San Antonio (Feb. 17, 2004) – The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio has received a $540,000 grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to administer the Generalist Physician Faculty Scholars program. This national career development program is designed to develop leaders in primary care academics by providing funding for junior faculty research.
Each year the program provides $300,000 for 15 junior faculty members in family medicine, internal medicine and general pediatrics, to conduct four-year research projects nationwide. Currently, there are more than 60 scholars participating in the program and conducting research on a wide variety of topics. Under the program, the scholars, sponsored by their medical schools, receive support to enhance their research productivity, develop innovative mentoring programs for medical students, and participate in the design and implementation of primary education initiatives. The program coordinates several activities including an annual meeting for the scholars to present their research findings and conference calls for the scholars to discuss professional issues.
Poison Center medical director invited to serve on federal board
San Antonio (Feb. 17, 2004) – Miguel C. Fernández, M.D., medical director of the South Texas Poison Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has been appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson invited
Dr. Fernández to serve on the Board of Scientific Counselors. The ATSDR, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, serves the public “by using the best science, taking responsive public health actions, and providing trusted health information to prevent harmful exposures and disease related to toxic substances,” according to its mission statement.
Dr. Fernández, associate professor of surgery at the Health Science Center, completed his postgraduate training in medical toxicology at the Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson and emergency medicine training at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has received numerous honors and awards. He is a fellow of the American College of Medical Toxicology and the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Dr. Fernández is a medical expert in toxicology and poison control and has been involved both nationally and internationally in the development of poison centers. Current projects include poisoning prevention education, herbal medication toxicology, acetaminophen toxicity, snakebite envenomizations, hyperbaric medicine, plant toxins and U.S.-Mexico border toxicology.
The South Texas Poison Center is a free and confidential public service available 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-800-222-1222.
HSC researchers seek glaucoma-Alzheimer’s link
San Antonio (Feb. 17, 2004) – A research group at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is examining the intriguing possibility of a link between glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease. The group is working with rat and mouse models of glaucoma to seek a possible connection. Glaucoma is a blinding disease that is difficult to detect until substantial vision loss has occurred.
Alzheimer’s includes an increased incidence of cerebral vascular disease and hemorrhagic stroke marked by abnormal deposits of a toxic protein called amyloid in blood vessel walls, said Stuart McKinnon, M.D., Ph.D., department of ophthalmology. “There is debate about what causes the process. We have found that amyloid also is deposited in the eyes, optic nerves and brains of rats in an experimental animal model of glaucoma.”
Other groups have shown that patients with Alzheimer’s have higher incidence of glaucoma (as much as five times higher) and progression of their glaucoma is faster. “Glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease, so why should its mechanism be different from other neurodegenerative diseases?” Dr. McKinnon said. “We’ve been finding that glaucoma seems to share similarities with Alzheimer’s.”
Dr. McKinnon’s lab is looking at the eyes and brains of rats and transgenic mice that produce proteins known to be mutated in the inherited forms of Alzheimer’s. The group recently developed a mouse glaucoma model, one of the first for glaucoma, to examine mice that over- or under-express proteins involved in Alzheimer’s. The researchers are checking to see whether these mice are overly susceptible to glaucoma damage.
If a connection is found, it is possible that treatments for Alzheimer’s could be used to treat glaucoma and vice versa. It’s also possible that physicians one day might be able to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease early by looking at the eye.
There is a push to diagnose Alzheimer’s before patients lose their cognitive abilities. Scientists are working on ways to image the amyloid plaques. “In the animal models we use, amyloid shows up early, so we hope we can take advantage of that and develop a test to diagnose glaucoma in humans earlier, before vision loss occurs,” Dr. McKinnon said. Small animal imaging devices at the Health Science Center will be used, he said.
The McKinnon group also is one of the first to explore gene therapy as a potential treatment for glaucoma. The inserted gene modulated the process of programmed cell death in ganglion cells, the retinal cell type damaged in glaucoma.
Clinical trial studies drug’s ability to prevent diabetes
San Antonio (Feb. 17, 2004) – The Texas Diabetes Institute, a partnership of the Health Science Center and the University Health System, is recruiting individuals for a four-year clinical trial of pioglitazone (brand name Actos) for the prevention of type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Ralph DeFronzo, professor of medicine at the Health Science Center and deputy director of the Texas Diabetes Institute, said the trial should demonstrate pioglitazone’s ability to improve the body’s sensitivity to insulin and prevent insulin-producing beta cells from dying.
Dr. DeFronzo is principal investigator for the ACT NOW Trial (Actos Now for the Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes), which will compare outcomes of pre-diabetic individuals receiving pioglitazone with those receiving a placebo.
Early in life, type 2 diabetics produce three or four times the amount of insulin produced by individuals who are not diabetic. The problem is that the body does not respond to the insulin, and the beta cells eventually start to fail.
Later in life, as the beta cells start to fail, the amount of insulin in the blood starts to fall. At this stage, even though the blood insulin levels are higher than in non-diabetic individuals, the amount of insulin isn’t enough because of the severity of the body’s resistance to insulin.
Pioglitazone is part of the thiazolidine family of medications. “Much of the basic research on this class of drug was done here,” Dr. DeFronzo said. “We were amongst the first to show that these drugs improve insulin sensitivity.”
Thiazolidine drugs also save beta cells from dying. “We believe this class of drugs cannot only improve how the tissues respond to insulin, but also improve how much insulin is made by the body, thereby preventing diabetes,” Dr. DeFronzo said.
The ACT NOW Trial will enroll patients at eight U.S. centers, including the Texas Diabetes Institute. The researchers will identify people who are pre-diabetic. Half will get pioglitazone and half placebo. Treatment will be for 39 months.
“We anticipate that 60 percent to 70 percent of the patients in the pioglitazone arm will not develop diabetes,” Dr. DeFronzo said. “If individuals are taking placebo and develop diabetes, they will receive pioglitazone.”
The researchers also believe that pioglitazone treatment, administered when people first develop diabetes, will prevent the blood glucose levels from rising and thus prevent blindness, kidney failure and nerve damage. Diabetics also are more prone to heart attacks and stroke. There is good evidence that the thiazolidines may prevent atherosclerosis, Dr. DeFronzo said.
By taking ultrasound wave readings of the subjects’ carotid arteries, the researchers will test for thickening of the artery, signaling atherosclerosis. “We believe this drug will cause regression of the atherosclerosis,” Dr. DeFronzo said.
Hispanics are at higher risk for type 2 diabetes and its complications, such as heart disease, stroke, amputations, blindness and kidney failure. The study coordinators seek to enroll large numbers of Hispanics and African Americans.
To be screened for eligibility, call (210) 358-7200. The study is looking to enroll pre-diabetics – individuals who are at high risk to develop diabetes later in life. Pre-diabetics include individuals with a strong family history of diabetes (including gestational diabetes) and individuals who are significantly overweight. There is no cost to participate, and subjects will be reimbursed for their time. Dr. DeFronzo’s group will enroll 75 to 100 patients.
Dr. DeFronzo emphasized the importance of weight loss and exercise. It’s been shown that exercise activates an important biochemical pathway to increase insulin sensitivity.
The ACT NOW trial is supported by a $7.4 million grant from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, makers of Actos.
UTHSC research team receives grant from The Mind Science Foundation
San Antonio (Feb. 10, 2004) – Abraham Verghese, M.D., the Marvin Forland Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, and Therese Jones, PhD., associate director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, received a 2004 Tom Slick Research Award in Consciousness from The Mind Science Foundation.
“We are thrilled to be one of seven research teams in America and across the world to be chosen for this award,” Dr. Verghese said. “We were funded for what I think is a unique project: to look at the construct and evolution of empathy.”
The awards are named after Tom Slick, who established the foundation to explore the human mind. Of the 20 research teams worldwide considered for the award, only seven were chosen.
“In our invitation to submit, we made it clear that we wanted to encourage collaboration with younger researchers as a means of stimulating interest in the field of consciousness among promising young scientists,” said Emilio Romero, M.D., professor and deputy chairman in the department of psychiatry at the Health Science Center and chair of The Mind Science Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Committee.
Cell biologist is named top 2004 scholar at HSC
San Antonio (Feb. 9, 2004) – A San Antonio researcher who studies the orderly – and sometimes not so orderly – process by which the body kills its own cells was awarded The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio’s top honor Jan. 29.
Brian Herman, Ph.D., professor and chairman of cellular and structural biology at the Health Science Center, received the 2004 Presidential Distinguished Scholar Award from Health Science Center President Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D. Dr. Herman’s contributions to scientists’ understanding of apoptosis, or cell “suicide,” has had major implications in the fields of aging, heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.
Scientists estimate that 100,000 of our cells die every second and are replaced by new cells. “It turns out a number of different diseases are due to defects in the process by which cells die,” Dr. Herman said. “Our research has implications for how aberrations in the cell death process are involved in the development of cancer and possibly the resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapy and other treatments. We also study how changes in the regulation of the cell death process may contribute to the rate at which we age and/or how well we age.”
Dr. Herman’s research teams and collaborators at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Mayo Clinic have made a number of major discoveries in his roughly 30-year career. They uncovered a process by which cells are injured when they lose oxygen due to loss of blood supply. They also discovered ways to rescue those cells from the injury or slow the injury process. “This has turned out to have major implications for the storage of organs for transplantation and also for treating people who have had heart attacks,” Dr. Herman said.
More recently, Dr. Herman’s work on aging has resulted in preliminary data that suggest deregulation of certain parts of the cell death pathway may play a major role in the development of neurodegenerative diseases and aging. His team is currently employing experimental models that resist the loss of brain cells in regions of the brain that are affected in Parkinson’s disease.
Dr. Herman received his Ph.D. in 1980 from the University of Connecticut Medical School. He joined the Health Science Center faculty in 1998 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has authored 51 book chapters and 148 peer-reviewed publications, many of which have appeared in the top-tier journals such as Nature.
Dr. Herman is chair of the Health Science Center’s Executive Research Committee and is principal investigator of grants totaling more than $8 million. He is the recipient of a prestigious National Institutes of Health MERIT Award, which provides long-term stable support to investigators whose research competence and productivity are distinctly superior and who are likely to continue to perform in an outstanding manner. It is an honor bestowed on only the top 1 percent of scientists in the nation.
Fifteen other Health Science Center faculty and staff were honored with excellence awards. To view photos, bios and video clips of all the winners, visit www.uthscsa.edu/opa/presaward2004/.