Volume 2 Issue 2 Winter Edition
Consortium of UT System MD/PhD Programs
The University of Texas System
has the 4 CTSA institutions in the
State of Texas and 4 of the 5 largest MD/PhD Programs including
one MSTP, UT-Southwestern. A
Consortium of UT System MD/PhD
Programs has been recently created to leverage these resources
aiming to create an effective Clinician-Scientist Pipeline (from MD/
PhD student to Independent Faculty). Bi-annual meetings of the
MD/PhD directors and administrators with UT System leadership
have led several proposals to improve the administrative function-
ing of each program. The Consortium is organizing an annual UT System MD/PhD Conference
in Austin creating a larger community (~200 MD/PhD students) with thematic poster presentations for all students fostering inter-institutional collaboration, and a larger array of career
development workshops.
UT System MD/PhD Program Consortium ( left to right) : Randall Goldblum, MD (UTMB), Dianne Milewicz, MD,
PhD (UTHSC-H), Patti Hurn, PhD (UT System), Larry Sowers, PhD (UTMB), Russell Broaddus, MD, PhD (UTHSC-H),
Andrew Zinn, MD, PhD (UTSW), José E. Cavazos, MD, PhD (UTHSCSA), and Karen Browning, PhD (UT Austin).
Inside this issue:
Adler Endowment
2
Dr. Bruce Beutler
2
F30 & F31
Grant Recipients
3
Match Day
3
New Citizen
3
Announcements
4
Holiday Party
4
MD/PhD Awardees
Katie Hinchee-Rodriguez, GS2
received the 2013 Graduate
Travel Award to attend the
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
( ASBMB ) Annual Meeting. The
meeting will be held April 19th24th, 2013 in Boston, MA.
Katie also received a Certificate
of Recognition for Best Poster at
our 4th Annual MD/PhD Retreat
on February 15th-16th, 2013.
Raehannah Jamshidi, GS2 received an “Outstanding Poster
Presentation” for her poster titled, “Long-Term Regulation of
Kappa Opiod Receptor Function by
a Single Administraion of the Antagonist norBNI in Peripheral Sensory Neurons”, at the Annual Behavior, Biology, and Chemistry
Conference in San Antonio, March
8-10, 2013.
Adler Endowment
$1 million Adler Family gift
provides support for scholars
and research
The latest program support to
be announced is from the estate
of Laura A. Adler in memory of
her husband, Harry F. Adler,
M.D., Ph.D. Half of the $1 million gift will establish the Harry
F. Adler, M.D., Ph.D., Laboratory
in the South Texas Research
Facility. The other half will establish the Harry F. Adler, M.D.,
Ph.D., President's Endowment.
Pioneer in translational medicine
Dr. Harry Adler was an early
pioneer in translational medicine who achieved the rigorous
educational milestone of physician with his M.D. degree and of
biomedical scientist with his
Ph.D. degree. In 1950 he wrote
an unpublished report on altitude decompression sickness
that became a classic review
used by many investigators. It
was made into a book in 1964.
Dr. Adler, a Chicago native, ran a
family practice from 1949 to
1979 in San Antonio and was
chief of staff at a Baptist hospital. He died in 1997.
At a reception in November,
Dallas dermatologist Max Adler,
M.D., a 1976 alumnus of the
School of Medicine at the UT
Health Science Center, spoke on
behalf of the Adler family.
“Mom and Dad would be very
proud of this,” he said.
The event honored the memory
of Dr. Adler and his wife, Laura,
who met her husband when
both were at Randolph Air Force
Base. Although never formally
trained, she developed great
skill as a nurse. A group of nursing students from the Baptist
Health System School of Health
Professions symbolized the excellence she acquired in on-thejob training under the watchful
eye of Dr. Adler. Mrs. Adler died
Dr. Max Adler (center)
With students from the MD/PhD Program. (Vinh Dao, Lena Wisely, David Melton, Jeff Cooney, Diana Villarreal, Katie Hinchee,
and Josephine Thinwa (top row). Dr. Jose E. Cavazos, Trey Kellogg , Justin Drerup, Curtis Clark, and Daniel Barron
Nobel Laureate, Dr. Bruce
Beutler
On March 24, the MD/PhD program hosted a roundtable discussion with Dr. Bruce Beutler, 2011 Nobel Laureate after his
lunch seminar on Inflammation and Toll receptors (see your
own email to students). Dr. Beutler is one of four Nobel Laureates who has lectured in our campus in the span of 12
months. Drs. Aaron
Ciechanover, Stan
Prusiner, and Mario
Capecchi have also
lectured at our institution during that span
of time.
Page 2
UT System Visit
The MD/PhD program was
featured at the annual institutional visit by the University of
Texas System on February 18,
2013. The program was congratulated by the outstanding
performance and productivity
of our MD/PhD students with
over 60% of them receiving
extramural research funding
during their graduate school
years, an average 4.4 publications out of their PhD degree
and a mean time to graduation of 7.8 years.
Volume 2 Issue 2
MD/PhD Program
MS4’s Match!
NIH Research Service Awards
Our two MS-4 MD/PhD students
crisscross the country with interviews from Boston to San Francisco, and on March 17, they
matched at outstanding residencies:
Two more NIH National Research Service Awards were earned by our MD/PhD students.
Daniel Barron: 1 F31 NS083160 - 01 entitled “Quantification of Thalamic Atrophy and
Connectivity in Medial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy”
Lena Wisely:
1 F30 AG043248 - 01A1 entitled “ Mechanism of Amyloid-beta mediated
mTOR Dysregulation in Neurodegeneration”
Angela Rodriguez Boyd –
OB/GYN, UTHSCSA
The MD/PhD program now has 5 F30 and 1 F31 NIH NRSA grants. In addition, two of our
MD/PhD students have just received excellent F30 priority scores. We hope that we have
great news later this year. With these NIH grants, our MD/PhD program ranks as top 8 out
of 110 MD/PhD programs by the ratio of F30s per MD/PhD students in the program.
Suzanne Thibodeaux –
Pathology (Research track),
University of Pennsylvania
Publications
Walch JD, Carreno FR, Cunninham JT. Intracerebroventricular (ICV) Losartan Infusion Modualtes Angiotensin Type 1 Receptor (ATIR) Exp ression in the Subfomicalorgan (SFO) and Drinking Behavior in bile Duct Ligated Rats. Exp Physiol. 2012 Dec 12 PMID: 23243146
Vo DT, Subramaniam D, Remke M, Burton TL, Uren PJ, Gelfond JA, de Sousa Abreu R, Burns SC, Qiao M, Suresh U, Korshunov A, Dubuc AM, Northcott PA, Smith
AD, Pfister SM, Taylor MD, Janga SC, Anant S, Vogel C, Penalva LO. The RNA-binding protein Musashi1 affects medulloblastoma growth via a network of cancer
related genes and is an indicator of poor prognosis. American Journal of Pathology. 2012 Nov; 181(5): 1762-72.
Penalva LO, Vo DT, Boutz D and Smith AD. Post-transcriptional gene networks, Encyclopedia of Systems Biology, W. Dubitzky, O. Wolkenhauer, K. Cho & H. Yokota (Eds.), DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-9863-7, Springer. Oct 2012.
Villard JW, Paranjape AS, Victor DA, Feldman MD. Applications of optical Coherenece tomography in Cardiovascular Medicine, Part 2. Advances in Non-Nuclear
Imaging Technologies. Journal of Nuclear Cardiology, Vol. 16, No. 4; 620-39.
Rossano A, Chouhan AK, Macleod GT. "Genetically-Encoded pH Indicators (GEpHIs) reveal activity-dependent cytosolic acidification of Drosophila motor nerve
termini in vivo." J Physiol. Accepted Dec. 14 2012, to be published early 2013
Ramirez TA, Jourdan-LeSaux C, Joy A, Zhang J, Dai Q, Mifflin S, Lindsey ML. Chronic and Intermittent Hypoxia Differentially Regulate Left Ventricular Inflammatory and Extracellular Matrix Responses. Hypertension Research, (2012).
Kwek S, Dao V, Roy R, Hou Y, Alajajian D, Simko JP, Small EJ, Fong L. Diversity of Antigen-Specific Responses Induced In Vivo with CTLA-4 Blockade in Prostate
Cancer Patients. Journal of Immunology. 189(7): Oct 1, 2012. PMCID: PMC3448828
New Addition to the MD/PhD
Program Extended Family
Humberto & Diana Villarreal
Lena Wisely becomes a US
Citizen
beauty, please visit:
Lena Wisely officially be-
along with Samuel welcomed
http://www.brownthe newest addition to their
eyedgirlphotogfamily. Sofia Rose Villarreal
raphy.com/
was born on January 9th, 2013 blog/2013/01/30/babyat 11:20am at 7lbs, 8oz and 19 sofie-sneak-peeks-san-
came a naturalized citizen
of the good ole USA on
January 31st, 2013. So now
Strike a pose……….
she gets to partake of all
inches long. A very sweet little
the duties of a citizen. Any
girl that everyone loves.
advice? Anyone?
Family are all happy…….
even her big brother.
For more glamour shots of this
Page 3
Congratulations!
Sofia Rose taking a
much needed snooze.
Villarreal Family
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Announcements
American Physician Scientist Association – South
Region
Since 2006, an annual Texas APSA conference has
attendance of about 100 MD/PhD students including
many of our students. The South Regional APSA conference will be hosted by our MD/PhD program in the
November 2nd, 2013.
For more info….. http://
www.physicianscientists.org/events/event_details.asp?
id=294954&group
MD/PhD Program Recruiting
SACNAS 2013 will be hosted in San Antonio at the
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, October 3rd to
6th. For more info…….www.sacnas.org
MD/PhD Holiday Party
Dr. and Mrs. Cavazos hosted the 2012 MD/
PhD Holiday Party on December 9th. It was
traditional white elephant where everyone
enjoyed the variety of gifts, food, and just
good cheer.
Thanks to them for opening up their home!
Best Wishes to everyone!
Page 4
Publications Con’t:
Cooney JD*, Hildick-Smith GJ*, Shafizadeh E*, McBride PF, Carroll KJ, Anderson H, Shaw GC,
Tamplin OJ, Wong C, Gallagher PG, Dalton AJ, Shah DI, Zon LI, North TE, Paw BH. Teleost Growth
Factor Independence (gfi) genes differentially regulate successive waves of hematopoiesis. Dev. Biol.
2013; 373(2):431–41. (*equal contributions)
Chen C, Garcia-Santos D, Ishikawa Y, Seguin A, Li L, Fegan KH, Hildick-Smith GJ, Shah DI, Cooney JD,
Chen W, King MJ, Yvette YY, Schultz IJ, Anderson A, Dalton AJ, Freedman ML, Kingsley PD, Palis J,
Hattangadi SM, Lodish H, Ward DM, Kaplan J, Maeda T, Ponka P, Paw BH. Snx3 regulates recycling of
the transferrin receptor and iron assimilation. Cell Metabolism 2013, in press.
Boyd AR and Mortensen EM. Are Statins Beneficial for Viral Pneumonia? European Respiratory
Journal. Invited Editorial. Accepted September 24 2012.
Barron DS, Fox PM, Laird AR, Robinson JL, Fox PT. Thalamic medial Dorsal Nucleus Atrophy in
Medial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: A VBM Meta-analysis. NeuroImage: Clinical 2 (2013) 25-32.