Global Accessibility Awareness Day is a good reminder of the importance of digital accessibility

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May 16 is the 13th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). At UT Health San Antonio, this day is an important reminder that digital accessibility benefits many people in our community.

According to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four people live with one or more disabilities. Many of those disabilities may be invisible or undisclosed, so people may not know the barriers faced by their co-workers, students, patients and neighbors.

Many of the people that UT Health San Antonio serves are even more likely to experience disability. People with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune disease are more likely to be living with a disability. Military veterans in the community also experience disability at higher rates. In addition, as the population ages, people are more likely to acquire disabilities or develop progressive disabilities.

To succeed in its missions and uphold its values, UT Health San Antonio must make sure its online workplaces and service points offer equal access to people who are blind, have low vision, are colorblind, are d/Deaf or hard of hearing, have cognitive disabilities, speech disabilities, seizures, mobility disabilities or other disabilities.

UT Health San Antonio invests in buildings and spaces that are accessible to all. As more and more of the institution’s services are offered online, the institution must ensure the same is true of its websites, mobile apps, software, learning materials and communications.

When accessibility is taken into account when planning, purchasing, designing, developing and deploying digital content or technology, everyone in the community benefits.

Closed captions, for example, were developed for people who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing, but they also benefit people with cognitive disabilities or those in noisy surroundings. Likewise, making sure reading material is accessible to blind people using screen readers also supports sighted people with dyslexia, or those who want to listen to material while they drive, jog or cook dinner. In short: Digital accessibility is essential for some and useful for all.

Early adoption of digital accessibility can reap future benefits

Everyone has a role to play in improving accessibility. The earlier the university community works accessibility into its digital materials or tools, the less remediation is needed later. There are simple steps the university community can take to ensure that emails, slide decks, documents, meetings, lectures and other digital materials are accessible. Mostly, it’s about taking the time to think with empathy about how other people will use those materials.

Follow these steps to improve digital accessibility

UT Health San Antonio has resources to help its community get started with those simple steps. First, take a look at the “Digital Accessibility 101” articles in the TeamDynamix Knowledge Base. There are currently  three there now, and more coming soon. Beyond that, there are many opportunities to learn more about digital accessibility through the institution’s  Accessibility Learning Paths, which include free courses from sources like Percipio, LinkedIn Learning and Access Academy, a learning platform available free of charge for State of Texas employees.

Contact for accessibility issues

Finally, any university community member who knows of someone who has encountered barriers or difficulties with UT Health San Antonio technology platforms, can contact accessibility@uthscsa.edu so that the institution  can learn from that experience and work to make the environment better for everyone. Likewise, those with questions or those who would like to learn more about opportunities to advance digital accessibility at UT Health San Antonio can contact accessibility@uthscsa.edu.

Photos: Schools co-host contractor fair

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More than 90 guests, composed heavily of local members of construction trades, visited an inaugural Construction Fair on May 8, co-hosted by UT Health San Antonio and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).

The fair was conducted by the institutions’ supply chain management departments in support of their Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) programs. It brought contractors large and small together with school representatives to learn about upcoming and planned projects at the growing campuses.

“Both institutions have construction projects underway and have more planned in the near future,” said Eric R. Walls, senior director of Supply Chain Management at UT Health San Antonio.

“We were excited to engage with the contractors and they’re excited about opportunities to help us grow and update our campus and UTSA’s,” he said.

View photos from the event.

Researchers at UT Health San Antonio, UTSA, UT Tyler receive $1M grant, partner in improving trauma care using AI

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James Bynum, PhD, professor and vice chair of research in the department of surgery at UT Health San Antonio and executive director of the Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative (TRC4), expressed support in partnership with researchers at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and The University of Texas at Tyler (UT Tyler) in developing and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve trauma care decision making among clinicians.

To read the full story, click here.

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) is one of the country’s leading health science universities and is designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. With missions of teaching, research, patient care and community engagement, its schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions, graduate biomedical sciences and public health have graduated more than 42,550 alumni who are leading change, advancing their fields and renewing hope for patients and their families throughout South Texas and the world. To learn about the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit UTHealthSA.org.

Stay connected with The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

UT Health San Antonio to lead $11 million, NIH-funded study of a first-ever oral chlamydia vaccine

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The study of a novel oral vaccine that could protect against chlamydia infection has been awarded approximately $11 million in National Institutes of Health funding over five years through a cooperative agreements research project grant, known as a U01 grant.

“We are excited about receiving the U01 award because it will enable us to move our basic microbiology and immunology bench research work closer to developing a medically significant reagent for ‘making human lives better,’ our institution’s overall mission,” said Guangming Zhong, MD, PhD, professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics with the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio), and principal investigator of the study.

Guangming Zhong, MD, PhD

Chlamydia is the most reported sexually transmitted disease and affects about 4 million people in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And yet, while there are vaccines for other sexually transmitted infections including HPV, hepatitis A and hepatitis B, there is none for chlamydia.

The infection often is left untreated due to the lack of specific symptoms. Untreated chlamydial infections can lead to severe complications including pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancy.

Zhong said the prospective vaccine, called intrOv, came about after several years of persistent effort studying chlamydial pathogenic mechanisms in mice.

While investigating mouse-adapted chlamydia, the team accidently found that genital chlamydia that spread to the gastrointestinal tract established long-standing colonization.

From there, they tried an oral inoculation of chlamydia to the GI system and found that it became not only non-pathogenic but also offered protective immunity against subsequent infection in other tissues including the genital tract and airways.

This surprising finding, Zhong said, led them to conclude that an oral delivery of chlamydia could serve as a vaccination against the infection. The team then created mutant versions of the infection that could no longer cause disease but could induce transmucosal protection.

One of these attenuated mutants, intrOv, included unique qualities viable for cross-species translation to the human pathogen of chlamydia.

“Since the human pathogen chlamydia has more than 15 serotypes, developing a vaccine against all 15 serotypes is challenging,” Zhong said. “Using the mouse-adapted, chlamydia-bases vaccine intrOv to cover all 15 serotypes is a nice surprise.”

This grant supports the production of investigative new drug-enabling data for moving the oral chlamydia vaccine to Phase I trials.

“We will optimize the immunization regimens, identify protection immune correlates in mouse models and validate the vaccine efficacy in pigs and non-human primates,” Zhong said.

If all goes well at that stage, the team will file an Investigational New Drug, or IND, application with the Food and Drug Administration to advance the vaccine to clinical trials by the end of the grant’s time frame.

Back in 2022, UT Health San Antonio was granted an exclusive global license to allow Ohio biopharmaceutical company Blue Water Vaccines Inc. to develop Zhong’s findings into an oral vaccine for chlamydia.

Study collaborators from the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UT Health San Antonio include Zhenming “Jack” Xu, PhD, and Nu Zhang, PhD, who will provide B cell and T cell expertise.

Other collaborators include Pat Frost, DVM, and Marie-Claire Gauduin, PhD, primate genital-tract infection experts with Texas Biomedical Research Institute; Yufeng Wang, PhD, bioinformatics expert with The University of Texas at San Antonio; Luis M de la Maza, MD, PhD, with the University of California at Irvine; Huizhou Fan, MD, PhD, with Rutgers University; Harlan Caldwell, PhD, chief of chlamydial diseases section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID; Robert Brunham, MD, with the University of British Columbia; and William Geisler, MD, MPH, from the University of Alabama.

Study: Physical exercise impacts every type of tissue in the body and affects males and females differently

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Exercise equipment is seen at the MoTrPAC clinical site at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

MoTrPAC releases seven publications this month

We all know that exercise is good for us, but figuring out the “why” and “how” of physical exercise’s effect on the body is the goal of a 10-year, multi-million dollar project through the National Institutes of Health called the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium, (MoTrPAC).

A study published May 1 in Nature showcases some of the first findings from MoTrPAC including data from a MoTrPAC clinical site at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Rasmussen

“It’s a multi-omics study meaning that we’re looking at transcriptomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, proteomics and trying to then do a bioinformatics approach to make a comprehensive map of how physical activity affects the human body,” said Blake Rasmussen, PhD, chair of the department of cellular and integrative physiology and director of the Center for Metabolic Health with the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, part of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

MoTrPAC was launched in 2016 and now includes 19 sites, six of which conduct exercise studies on adults and one site for exercise studies of children. Other sites include pre-clinical animal studies, chemical analysis, bioinformatics center and coordinating center.

Rasmussen said consortium site participants work together to gather data and share their findings.

Vopli

He heads the MoTrPAC clinical site located at UT Health Science Center’s Barshop Institute. Elena Volpi, MD, PhD, director of the Barshop Institute, is a co-investigator at the UT Health MoTrPAC site.

The MoTrPAC project had a prolific month for publications with seven studies released in Nature, Nature Metabolism, Nature Communications, Function, Journal of Applied Physiology, Cell Metabolism and Cell Genomics.

These first findings from MoTrPAC focus on the effects of physical exercise on male and female rats, but Rasmussen said they hope to translate these findings to patient populations.

Researchers conducted thousands of analyses on 19 rat tissue types identifying changes in genes, proteins and metabolites.

The study published May 1 in Nature, the first in a group of MoTrPAC papers in this publication, focuses on the widespread effect of physical exercise on every type of tissue in the body and how exercise affects male and female rats differently.

Rasmussen said they were aware that exercise has acute and long-term effects on certain body systems, but said it was a surprise to find that all bodily tissues have some response to exercise training.

Additionally, the exercise-response differences between male and female rats were greater than anticipated. For example, researchers found differences in most tissues sampled including brain, adrenal gland, lung and fat tissue. These findings could eventually play a role in how exercise interventions are recommended for men and women.

Rasmussen said the goal of MoTrPAC is to create a “map” that would be available online, of the exercise response of every system in the human body.

These insights could lead to specialized exercise routines being prescribed, just like a pill, for many ailments or health conditions.

To have UT Health Science Center at San Antonio be part of this historic study is a privilege, Rasmussen said.

“The NIH said this is the most complicated, complex clinical trial they’ve ever funded. Because of all the different tissues we’re collecting, different procedures, intervention components and tests that we’re doing. It is exciting to be a part of such a large national consortium that puts us on the map with prestigious institutions from around the country,” Rasmussen said.

MoTrPAC is funded by the NIH Common Fund and overseen in collaboration with the National Institute on Aging , the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. For a list of current projects, visit https://commonfund.nih.gov/MolecularTransducers/fundedresearch.

For more information on adult and pediatric clinical studies, visit clinicaltrials.gov under NCT03960827 and NCT04151199or visit the recruitment webpage to learn more about how you can participate.

The data produced through this research project is publicly available for further analysis and direct download to encourage more hypotheses from the biomedical community.

Temporal dynamics of the multi-omic response to endurance exercise training

MoTrPAC study group and lead analysts

Published: May 1, 2024, Nature, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06877-w

 

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) is one of the country’s leading health science universities and is designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. With missions of teaching, research, patient care and community engagement, its schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions, graduate biomedical sciences and public health have graduated more than 42,200 alumni who are leading change, advancing their fields and renewing hope for patients and their families throughout South Texas and the world. To learn about the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit UTHealthSA.org.

The Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies is one of the world’s premier institutes dedicated to the study of age-related diseases. The Barshop Institute is the only aging intensive research institute in the country to have four peer-reviewed designations: two National Institute on Aging (NIA)-funded centers (Nathan Shock and Claude D. Pepper centers), a testing site of the NIA-sponsored Interventions Testing Program, and a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center.

Stay connected with The University of Texas Health Science at San Antonio on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

 

 

UT School of Public Health San Antonio café now open

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The new café is located on the first floor of the UT School of Public Health San Antonio Building.

A new café on the first floor of the School of Public Health Building recently opened, offering breakfast tacos and classics like pancakes and oatmeal as well as lunch favorites like burgers, sandwiches, salads, wraps and more.

Rocio’s Café is located at 8403 Floyd Curl Drive on the Greehey Academic and Research campus and is open Monday – Friday from 7 a.m. to 2:45 p.m.

Click here to see the menu.