eRoundup for 10/30/09

Georgia Bio, Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), and the ACTSI welcomed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden to Georgia on Wednesday in the MSM Louis W. Sullivan National Center for Primary Care. Some of Dr. Frieden's comments are captured here, in the Fox 5 News coverage of the event.

The NCRR, part of the NIH, announced yesterday that it will provide approximately $75 million over the next five years to support four institutions via NCRR's Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMIs) program. The awards will support clinical and translational research which focuses on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, HIV/AIDS and other conditions that disproportionately impact minority and other medically underserved populations. Institutions receiving awards are Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (Los Angeles), Meharry Medical College (Nashville), Morehouse School of Medicine (Atlanta), and Xavier University (New Orleans). Read More... 

Listen to Sound Science as neuroscientist Donald Stein, PhD, discusses the protective properties of progesterone in the brain. Discoveries Dr. Stein made in the laboratory beginning 25 years ago are finally being tested in patients with traumatic brain injuries. Grady will serve as the lead center, led by Emory faculty researchers, along with those from the Morehouse School of Medicine. Read and listen.

In studies of identical and fraternal twins, Viola Vaccarino, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and director of the Emory Program in Cardiovascular Outcomes Research and Epidemiology, found that differences in genetic makeup may make some people with depression more vulnerable to heart disease. Read more... Dr. Vaccarino was also quoted this week in HealthDayNews, the Los Angeles Times, and Times of India featuring her research on heart disease.

HIV specialist Dr. Carlos del Rio bridges patients and populations as chair of the Rollins School of Public Health's Hubert Department of Global Health. Read more... Dr. Rio was also quoted in Journal Watch last week in the article A glimmer of hope for HIV vaccines.

Dr. Mark Mulligan, a researcher at the Emory Vaccine Center, was quoted by the Associated Press on October 23, in the article Mexico pushing for homegrown swine flu vaccine.

Finally, the ACTSI's Community Engagement & Research Program's (CERP) Dr. Melissa Kottke was quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday in the article DOCTOR IS IN: Domestic violence - stopping abuse and bringing awareness.

Nadine Kaslow, PhD, chief psychologist for the Department of Psychiatry and Sciences at Emory was quoted on ABC News and in the NY Daily News on October 21, in the story Teen train suicide cluster shakes affluent California town. Dr. Kaslow was also quoted on CNN yesterday for the story Mate debate: Is monogamy realistic? 

Michael T. Compton, MD, MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at Emory School of Medicine was quoted in Journal Watch last week in the article A glimmer of hope for HIV vaccines.

Ifor Williams, MD, PhD, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory School of Medicine was quoted in Health News Digest on Tuesday in the article "Conveyor Belt" cells may be key to improved oral or nasal vaccines.

Proposals for research by the Emory School of Medicine faculty are being accepted toward the November 1, deadline. Grants up to $25,000 are provided by the Emory Medical Care Foundation. They are awarded to faculty who are based at least 50 percent of their time at Grady Memorial Hospital. Preference is given to faculty in the first 10 years at Emory. For questions or to apply, contact William Payne at 404-727-5640.

NIH funding to support the development, expansion, or reconfiguration of infrastructures needed to facilitate collaboration between academic health centers and community-based organizations for health science research. In this community research infrastructure program, NIH establishes the role of Community Research Associate (CRA), who will be a community representative and serve as a primary liaison facilitating communication and collaboration between the academic health center and the local community.  Applicants must identify at least one CRA. The NIH Funding Opportunity Announcement, Recovery Act Limited Competition: Building Sustainable Community-Linked Infrastructure to Enable Health Science Research (RC4), RFA-OD-09-010 has just been published in the NIH Guide. Click here for the full announcement. Letters of Intent are due November 12; the application deadline is December 11; and the earliest anticipated start date is July 2010. This initiative is funded under the Recovery Act. 

The Emory Center for Injury Control has created a multidisciplinary Faculty Seed Grant Program to facilitate and promote innovative, preliminary, and interdisciplinary research activities to yield future high-impact injury prevention research. The four categories of grants (One-year Pilot Grants, Grant Application Awards, Community-based, Capacity-building and Translation Research Grants, and Cooperative Grant) are designed to provide incentives and support for researchers to work collaboratively with interdisciplinary teams and community members on projects that can lead to larger grant proposals related to violence and unintentional injury prevention or that support the preparation of a larger grant proposal. The seed grants range in amounts but all reflect total costs (covering both direct and indirect costs, where applicable) for projects lasting one year or less. Application

The Office of Research Compliance and Center for Ethics sponsors its 4th Annual Compliance Symposium, Research Misconduct and Things (Authorship, Falsification, Plagiarism and Fabrication) that go Bump in the Night, TODAY from 9:00 a.m. until noon in the Woodruff Library, Jones Room, 3rd Floor. For more information about the event please click here. CME and CHC educational credits will be offered.

More than 270 medical and dental students from 70 U.S. schools will visit the NIH Clinical Center next week for the 7th annual Clinical Investigator Student Trainee Forum. The forum is a program of the NIH Clinical Center's Office of Clinical Research Training and Medical Education to encourage collaborations and professional relationships and to educate on the process of building a career in clinical research. New this year, organizers will update attendees on the schedule and presentation content via the Twitter handle CCMedEd, using the tag #CIST. The forum will be held Wednesday through Friday in the Masur Auditorium, NIH Clinical Center, Bethesda, MD. For more information and a full schedule, contact Maggie McGuire, NIH Clinical Center communications specialist, at 301-594-5789 or mcguirema@mail.nih.gov.

A New Faculty Orientation offered jointly by the Emory Office of Sponsored Programs and the Office of Grants & Contracts Accounting is scheduled for Friday, November 6, from 9:00 a.m. until noon in the 1599 Building, Room 1.432. This workshop is open to all faculty, but is particularly relevant for those faculty new to research or fairly new to Emory.  Anyone interested in attending should RSVP to Camilah Hicks at cghicks@emory.edu.

Emory's Office for Clinical Research presents Research Matters @ Grady on Thursday, November 12, from 11:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. in the Grady Faculty Office Building, room 101. This event offers CME hours. Click here to register. 

The NCRR along with the National Cancer Institute and the Clinical Center at NIH presents the CTSA Pharmaceutical Assets Portal: Matching Academia and Industry for Drug Repositioning conference on Friday, December 4, from 9:00 a.m. until noon in the Lipsett Amphitheater, Building 10, NIH Campus, Bethesda, MD. Drug repositioning has become more important recently as many pharmaceutical companies are seeing their drug pipelines dry up. With the high cost of drug research and development, drug repositioning offers a way to explore these previously shelved assets. The CTSA Pharmaceutical Assets Portal is a tool that aims to match researchers' scientific knowledge of targets and diseases with the repositioning needs of the pharmaceutical industry to potentially increase the number of approved drugs for alternative uses. Join your colleagues for a half-day conference that will bring together leaders in the pharmaceutical industry, government, and research to explore current drug repositioning efforts. For more information and to register, visit http://palladianpartners.com/Pharm-Assets. Registration is requested by November 25, Register Now. This event will be videocast at http://videocast.nih.gov. View Agenda

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the NIH, announces the next generation of its online Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms. The glossary contains several new features, including more than 100 colorful illustrations and more than two dozen 3-D animations that allow the user to dive in and see genetic concepts in action at the cellular level. The updated glossary gives students, teachers, and the public a reliable online resource for more than 200 terms and basic concepts behind today's breakthroughs in genetics and genomics. The glossary is available at www.genome.gov/glossary.

The new curriculum in the Emory University School of Medicine now includes a Discovery Phase that requires all third year students who have completed medical school through their clinical rotations, to engage in an approved, mentored research project for at least five continuous months beginning in the spring of 2010. There is no salary commitment on the part of mentors or projects to have these talented individuals join your team.  Click here for more information.

Current medical students at Emory University School of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), and other health professional trainees pursuing doctoral degrees in public health, biomedical engineering, nursing and other fields at Emory, MSM and GA Tech can apply for short-term (3 month) stipends ($5,190 of salary support) funded by the Research Education, Training and Career Development (RETCD) program of the ACTSI. This mechanism will support medical and graduate students who are interested in a short course program focused on clinical and/or translational research under the mentorship of a successful, federally funded faculty mentor. Application for the short-term training program includes several components that should be submitted electronically by emailing TL1Applications@erooms.emory.edu. For more information please visit www.atlantactsi.org/areas/retcd/documents/TL1_three-month_program-9-30-08_FINAL.pdf.

The West End Medical Center site is a community-based ACTSI Clinical Interaction Site that provides comprehensive support for clinical investigation with various core resources and facilities. ACTSI provides support, equipment, consultation, nursing and lab services, and the infrastructure necessary for Emory, MSM, and Georgia Tech faculty to conduct clinical research at the West End Medical Center. For more information please click here. To learn how to submit a protocol click here.