The Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine and the Office for Inclusion and Diversity are celebrating Women in Medicine Month, held annually in September and promoted by the American Medical Association.
This year’s theme is “Celebrating Our Legacy, Embracing Our Future.” Each week in September will focus on a different area (education, research, patient care and community engagement).
The four women here represent research. They include: Lynette C. Daws, Ph.D., professor of cell & integrative physiology; Sara E. Espinoza, M.D., associate professor of medicine and geriatrics researcher, Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies; Jean X. Jiang, Ph.D., Ashbel Smith Professor of Biochemistry and Structural Biology; and Jennifer Sharpe Potter, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and vice dean for research.
Dr. Daws’ NIH-funded research examines antidepressant-like properties of novel compounds in preclinical behavioral and pharmacological studies, which sets the stage for further exploration of new compounds that will help researchers to develop new treatments for depression, especially in children and adolescents.
Dr. Espinoza and her team are conducting a major NIH-funded study to test metformin as a novel intervention for the prevention of frailty, a clinical geriatric syndrome of progressive physical and physiologic decline that is known to increase risk for multiple adverse outcomes with aging. They propose that diabetes/insulin resistance and inflammation are major contributors to frailty, and that the use of metformin to modulate diabetes/insulin resistance and inflammation will prevent and/or ameliorate the progression of frailty.
Recently awarded a $3.2 million grant by the U.S. Department of Defense, lead-scientist Dr. Jiang, in collaboration with researchers from McGovern Medical School in Houston, will test and help develop a drug aimed at keeping breast cancer from further invading bone tissue. Dr. Jiang and her collaborators are working toward developing a less toxic treatment to halt the progression of such metastasis.
Dr. Potter has been selected as a member of the current class of distinguished fellows of the highly competitive Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine® (ELAM) program. Established in 1995 at Drexel University, ELAM® has enrolled nearly 1,000 women leaders and accepts approximately 50 new fellows each year in fields of medicine, dentistry, public health and pharmacy. The program offers an intensive one-year fellowship of leadership training with extensive coaching, networking and mentoring opportunities aimed at diversifying health care leadership.