
The new NIH designation for a flu
center of excellence at Emory comes with a $32.8 million contract
to help the United States prepare for a possible pandemic. Emory’s
role will be to determine how flu viruses mutate to infect different
species, a critical piece of knowledge in preparing for the possibility
of a bird flu pandemic. Specifically, researchers will look at how
human genes might be "silenced" to decrease or eliminate
flu infections. |
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Georgia
Assembly highlights
The
2007 Georgia General Assembly wrapped its session in April, passing
a budget and legislation that has a major impact on health care
in the state.
On the legislative front, Emory ethicist
Kathy Kinlaw worked with legislators to create an important and
improved advance directive statute for health care, House Bill 24.
The new law combines the living will and durable power of attorney,
making the advance directive more patient-friendly and easier to
understand. It also gives clearer directions to health care professionals
on the types of treatment and care that can be administered or withheld.
In the area of stem cell research,
Senate Bill 148 establishes a network of banks for collection and
storage of postnatal tissue and fluids in partnership with colleges
and universities, hospitals, nonprofits, and private firms. The
bank network, known as the Newborn Umbilical Cord Blood Bank, will
make such tissue and fluid available for medical research. Beginning
June 30, 2009, all physicians and hospitals must inform pregnant
patients of the full range of options for donation of postnatal
tissue and fluids no later than 30 days from the commencement of
the patient’s third trimester of pregnancy or at the first
consultation between the attending physician or the hospital.
Every health care provider who gives
prenatal care will now be required to test patients for HIV except
in cases where the woman refuses testing, based on House Bill 429.
Physicians also are required to refer HIV-positive women to counseling
services and appropriate medical care providers.
A recommendation of last year’s
Joint Comprehensive State Trauma Services Study Committee resulted
in the introduction and passage of Senate Bill 60 that establishes
the Georgia Trauma Care Network Commission. This commission will
create a state trauma network, which will distribute funds designated
for trauma care and is the first step in the development of a sustainable
statewide trauma system for the citizens of Georgia. Lt. Governor
Casey Cagle has appointed Emory emergency medicine physician Leon
Haley to serve on the commission.
With several bills carrying over to
next year’s session, the legislative debate is certain to
continue on Georgia’s Certificate of Need (CoN) program. The
intent of the CoN program is to insure appropriate access to health
care for rural and urban populations, control investments in hospitals
and health care facilities, and promote quality health care for
all Georgia citizens. The debate concerns legislation that would
grant an out-of-state specialty hospital an exemption from the CoN
process. Emory Healthcare favors retaining the current CoN program
with some modifications to streamline the process but opposes exemptions
or the creation of special categories to guarantee an exemption.
The CoN Program should continue to fulfill its purpose, while improving
laws to correspond with Georgia’s health care market needs
and supporting consistency in administering those laws. —Linda
Womack
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Highlights
of the 2008 budget included: |
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- $1.7
million to recruit 20 eminent cancer scientists and clinicians
- $125,000
to develop and expand oncology clinical trials network
- $1.5
million for six Regional Cancer Coalitions of Excellence
- $10
million for life sciences vaccine research (Georgia Research
Alliance)
- $7
million increase in funds for antiviral medications to
treat pandemic flu and $250,000 for storage of medications,
and
- $650,000
for a fast-track nursing initiative to train new nurses
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Bluffton
University bus crash, Grady responds
Atlanta.
March 2, 2007. 5:40 am. A chartered bus carrying an Ohio college
baseball team en route to Florida overturns on an exit ramp off
I-75 and crashes to the interstate below. Eric Ossmann,
director of emergency medical services for Grady Hospital, is called
to the scene as primary triage officer. Six years of responding
to crises for Grady—car wrecks, a workplace shooting, a plane
crash—fail to blunt the impact of the tragedy for Ossmann.
The accident claims the lives of four students, the bus driver,
and his wife, and one week later, a fifth student, who dies at Grady.
"I’ve seen a lot of bad
stuff in my career, but this overturned bus was awful," Ossmann
says.
At the scene, he found some of the
victims were ejected once the bus hit the overpass barrier, followed
by more who were thrown when the bus landed on the highway below.
With the help of paramedics working at the accident site, Ossmann
sent the 16 most critically injured via ambulance to Grady and two
other metro Atlanta hospitals. He put another 14 "walking
wounded" on a MARTA bus bound for Grady, supervised by a paramedic.
At 6 am, the staff at Grady was in
the midst of a shift change, but many stayed late to help with the
incoming injuries. They knew the drill. They formed a line to receive
the Bluffton University players getting off the bus. They assessed
injuries first, then walked each student to a decontamination room
to shower off fuel and dirt from the accident.
They also cleared the radiology holding
area so that the students could stay together. "The decision
to put the students in a private area really allowed the psychologic
healing to begin," says Alexander Isakov, associate director
of Grady EMS. "What was remarkable about the Bluffton players
is they worked as a team throughout the healing process."
Chaplains and social service personnel were available to talk with
concerned families, who started pouring in by late morning.
To the media camped outside the hospital’s
doors, Ossmann and Leon Haley, chief of Grady’s emergency
department, gave regular updates. As players were discharged, they
gave first-hand details to the reporters about the terrifying accident.
The last patient, Tim Berta, age 22 at the time of the accident,
left Grady in late April to continue rehabilitation in Ohio.
"Terrible events like this show
the value of a hospital like Grady," says Isakov. —Kay
Torrance
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Emory
Midtown
With
a prime location in the heart of downtown Atlanta and adjacent
to key education and business partners, the Emory Midtown campus
brings unprecedented opportunities for Emory’s health sciences.
WHSC CEO Michael Johns describes Emory Midtown as "a footprint
for one of the most vital urban environments in any major city."
Adding to the significant health care presence of Emory Crawford
Long Hospital and the Predictive Health Institute’s Center
for Health Discovery and Well-Being, Emory envisions a campus with
retail and living space, cultural venues, and educational areas.
In his Vision 2012 speech in May,
Johns unveiled a mixed-use project for Emory Midtown that will start
at the corner of Peachtree and Linden. The site, still in the planning
phase, will include parking, retail, approximately 200,000 square
feet of research space, and an additional 100,000 square feet of
clinical space, potentially topped by housing.
Planners hope to work with adjacent
property owners over the next decade to develop open spaces, such
as a large quad and a park that spans the interstate. "This
could all make for one of the most spectacular environments for
education, research, health care, and urban living anywhere,"
says Johns. |
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Found
in translation
Travelers
unaware of the meaning of certain gestures in foreign countries
can quickly get into trouble. Now researchers at the Yerkes
National Primate Research Center are trying to interpret how gestures
are used in the culture of great apes and just how that use fits
into language development.
As reported in the April 30 edition
of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers
Amy Pollick and Frans de Waal have found that chimpanzees and bonobos
use gestures more flexibly than facial or vocal expressions to communicate.
Both species use facial and vocal signals similarly—for example,
a scream for victims of intimidation, threat, or attack. But the
way the 34 chimps and 13 bonobos in the study used gestures was
more complicated. A single gesture could communicate different messages
depending on its social context. For example, in the hundreds of
hours of videotape they observed, the researchers found that a male
chimpanzee using an extended arm and open hand could be begging
for food, asking a female for sex, or even attempting to reconcile
with another male after a fight.
The finding supports a theory that
human language began with the development of gestures. Gestures
are evolutionarily younger than facial expressions and vocalizations,
as shown by their presence in apes and humans but not in monkeys.
This ability to learn gestures distinguishes the great apes (chimpanzees,
bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas) from monkeys, according to deWaal.
"A gesture that occurs in bonobos and chimpanzees as well
as humans likely was present in the last common ancestor,"
says Pollick. |
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Milestones
Funded by a $10 million grant from
the National Institute of Aging, researchers at
Yerkes are comparing changes in humans (normal aging humans, humans
with Alzheimer’s, and humans with mild cognitive impairment)
with changes that occur in nonhuman primates, including chimpanzees
and rhesus macaques. The goal of the five-year study, the first
to use chimpanzees, is to identify ways to diagnose aging-related
disorders earlier to increase chances for effective treatment.
Generous gifts: In a record-breaking
year, the WHSC raised more than $420 million in
gifts and commitments for buildings, programs, and scholarships.
The grand total reflects $240 million from the Woodruff Foundation
for a new clinic building, $50 million from the Rollins family for
a new public health building, more than $20 million for faculty
research and global health programs, $9 million for renovations
to the WHSC administration building (also from the Woodruff Foundation),
more than $4 million for student scholarships, $3 million for predictive
health programs, and more than $2.5 million for neuroscience-related
programs. In all, donors have funded 12 new endowed chairs. Former
Georgia Pacific Chairman and CEO Pete Correll and his wife, Ada
Lee, have pledged $2.5 million through the Correll Foundation to
the School of Medicine for support of scholarships,
faculty research, and teaching. Andrew McKelvey, founder of Monster.com
has donated 115,000 shares of Monster stock, valued at more than
$5.4 million, to support the Emory Transplant Center. And the estate
of J.B. Fuqua has pledged a $3 million gift to expand treatment
for late-life depression for elderly people living in rural and
medically underserved regions of Georgia.
With the University’s acquistion
of a new high-performance computer cluster, Emory
has significantly enhanced its computational resources, accelerating
the pace of scientific discovery in fields from chemistry and neurology
to genetics and pharmacology. The new cluster, which became operational
in June, places Emory on the list of the world’s most powerful
supercomputing sites and allows researchers to pursue unprecedented
studies, for example, the digital imaging of breast cancer and the
effect of anesthesia on the central nervous system.
The National Institute of Mental Health
has awarded the medical school a $3.6 million grant to test schizophrenic
patients for a recently discovered variation in the human genome.
Led by chair of Human Genetics Stephen Warren, the project will
screen 500 schizophrenic patients and 500 people without schizophrenia
for the variation, known as copy number variation, or CNV. |
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