Volume 6 Number 1 Summer 2008

This is a 22-year-old brain.

That large bubble is an Aneurysm.OUR GLOBAL TB POWERHOUSE • THE ART OF CANCER RESEARCH • EIGHTY-SOMETHINGS @ WORK

Another school year has come and gone at New Jersey Medical School. This past May, we watched

142 graduating members of the Class of 2008 make the transition from their roles as students to

that of doctors. As these stellar individuals face the next stage of their medical training in their

respective residency programs, I’m confident they will continue to make us proud.

There’s a lot for us to be proud of at New Jersey Medical School:

• Our match rate of 97 percent remains well above the national average. That means the vast majority

of our students are able to parlay the top-notch training they receive here into their first jobs as doctors

in residency programs at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions.

• We continue to be a place where high-quality science is conducted. One needn’t look much further

than the grants our scientists are receiving to know the type of cutting-edge and highly regarded research

that takes place here.

• Our Admissions Office is as busy as ever, fielding thousands of applications from aspiring medical

students to fill just 170 spots.

• Our faculty members remain steadfast in their commitment to providing quality medical care that’s

defined by compassion.

In this issue of Pulse, you will read more about projects and programs run by our faculty, staff and stu-

dents as well as other achievements that make New Jersey Medical School a place we all can be proud of.

In health,

Interim DeanUMDNJ–New Jersey Medical SchoolRobert L. Johnson, MD

DirectorUniversity Marketing CommunicationsBarbara Hurley

Executive Director for AdministrationWalter L. Douglas, Jr.

DirectorNJMS Marketing CommunicationsGenene Morris

Senior Editor, NJMS PulseMaryann Brinley

Contributing WritersKaylyn Kendall DinesJennifer S. DoktorskiFlorence IsaacsEve JacobsLisa JacobsJoni ScanlonJill Spotz

PresidentNJMS Alumni Associationand AlumniFocus EditorJoseph V. DiTrolio, MD

AlumniFocus CoordinatorDianne Mink

DesignSherer Graphic Design

Message from the Dean

pulse VOLUME 6 NUMBER 1 SUMMER 2008 UNIVERSITY OF MEDICINE & DENTISTRY OF NEW JERSEY

Keep In Touch…NJMS Pulse is published twice each year by the UMDNJ– Department of University Affairs for New Jersey MedicalSchool (NJMS). We welcome letters to the editor and suggestions for future articles.

Send all correspondence to:Pulse EditorOffice of University Marketing CommunicationsUniversity Heights –P.O. Box 1709, Room 132865 Bergen StreetNewark, NJ 07101–1709or via email to njmspulse@umdnj.edu

JOHN EMERSON

Robert L. Johnson, MD, FAAPThe Sharon and Joseph L. Muscarelle Endowed Dean (Interim)

INSIDE INFORMATION

2 How Do You Measure Success? Try Match DayCounty by County, Respira Grows

3 New Jersey Journal of Medicine LaunchedBarbers Recruited to Fight Cancer

4 Sunday in the Park, Racing for a CureStraight Talk for TeensLeevy’s Legacy

5 NJMS News by the NumbersA Motown Miracle in a Musical Moment

A CLOSER LOOK…

6 …At Our Endowed Chairs 10 …At The Power of Hormones 12 …At www.ePlasty

NJMS PEOPLE: DO YOU KNOW?

14 Hamid Bagce, Student Inventor at Work15 Noreen Gomez, Art is Her Passion 16 Sylvia Voorheis & Eileen Quirk, Eighty-Somethings17 Kudos

FEATURES

18 Inside the Admissions OfficeA peek at the harsh realities behind the scenes

22 Doctor Who?Taking the mini-version of med school

24 The Aneurysm AnswerOn the way to solving a neurological nightmare

28 Inside Our Global TB PowerhouseThe battle to stop a catastrophe in the making

30 Growing Great ResearchersThe art of mixing the clinical and scientific sides of cancer medicine

ALUMNIFOCUS

34 News of Special Interest to NJMS Graduates36 To Send Med Students into Newark

Oh, The Places You Will Go 37 Class Notes: Are You in this Picture?

FOCUS ON PHILANTHROPY

40 How Kirby Makes All the Right Connections

pulse

Summer 2008

COVER: COURTESY OF CHARLES PRESTIGIACOMO, MD, AND WENZHUAN HE, MD

24

28

18

40

15

How Do You Measure Success?

Try Match DayYES, THE 97 PERCENT MATCH RATE — a figure which far exceeded the

national average of 94.2 percent — was impressive. But consider the fact

that fourth-year students won these nearly perfectly matched residencies

in prestigious programs at Stanford, Duke, Yale, Brown, Johns Hopkins,

Weill-Cornell, Columbia, Emory, the Mayo School of Graduate Medical

Education, and in highly competitive specialties like dermatology, neuro-

surgery, ophthalmology, urology and orthopaedics. �

Section compiled and written by Genene Morris

TOP: PETE BYRON2 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

I N S I D E I N F O R M AT I O N

County by County,RESPIRA Grows

RESPIRA, the NJMS bilingual

program teaching children and

parents about asthma triggers, symp-

toms and disease management, grew

by three counties recently. Starting in

2006, the innovative initiative served

families in Essex and Union, but

new funds— $150,000 from the

Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey

and $507,000 from sanofi-aventis—

will ease expansion into Hudson,

Morris and Passaic counties.

“The prevalence of asthma in New

Jersey is increasing at an alarming

rate,” says Evelyn Montalvo Stanton,

MD, RESPIRA director and NJMS

assistant professor of pediatrics.

“Inner-city children are among the

most affected, with the highest preva-

lence in Latino children, particularly

those of Puerto Rican descent.”

Partnering with the New Jersey

Children’s Health Project, a mobile

medical unit launched by the

Children’s Health Fund and the

UMDNJ-School of Nursing,

RESPIRA will now add more bilin-

gual staff members. �

Sarada Sakamuri, MD, ’08 and Elaine Liu, MD, ’08

L EONARD Bielory, MD, pro-fessor of medicine, pedi-

atrics, ophthalmology and visualsciences and director ofthe Division ofAllergy/Immunologyand Rheumatology,knows a thing or twoabout creating a newpublication. More than30 years ago in his firstyear at NJMS, he start-ed The Innominate, astudent newspaper.

This past spring, theinaugural issue of theNew Jersey Journal ofMedicine was published to positive reviews.The new publication, sent to alumni andfaculty, is the product of the AlumniAssociation of NJMS, the Department ofMedicine and UMDNJ-Center forContinuing and Outreach Education.Published semi-annually, it was made possi-ble in part by a grant from sanofi-aventis.

“The feedback has been quite good,” saysBielory, noting that several faculty membershave already expressed interest in contribut-ing to the next issue.

Also on the journal’s editorialboard are: Nancy D. Connell,PhD, professor of medicine;Jennifer Heimall, MD, a medical

staff fellow at the NIH; and Kavita Singh,MD, a private practitioner in Brentwood,TN. Joseph V. DiTrolio, MD, AlumniAssociation president, is executive editor.“The Alumni Association is always availableto help build on the excellent educationreceived by our students,” DiTrolio says.

The first issue, a CME- (continuing med-ical education) certified publication, wasdevoted to the subject of emergingpathogens and featured articles by membersof the Department of Medicine, includingConnell (“Extensively Drug-Resistant TB”and “Bioterrorism, Biodefense andMedicine”); Lawrence D. Budnick, MD,associate professor of medicine (“SeasonalInfluenza Resources for Clinicians”); DavidCennimo, MD, an infectious disease fellowat NJMS (“Chronic Persistent Cough”) and11 others. �

(See page 12 for news about the new ePlastyonline journal.)

Barbers Recruited toFight Cancer

PATRONS of barbershops in northern

New Jersey may soon find themselves

receiving more than just haircuts. They may

also get life-saving information about

prostate and colorectal cancer as part of a

special program. To raise awareness about

these cancers and reduce

their incidence and mortality

rates, Stanley H. Weiss, MD,

professor, preventive medi-

cine and community health,

and an NJMS team are

implementing The Prostate

Net’s Barbershop Initiative™

in Essex, Hudson, Union

and Middlesex counties.

They have embarked on

an aggressive campaign to

train barbers to educate customers about

the dangers of these cancers and encour-

age the men to take advantage of free

screenings. This program is facilitated

through Essex County Cancer Coalition co-

coordinators Christopher P. Tuohy and

Daniel M. Rosenblum, PhD, and outreach

worker Deborah A. Johnson. Weiss designed

the $185,000 Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention (CDC)-sponsored project,

which has also been funded by the Office

of Cancer Control and Prevention of the

New Jersey Department of Health and

Senior Services. �

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LLEFT: PETE BYRON 3

N E W S A B O U T N J M S E V E N T S , F A C U LT Y, G R A N T S , R E S E A R C H A N D M O R E

New JerseyJournal ofMedicineLaunched

“I did have an appreciation for

what I was getting myself into,”

Bielory says, describing the task

of launching a new journal.

Leonard Bielory, MD

LEFT: SARAH RAHMAN4 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

I N S I D E I N F O R M AT I O N

Leevy’s LegacyDOZENS OF COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS AND FAMILY MEMBERS took part in

a memorial service for the late Carroll Moton Leevy, MD, one of the

founding fathers of NJMS. Attendees included his son, Carroll B. Leevy,

MD, an NJMS faculty member; UMDNJ President William F. Owen, Jr.,

MD; NJMS Interim Dean Robert L. Johnson, MD; NJMS Vice Dean Maria

Soto-Greene, MD; and Department of Pediatrics Acting Chair Kendell

Sprott, MD. Leevy was the second faculty president from 1970 to 1972

and served as chair of the Department of Medicine from 1975 to 1991.

He published four books, 20 textbooks, and more than 500 scientific

papers. He also established the Sammy Davis, Jr. National Liver Institute

and was one of the first NJMS faculty members to receive the title

Distinguished Professor. �

Sunday in the Park,

Racing for a Cure

ON an overcast Sunday morning inMay, 176 UMDNJ employees on five

teams laced up their sneakers and headed forBranch Brook Park in Newark for a goodcause: the inaugural walk /run sponsored bythe North Jersey Affiliate of the Susan G.Komen for the Cure, whichpledged financial support for NJMS/University Hospital Cancer Center’s mammography van. The University teams raised nearly $12,000 and the event totaled more than $1.2 million. �

Straight Talkfor Teens

THREE hundred and fifty Essex Countyhigh school students attended the 4th

Annual Teen Forum on HIV/AIDS spon-sored by the Division of

Adolescent and YoungAdult Medicine onApril 11. ActivistHydeia Broadbent,born HIV positive,was joined by actor

Jamie Hector ofHBO’s “The Wire;” East

Orange police sergeantDeLacy Davis, founder of Black CopsAgainst Brutality; Haneefa Freeman, anadvocate for HIV awareness and Dr. RaniWhitfield, all panelists on a discussiontitled: “Think about your choices. The deci-sions you make today will affect the life youlead tomorrow.” The event also featuredAlesha Renee, a Black EntertainmentTelevision (BET) host and spokesperson forBET’s national “Rap it Up” HIV/AIDSCampaign and the National CoalitionAgainst Domestic Violence. �

Father and son (l. to r.): the late Carroll M.Leevy, MD, and Carroll B. Leevy, MD

Hydeia Broadbent

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LTOP: PETE BYRON; BOTTOM LEFT: COURTESY OF MADELEINE SHERER 5

A Motown Miraclein a Musical Moment

SOUL singer-songwriter, record producer,and star of Motown’s legendary

Miracles, Smokey Robinson enjoyed thespotlight at the New Jersey Performing ArtsCenter on June 5 and joined past perform-ers like Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters,Kenny Loggins, Gladys Knight and TonyRandall, who have all come to the rescue ofMS. This year’s event, attended by 2,100people, raised $1.7 million to be used tosupport local research programs includingthe Neurological Institute of New Jersey at UMDNJ–NJMS. In the past, proceeds have established two endowed chairs at the Institute.

NJMS researchers Teresa Wood, PhD,and Steven Levison, PhD, were honoredthat Thursday evening with Medal ofExcellence Awards. Both professors of neu-rology and neurosciences, they are one of afew husband-and-wife MS research teams in the U.S. (For more information aboutWood’s work, see page 8.) �

142New doctors who celebrated at NJMS Convocation on May 19 at New Jersey Performing Arts Center

$15.6 millionFive-year grant from the National Institutes of Health–National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to Abraham Pinter, MD, professor,microbiology and medical genetics, one of 10 researchers nationwide who will be developing preventive HIV vaccines

4,200Total number of graduates of annual Mini-Med program over its nine-year history

3Researchers receiving awards from the UMDNJ Office of Patents and Licensing, fundedby the New Jersey Commission on Sciences and Technology and The Foundation ofUMDNJ: Peter Frederiske, PhD, Emilia Vitale, PhD, and Harvey Ozer, MD

43Top Docs from NJMS chosen by New York Magazine

$110,000Another grant from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) to the Institute ofOphthalmology and Visual Science, led by Marco Zarbin, MD, PhD, bringing the totalRPB commitment up to $1,725,000

$20,000Gift from the Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation to The Autism Center’s Bridging the Gap program

$1 millionReynolds family gives third million for The Tim Reynolds Family Spinal Cord Injury Centerand the research of Robert Heary, MD.

$200,000Three-year award from the March of Dimes to implement“The University Hospital OB/GYN Preterm/Prenatal HealthProject” under Medical Director Theodore Barrett, MD

NJMS News by the Numbers

6

A CLOSER LOOKAT OUR ENDOWED CHAIRS

A N D R E W T H O M A S A N D T E R E S A W O O D

Two Winners’ TalesB Y J I L L S P O T Z

Look for the secret of brilliant work and you’ll probably find the freedom money can buy. Endowed

professorships do this so well. At NJMS, a minimum donation of $2 million supports an endowed chair, one of

the most prestigious honors presented to a faculty member. The gift offers a lasting legacy for the donor, while

simultaneously supporting NJMS’s brightest stars because the money is invested annually, with 5 percent of

the fund’s assets spent each year to sustain the chair’s research. NJMS currently has more than 25 endowed

chairs with funds going to education, research, patient care and community service activities in areas such as

trauma surgery, public health, infectious

disease and bioinformatics.

There are inspirational stories behind all of

these endowments which give credence to both

the philanthropists and the researchers who share

NJMS’s desire to move medicine forward.

Meet two of our endowed chairs: Andrew P.

Thomas, PhD, is researching obesity and its

associated conditions of heart disease and type

2 diabetes; and Teresa L. Wood, PhD, is inves-

tigating multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.

P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

The Thomas P. Infusino Endowed Chair

Andrew P. Thomas, PhDProfessor and Chair, Department ofPharmacology and Physiology

W ALK through Andrew P. Thomas’lab on the sixth floor of the

Medical Science Building (MSB) and wit-ness a whirlwind of scientific experiments inaction…that is, if you can keep up withhim. The professor in The Thomas P.Infusino Endowed Chair is quick on his feetbut even faster in thought. It’s a race to keepup with him.

“In this area of the lab we are workingwith tissue culture. Over there is our bio-chemical area. Here, we are monitoring liv-ing cells in real time to detect either theirphysiological status or the proteins they areexpressing,” he explains. “We are alwaysinterested in the cellular dynamics thatunderlie physiology.” In the Thomas labora-tory, microscopes illuminate living cells

maintained in tissue culture. Fluorescentprobes monitor the signaling processes thatconnect hormonal and metabolic stimuli toalterations in cell function. A very sensitivecamera takes pictures at brief intervals, cre-ating a moving image of cells in action.

A PhD student working in the labdescribes Thomas as “laid back” yet one ofthe most intelligent people he has ever met.This professor completed his graduate andpostdoctoral training at the University ofBristol in England and later at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. He came toNJMS in 1997 from the Department ofPathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology atThomas Jefferson University, where he hadrisen through the ranks from assistant pro-fessor to full professor in just eight years. Inhis 11 years as a chair at NJMS, his depart-ment’s research funding has grown from $1 million to $7 million.

Because he oversees a department of 30faculty members, much of his time is spentbehind a desk, but he still visits the lab eachday. There, you’ll find him answering ques-

tions and helping others. Thomas is knownfor his findings on intracellular signals usedby hormones to control metabolism. He wasthe very first researcher to identify how IP3controls calcium signals in the liver.

When a call for proposals was announcedfor a new endowed chair position in 2005,the pharmacology and physiology depart-ment put Thomas’ name forward. In fact,this group jumped at the opportunity. TheNJMS donor, Thomas P. Infusino, hadserved as chairman and CEO of WakefernFood Corporation, the parent company ofShopRite supermarkets. Infusino’s colleaguesthought a tribute was in order when heretired, so they presented him with anendowed chair to fund education, research orpatient care programs at NJMS. All Infusinohad to do was choose a winning proposal.

Back in the Department of Pharmacologyand Physiology, Thomas recalls, “We createda proposition that was reviewed by theFoundation of UMDNJ and Mr. Infusino.We discussed how we would utilize thefunds and Mr. Infusino felt our research

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LJOHN EMERSON 7

Andrew Thomas, PhD

interests were important to him.” The for-mer CEO was attracted to the idea ofresearch on obesity, diabetes, heart diseaseand alcoholic tissue injury.

Both obesity and type 2 diabetes, occur-ring in epidemic numbers nationwide, canlead to stroke, heart disease, blindness andamputations. “We are certain that these con-ditions are linked to an underlying dysfunc-tion in the regulation of metabolism,”Thomas explains. “There are two ways thebody senses its metabolic status, one isthrough hormones such as insulin and theother through the direct effect of metabo-lites on cells.” While his laboratory hadstudied the hormonal regulation of metabo-lism for many years, Thomas expanded toinvestigate how cells are regulated by theirexposure to metabolites. He has initiatedanalyses of this metabolic sensing in the liverand muscles, where amino acids derivedfrom dietary protein elicit signals that regu-late tissue growth and function.

“Metabolic sensing in the brain is a criti-cal component in the regulation of appetiteand eating behaviors,” explains Thomas.“Growing evidence suggests that the centralnervous system plays a major role in this.”He has also been collaborating with Vanessa

Routh, PhD, associate professor, who identi-fied the specialized neurons that sense glu-cose and the body’s metabolic state.

Funds from the endowment supportassistant professor Larry Gaspers, PhD, whois able to devote almost all his efforts to themetabolic sensing mission. Gaspers, whowas a post-doctoral fellow at ThomasJefferson University, has worked withThomas for 15 years and came to NJMS in1997. “I was always interested in calciumsignaling,” Gaspers explains. “We had stud-ied how nutrients, such as amino acids,evoke calcium responses and whether mito-chondrial metabolism plays a role in gener-ating these intracellular signals. The basicimaging techniques were already in place,but now we are using these approaches tofocus on new goals.”

Gaspers oversees the Thomas lab andcredits his mentor for his own leadershipstyle. “Andrew is very sharp and challengesyou to think,” he explains. “The graduatestudents are free to be adults and takeresponsibility for their projects. This isimportant because some principal investiga-tors choose experiments for their students.Andrew lets them direct their own projectsand encourages them to think outside the

box. In the end, it will be their ambitionsand aspirations that make the project work.”

One student with her own good ideas issecond-year PhD candidate Stephanie Troy,who is collaborating with Routh on howneurons in the hypothalamus detect hypo-glycemia. Thomas explains, “If you’ve had abig meal, neurons start firing and tell you tostop eating or if you are hungry, another setof neurons signals that your blood glucose islow and you should start eating. Stephanie istrying to understand which ones are activat-ed when your blood glucose is low.” French-born, Troy has only been in the U.S. for twoyears. “Although I had to adapt to a differ-ent language and culture, I enjoy this labbecause all the students and post-docs inter-act. Everyone has their own specialty but wecan ask for assistance if we run into troublewith a technique,” she says.

Funds from the endowment are beingused to train MD-PhD physician-scientistsand to facilitate a surgical post-doc’s investi-gation into multiple organ system failure, ina collaboration with Edwin Deitch, MD,professor and chair, surgery. The Infusinogift will also support an ongoing lectureshipfeaturing a prominent scientist working in arelated area.

8 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

A CLOSER LOOK

The Rena Warshow Chair in Multiple Sclerosis

Teresa L. Wood, PhDProfessor and Vice Chair for Research,Department of Neurology and Neurosciences

T ERESA L. Wood, PhD, holds manyNJMS titles: professor, Department

of Neurology and Neurosciences, vice chairfor basic science research, UniversityProfessor—a designation established byUMDNJ in 1999 to attract the best andbrightest researchers in the world—and TheRena Warshow Chair in Multiple Sclerosis(MS).

Wood came to NJMS in 2005 from PennState College of Medicine to fill this

endowed position for three reasons. First,“there is a strong MS research communityhere,” she explains. “NJMS is also wellknown for its exceptional clinical care of MSpatients, and third, the New Jersey MedicalSchool—University Hospital Cancer Centerwas being constructed, which fit both areasof my research.”

According to the National MultipleSclerosis Society, MS affects 2.5 millionindividuals worldwide. Two to three times asmany women as men suffer from this chron-ic, often disabling disease of the centralnervous system (CNS). One of these womenis Lee Kushner, wife of New Jersey realestate developer Murray Kushner. Lee wasdiagnosed more than 10 years ago with amild form of MS, which prompted theKushners to start the annual NJMS Musical

Moments for MS concerts. The first benefitin 1998 raised $2 million, which went toestablish The Rena Warshow EndowedProfessorship in Multiple Sclerosis, namedin honor of Lee’s deceased mother. Sincethen, these annual fund-raisers have generat-ed more than $6 million for MS research.

MS is primarily a disease of the brain’s“white matter,” made of nerve fibers respon-sible for transmitting communication sig-nals. In MS, lesions appear in random areasof the CNS white matter, and myelin, nerveinsulating material, is lost. Myelin, the fattysheath coating the axons of nerves, is thefocus of Wood’s search for a cure or at leasta promising new MS treatment. “Sincemyelin and the cells that make it areattacked in MS, I am trying to understandhow immature cells in the brain turn into

myelin-producing cells during develop-ment,” Wood explains. “Then, we may beable to repair them in an adult situationwhere the cells and myelin are lost.” She isalso interested in stem/progenitor cellsbecause they generate the myelin producingcells. Stem/progenitor cells are abundant inthe developing brain and a number of themare still present in the adult nervous system.One of her ideas is aimed at helping thesecells turn into myelin-producing cells as thedamage is occurring.

Wood also wants to understand the path-ways that the myelin producing cells takebefore they die. “Protection and repair aretwo aspects of our work,” she explains. “Ifwe can understand how to protect the cellsfrom injury or damage perhaps we can pre-vent the amount of loss.” The repair researchis concentrated on trying to generate newcells and new myelin. However, transplant-ing stem cells isn’t the easy answer. Woodexplains that since there are endogenous(produced by the body itself ) stem cells, itmay be easier to trigger these cells to produce

additional cells rather than trans-planting new ones. “There areproblems with both approaches,”she explains, “It’s difficult to transplant stemcells for MS lesions because the lesions arescattered throughout the body, unlike somecancers that are focused in one location.” Butit is also a problem directing endogenouscells to form the type of cells needed at thelesion site.

Wood is studying another aspect of MSrepair. In relapsing-remitting MS, the mostcommon form of this disease, a person expe-riences relapses, when new or old symptomssurface, followed by periods of remission withfull or partial recovery. She is looking atwhat’s happening to the endogenous cellsduring each phase. “During the remittingperiod, the cells experience repair, often theresult of the endogenous progenitor cellsforming new myelin-producing cells. Somecells that surround lesions actually divide,make new cells and turn into myelin-produc-ing cells,” she explains. “This repair is oftenthe result of the endogenous progenitor cells

forming new myelin-producing cells.”Evidence from other MS research labora-

tories suggests that the repair eventuallyfails, moving the patient back into relapse,not because the cells are depleted, butbecause they are inhibited from continuing.The breakdown may be in the signaling.The cells may not be receiving or respond-ing to the correct signals. So Wood’s labora-tory is investigating the signaling processesneeded for promoting the repair and genera-tion of new myelin.

Wood is also a breast cancer researcher.Though not supported by the endowment,these studies relate to the MS work becausethey focus on fundamental mechanisms sup-porting cell growth and the biology of stemand progenitor cells in relation to breastcancer. She points out that a hallmark ofcancer is uncontrolled growth. Some of thepathways of this unrestrained growth, activein stem and progenitor cells, also controlnormal growth during developmentalprocesses. But in uncontrolled growth, thepathways are deregulated.

Endowed professorships play a criticalrole in attracting and retaining faculty.Without this support, researchers likeWood, who have brought more than $2 mil-lion in NIH funding to NJMS, would notbe here. For more information aboutendowments and supporting NJMS, pleasecontact The Foundation of UMDNJ at(866) 44-UMDNJ. �

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LPETE BYRON 9

Teresa L. Wood, PhD, (left and below) andDeborah Lazzarino, PhD, (below right)

PETE BYRON10 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

HORMONES have been at the heart ofthis NJMS researcher’s journey into

the factors that lead to susceptibility fordeveloping mental disorders. Talk about com-plicated questions! There online, 18 pages ofdefinitions and circuitously interconnectedexplanations spill forth, suddenly turning thetopic of hormones into a wild biochemicalworld just below the surface of possibly everysingle human behavior. It was in the 19thcentury that the first studies discovered that“hormonal glands” influenced behavior, andever since, researchers like Beck and clinicianshave been trying to understand the role ofhormones in neuronal processes associatedwith sensation, learning and memory, and theexpression of various symptoms associatedwith neurological disorders and psycho-

pathologies. Although there are flickers oflight at the end of this tunnel, there are manyinconsistencies and the debate goes on.

“I’ve been interested in ovarian hormonesand sex differences since I was in graduateschool.” Beck, who earned a master’s degreein developmental psychology at ColumbiaUniversity and his doctorate in biopsychologyat City University of New York, was puzzledby the fact that certain subjects were morereactive to chronic stress but only some devel-oped long-lasting behavioral and neurochem-ical changes afterward. Many of these indi-vidual differences were dependent upon thepast experiences of the animal as well as thesex. In searching for novel mechanisms forindividual differences both between andwithin each sex, the research led him to

explore the rapidly developing field of psy-choneuroimmunology (PNI).

An assistant professor of neuroscience atNJMS who teaches in the “Neurobiology ofDisease” course at the medical school, he’scombined his love of psychology and biolo-gy as a research physiologist at the VA NewJersey Health Care System and as associatedirector of the UMDNJ Stress andMotivated Behavior Institute. “I thought mybackground areas of psychology and neuro-science were complicated, but now with theimmune system involved, that is a wholeother ball of wax.” Even in cases of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—promi-nently in the media because so manyAmerican soldiers are suspected of havingPTSD—Beck reports that lab and clinicalresearch in the last decade has shown thatthese patients are experiencing aberrant hor-mone and immune responses.

Always intrigued by how hormones relateto pathology, Beck has spent years investi-gating the effect of estrogen and proges-terone on learning and sensory reactivity,especially after what would be consideredtraumatic stress. Why is it true that womenare statistically more likely to suffer fromdepression and anxiety as opposed to schizo-phrenia, which appears equally in males andfemales? “The question then becomes: Isthere a hormone that supports the expres-sion of certain symptoms? Which hormoneinfluences which symptoms? What are theydoing and where? For instance, we’ve justfinished up some studies and it looks likeprogesterone may be a smoking gun forsome changes in sensory reactivity. Not thatestrogen doesn’t play a role but the data sup-ports the fact that progesterone is a criticalelement in some sort of regulation, influenc-ing the immune system, adrenal hormones,and shifting the neurochemical balance inthe brain.”

When Beck and his colleagues examinedchanges in rat sensory response followingexposure to a traumatic stressor, they foundmale rats remained generally unchanged, but

If you “Wikipedia” the subject of hormones on the internet encyclopedia, Kevin Beck’s conundrumbecomes quickly apparent.

A CLOSER LOOKAT THE POWER OF HORMONES

Kevin Beck, PhD

female rats showed less reactivity to acousticstimuli. “Both sexes startled to the sameacoustic decibel stimuli, but the degree oftheir motor response levels, or the amountthey flinched, was selectively reduced in thefemales. We called this stress-induced startlesuppression,” Beck explains. What’s more,the dampened-down reaction was linkedspecifically to the presence of ovarian hor-mones because when Beck removed thisovarian chemical influence from the rats,they didn’t exhibit the “stress-induced startleresponse” and behaved just like the males.To test his theory further, Beck’s team alsoinjected the female rats with a pro-inflam-matory cytokine which is commonlyreleased by the body when exposed tointense stressors. His recent work suggestsprogesterone is the necessary ovarian hor-mone for this effect.

Progesterone is being recommended intreatment plans for both male and femalevictims of traumatic brain injury because ofits neuroprotective powers. This steroid hor-mone is a powerful anti-inflammatory whichhas an impact on many other organs. “Allthese endocrine systems are connected,”Beck says. Not to be dismissed as simplyfemale-related or estrogen’s partner, proges-terone receptors are even located in the sub-mucosal tissue of the bronchial tubes as wellas in macrophages in the immune system.Beck bemoans the fact that the body ofresearch literature on women is so muchsmaller and so hotly debated that “peopledon’t know what to make of it. Women arean incredibly understudied population.”

Following up on the work of researcherslike neuroscientist Tracey Shors, PhD, atRutgers University, Beck and his colleagueRichard Servatius, PhD, associate professor,neurology, documented how ovarian hor-mones affect women’s ability to learn to asso-ciate a sound with an elicited eye-blinkresponse caused by a puff of air to the cornea.In trials, female subjects learned to blink inresponse to the sound in anticipation of theair puff. In her research, Shors found that

female rats learned this response quicker thanmale rats, but only during the hormonalphase when their estrogen was peaking fol-lowed by a rise in progesterone (known asproestrus). Beck questioned whether similarhormonal influences could be occurring inwomen; especially because the rat estrus cycleis so much more compact than the humanmenstrual cycle.

Surprisingly, he discovered that for a sam-ple of adult pre-menopausal women, learn-ing the conditioned eye-blink response wasmore dependent upon oral contraceptivesthan the menstrual cycle. In the non-med-icated women, there were no significant dif-ferences in learning during their cycles.However, the women taking oral contracep-tives picked up the learned response muchfaster than the others. The drugs definitelyaffected the ability to acquire the new motorresponse. “These results were so unexpect-ed.” What are these synthetic hormonesdoing?

“We still don’t know,” he says. No onehas been able to answer this riddle because,Beck explains, normal hormone assays can’taccurately measure the amount of oral con-traceptives circulating in the body. “This isstill a bit of an unknown because synthetichormones do not come out in traditionalassays. Is their influence on the brain ridingon top of normal hormones or are theyqualitatively different? Are we increasingsome sort of mental efficiency level when weadd them?” When Beck considers all thosestatistically significant instances of femaleanxiety disorders, he also wonders if somewomen aren’t being influenced by these hor-mones to mentally process events almost tooefficiently, making unnecessary associations,

and becoming more susceptible to link irrel-evant stimuli from the time of trauma tophysical and emotional experiences later.

Hormones, it turns out, have a powerfulbehavioral and biochemical impact over thecourse of the entire female life cycle. “It’swell-known that supplements of thyroidhormones really make a difference in treat-ment for depression.” A key to female

behavior, Beck believes, is in progesterone,“because when you put it on board biologi-cally, during pregnancy, lactation, or any-where in the female profile,” Beck says, star-tle responses can be “pushed down, and pos-sibly held below baseline.” An example inreal life can be seen in victims of chronicstress due to domestic violence, wherewomen’s emotions have been documented asblunted. “Maybe there is an endogenousmechanism for women under regular,unpredictable or uncontrollable stress thatmakes them pull back and not hyper-respond” while still remaining in a stress-induced hypervigilant state.

In fact, the full range of hormonal powersis quite staggering, as the Wikipedia treas-ure-trove states: they stimulate and inhibitall growth; affect mood and mind; induceand suppress apoptosis (programmed celldeath); activate and inhibit the immune sys-tem; regulate metabolism; help the bodyprepare for any new activity such as fighting,fleeing or mating; prime us for new lifephases like puberty and parenting; and con-trol all reproduction. About all this, Beck iscertain: “If we really want to get to the coreof some psychopathologies, we need to takean integrative approach and not simplycome up with a better Prozac: It has toinclude hormones.” —MARYANN BRINLEY

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L 11

“Women are an incredibly understudied population.”

The body of research literature on them is so small and so

hotly debated that “people don’t know what to make of it.”

T HE country of Mauritius, in theIndian Ocean off the southeast coast

of Africa, is more than 9,200 miles—butjust a click of the mouse—away fromNewark, NJ. That’s incidental informationto most, but not to NJMS professor, plasticsurgeon and division chief Mark Granick,who’s journeyed there twice and will headback again shortly. With only one residentplastic surgeon, this island with a populationof a little more than a million needsGranick’s expertise in more ways than one.He goes there to “lend a hand” or, actually,two hands, to surgically correct congenitalabnormalities, and repair disfigurementscaused by accidents and burns. But it was inthis far-off locale that his brainchild wasconceived.

While Granick’s operating room expertisehas certainly changed the lives of many inMauritius, his greater impact may now be inthe wider world of plastic surgery.

Doctoring—like most professions—iscollegial in nature, with physicians learningnew information, techniques, and skillsfrom one another, and this is especially truefor surgeons. So, how does a lone plasticsurgeon such as Mauritius’ R. P. Gunessee—with not one colleague in his specialty with-in close geographical range—manage to staycurrent and hone his abilities? With verygreat difficulty, says Granick, because sub-scriptions to journals, which certainly helpkeep physicians in the loop, can run intomany thousands of dollars and take monthsto arrive at distant post-offices. Both are

major minuses to a surgeon needing to beconsistently at the top of his form.

The solution? Obviously the World WideWeb, but subscriptions to most online pro-fessional journals are incredibly costly.Granick’s solution? An “open access” onlineplastic surgery journal—free, always up-to-date, and immediately reachable—thatwould be equally valuable in Mauritius andNewark, Vancouver and Beijing, Delhi andLondon. The downside? None, if you’rewilling to dedicate what little “free” time isleft after back-to-back surgical proceduresand teaching responsibilities, to create andsustain such an enterprise. So, that is exactlywhat Granick did, joining forces with twosurgeon-colleagues to launch ePlasty severalmonths ago.

12 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

A CLOSER LOOKAT WWW.ePLASTY

A new Web site links plastic surgeons aroundthe globe

“Open access” is a concept near and dearto Granick’s heart. The idea, he says, is about10 years old and gained followers with theflourishing of the Internet. Eliminating priceand time barriers to accessing scientific infor-mation is tantamount, but there are otherbenefits. The surgeon points out that some-times it takes two years to get a scientist’sresearch into print—way too long for timesensitive material—and that many printedjournals turn down 88 percent of submis-sions because of space limitations. “The con-tent of open access journals is available24/7,” he says, “the turn-around-time forpublishing a scientist’s material is slashed andspace is not an issue. We also do not have towait to complete a volume before makingmaterial available—as soon as an article isready, it goes up.”

But don’t think that “peer review” is sacri-ficed, he points out. An article goes throughmuch the same process it would if submit-ted to a traditional journal—review by mul-tiple experts in the author’s field, suggestionsfor changes given to the writer if the articleis accepted for posting, and time for thosesuggestions to be incorporated into the text.

But the entire process moves along at a clip,with accepted articles being published with-in two to three months of submission. “Upand out in three months,” is his motto. Inaddition, reprints of an article—that cancost upwards of $20,000 in licensing andother fees from a traditional journal—costnothing more than the paper and ink todownload them from PDF format. “Thewriter retains ownership of everything,including photos and other visuals,”Granick explains, “unlike standard journalarticles, where the writer signs everythingover to the publisher.”

The creators envisioned a site where, inaddition to reading scholarly articles withaccompanying visuals (28 have been postedin the last two months), you could go tolearn an innovative surgical technique, studythe proper way to use a new instrument orpiece of equipment via a multi-media pres-entation, review interesting cases withaccompanying questions and answers to pre-pare for boards, and participate in a forumwhere you can ask questions, and receiveand post answers. For instance, a residentwho plans to set up a practice could learn

from others in his field who had recentlydone this. (This is the only section requiringa sign-in.) The virtual “exhibit hall,” whichis just getting off the ground, will allowadvertisers to do “amazing things that youjust can’t do in print,” such as demonstrat-ing how to set up a machine in the OR, orshowing step-by-step how to use it. This willbe similar to an exhibit hall at a medicalconference.

For authors thinking of submitting apaper, the editors have made your job easierby creating a template. But the work stillneeds to be excellent; so far, 29 papers havebeen rejected.

Granick takes great pride in this project.“We are Pub-Med indexed,” he states, whichmeans the online journal’s content is avail-able via the free search engine service of theU.S. National Library of Medicine, whichhas more than 17 million citations fromMEDLINE and other life science journalsfor biomedical articles back to the 1950s.The plastic surgeon also sees ePlasty as pro-viding students in their 20s—who, he says,are masters of multi-tasking and seem tolearn more effectively by reviewing cases andreading chapters online than by sittingthrough lectures—with more effectivemeans of studying. Granick and his co-edi-tors are intent on providing students andresidents with a “core curriculum or livingtextbook of plastic surgery,” with all of theessential knowledge of their specialty.

The plastic surgeon will return toMauritius in time for World Diabetes Dayon November 14. His wife Carol Singer-Granick, an NJMS associate professor ofpediatrics and pediatric endocrinologist, willaccompany him there once again to bringher expertise to this island where no onepractices her specialty. While ePlasty has cer-tainly made its mark there, Granick will stillbe needed to work with his team onupwards of 90 of the nation’s most complexplastic surgery cases. But despite the thou-sands of miles he’ll journey, with just a clickof the mouse at the end of this year, you justmight be privy to some of his most interest-ing OR experiences. —EVE JACOBS

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LPHOTO COURTESY OF MARK GRANICK, MD 13

In the plastic surgery ward of Victoria Hospital, Candos, Mauritius. Standing: (l to r) Dr. R. P. Gunessee,Frank Ciminello, MD, Mark Granick, MD, and Guy Cappuccino, MD.

PETE BYRON

“WHEN you’re an engineer, you’retaught to work with what you

have,” says Hamid Bagce, a first-yearMD/PhD student, describing how his labteam once formulated an idea for a rehabili-tative knee brace. They had been trying tofind a constructive use for an excess ofexpensive magnetic fluids that had beenordered for the lab. So, Bagce linked proper-ties of the fluid, which dampens motion, toan experience he had while playing racquet-ball, and from there, the idea was born.

“The magnetic fluid allowed for con-trolled dampening by altering viscosity of theknee brace, thus permitting us to rehabilitatethe knee possibly through either immobility

or resistance training, depending on theextent of injury,” he explains. This process—of first considering what materials he hasaccess to and then formulating profitableapplications for them—is not only a scientif-ic exercise for Bagce, but a theme of his lifethat has paved the road to personal successes.

Always gifted in math and science, Bagceused these talents to distinguish himself andpropel his academic career toward medicalschool. He was raised in Paterson, where hisscholarly achievements caught the eye of anon-profit group, New Jersey Seeds, whichgranted him a full academic scholarship toDelbarton, a private college prep school inMorristown. Then he accomplished the

same feat twice more—first earning a fullscholarship to New Jersey Institute ofTechnology (NJIT), and then getting com-plete funding for his current MD/PhD pro-gram.

Bagce chose to major in engineering as hecompleted his pre-med requirements, and tofocus on devices that would help improvepeoples’ lives. The undergraduate worked onthree major research projects: a computer-ized sign language program to facilitatecommunication among the deaf; a rehabili-tative chair that mimics the movements of ahorse to reduce muscle spasticity in childrenwith cerebral palsy (part of a major researchgrant that was awarded to NJIT); and theknee brace, which uses magnetic fluids incombination with electrical stimulation todecrease range of motion and thereby pre-vent injury.

Inspired by NJIT Professor RichardFoulds, as well as other teachers, Bagce isinterested in research and learning in hisfuture career. “Whenever Dr. Foulds was lec-turing, nothing else existed to him. I sawhow devoted many professors are to theirwork, and I decided that I want a professionlike that.” He finished his undergraduatecoursework in three years, earning a 4.0average and distinction as the OutstandingBiomedical Engineering Student.

Bagce envisions himself as the kind ofphysician who teaches his patients preventivemedicine. Frustrated by his failure to con-vince his own parents to stop smoking,Bagce hopes that his medical degrees willconfer a certain authority, as well as skill, topersuade people to change self-destructiveways. “I don’t want to treat just one patient’ssymptoms. I want to treat the entire family,and address lifestyle,” he explains.

These may seem like grand goals for afirst-year student, but if his prior successesare any indication, Hamid Bagce will find away to take the resources at hand and makethese raw materials work in new, remarkableways. As an engineer-physician-researcherand inventor, he will certainly bring aunique array of talents to the table. —LISA JACOBS

14 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

H A M I D B A G C E

Student-Inventor at WorkFrom a knee brace design based on leftover magnetic fluid

in the lab to new sign language software, he always takes his

creative pursuits passionately.

NJMS PEOPLEDO YOU KNOW?

Hamid Bagce

NOREEN Gomez loves art. Name thegenre—oil and water color paintings,

ceramics, pottery, photography, quilts, jewel-ry, metal and wood sculptures, poetry, etcetera—and Gomez will tell you she lovesthem all. You can say it’s in her blood.

“My mother started painting when shewas in her 50s. I have a brother and a sisterwho are artists in Virginia,” says Gomez,whose daughter, Christine Ryan, is anartist /fashion designer in Brooklyn. “I grewup with art on the walls. It’s always beensomething I’ve loved.”

So it comes as no surprise that when theNewton Square, PA, native was asked tooversee the NJMS annual Arts Festivalshortly after joining the staff eight years ago,she jumped at the chance. Gomez explainsthat the program initially began as a one-week long spring event that featured workfrom UMDNJ artists and the local commu-nity on the B-Level of the Medical ScienceBuilding (MSB). Then it was moved to thefall, showcasing artwork for two-monthstretches. With permission from NJMS’sInterim Dean Robert L. Johnson, MD,Gomez recently expanded the program toyear-round.

“It was so depressing when we took theart down,” says Gomez, explaining the deci-sion to keep it up.

With assistance from Shelly Gelbman andCynthia Kirby, both of NJMS, and KarenFloriani of the UMDNJ–New Jersey DentalSchool, Gomez, a program assistant withinNJMS’s Facilities Planning and ManagementServices, masterfully plays the role as the ArtsFestival’s recruiter, promoter and curator.

Colorful murals depicting aquatic scenes,black-and-white photographs of street set-tings and children at play, abstract paintings,portraits of women, animals, and floralarrangements all add aesthetics to the other-wise cold, cement-block-and-mortar walls at

various locations inthe MSB, includingthe B-level as well asthe Dean’s Officereception area.

“Noreen hastaken a one-weeklong program andtransformed itinto somethingthat people canappreciate allyear long,” saysWalter L.Douglas, Jr.,executivedirector foradministra-tion. “We are grate-ful to Noreen for her efforts as they go along way in enhancing our environment,showcasing the artistic talents of our col-leagues and strengthening our connectionwith the community.”

As the program becomes more popular,Gomez finds recruiting exhibiters to be the easiest part of this assignment. In fact,there’s a year-long waiting list to showpieces.

“A lot of the artists find out about itthrough word-of-mouth,” says Gomez.“Artists who have exhibited in the past tellothers about it because they’re happy withhow they and their artwork are treated.Their pieces are truly appreciated here.”

The backgrounds of the artists are asdiverse as the artwork. The artists are facultymembers, staff, students, local citizens, andUniversity Hospital patients from theDepartment of Inpatient Psychiatry and theChild Life Department. Current and pastexhibitors include: Joseph Benevenia, MD,interim chair and professor, Orthopaedics;Deborah Heller, MD, professor, Pathology

and Laboratory Medicine; Keith Bratcher,principal management assistant, Dean’sOffice; Scott Cutro, MD, NJMS Class of2008; and Joyce Dyer, a UH oncologypatient and Newark resident.

Gomez also has been working with DianeWheeler, program administrator at NJMS–University Hospital Cancer Center, to exhib-it art on the F, G and H levels of the CancerCenter building. (See story on page 30.)

For Gomez, art pieces are not just wallaccessories. They engage people, encourag-ing them to appreciate their surroundings.“It’s nice to see people walk down the hall,stop and look at the artwork,” she says. “Itdoesn’t matter whether they like it or not.The fact that the exhibit speaks to them insome way and that they’re aware of it is grat-ifying to me.” —GENENE W. MORRIS

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LPETE BYRON 15

N O R E E N G O M E Z

Art is Her Passion

Quietly, she turned a week-long event into a never-ending arts festival on campus.

PETE BYRON

WHEN Sylvia Voorheis first enteredthe workforce in the City of

Newark, her primary mode of transporta-tion was a trolley. The round-trip fare was10 cents. The year was 1937. Now, the 89-year-old veteran of World War II leaves herhome five days a week and drives 10 milesto NJMS where she is a patient services representative.

Most people work because they need toearn a living and then they retire. However,this extraordinary woman has a differentmotive. “I don’t work for the money. Youhave to have a reason to get up in the morn-ing. I’m working to stay alive,” saysVoorheis, who has been an employee atUMDNJ for approximately 16 years.

This feisty, yet regal, octogenarian hasworked in several industries and tried retire-ment—twice. Finding little contentment inbeing a retiree, she sought a paid position atUMDNJ in the Department of Ophthal-mology. Voorheis enjoys spending her week-days at NJMS making telephone calls toconfirm patient appointments and walkingher usual swift pace to assist colleagues andregister patients. “I can’t believe how old Iam. People ask me and I say I’m in my 70s,”she said, admitting that sometimes she for-gets her age.

Voorheis, the eldest employee atUMDNJ, is one of 21 octogenarians work-ing in this statewide institution. EileenQuirk, 85, is another. According to theHuman Resources Department, there are 12

octogenarians on the Newark campus, eighton the New Brunswick-Piscataway campus-es, and one on the Stratford campus.

Quirk still walks seven blocks each morn-ing to the Path train and then takes theUniversity shuttle bus to arrive at her deskwhere she is now an administrative assistantin the NJMS Liver Center and the SammyDavis, Jr. Liver Institute, a part of theDepartment of Medicine. For 58 years, shealso worked for the late Carroll M. Leevy,MD, considered to be a founder of the med-ical school.

Sure, she has challenges. Initially, one ofthem was her knowledge of medical jargonand the other is now her sight. She was bornwith a missing pigment in the back of hereye, but that doesn’t deter her. She met thatfirst challenge matter-of-factly: “My gospelfor all these years has been the medical dic-tionary. Now, that I’m older, I use my spyglasses,” she says, referring to a pair of mag-nifying glasses she needs to overcome hervisual handicap.

Like Voorheis, Quirk isn’t on campus forthe money. Instead, “It’s the personal satis-

16 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

S Y LV I A V O O R H E I S& E I L E E N Q U I R K

Eighty-Somethings

Sylvia Voorheis (left) and Eileen Quirk

These feisty, energetic

octogenarians don’t believe

in retirement.

NJMS PEOPLEDO YOU KNOW?

faction in doing something for others,” shesays. At the end of her day, she returns tothe home she shares with her 92-year-oldsister. Inspired by the lessons her parentstaught them early in life, she rememberstheir advice: “Get jobs, make money, liveindependently. That kind of pushes mealong,” Quirk says. When asked to describeher years as an NJMS employee, sheexplains that being at the medical school forso long has been “like watching somethinggrow and being part of it in a small way.”

Meanwhile, long before the medicalschool was established, Voorheis was pho-tographed for a 1943 edition of LIFE maga-zine. In the picture, wearing her Navy Wavemilitary uniform, she sits in the front rowwatching as Frank Sinatra croons and anaudience full of uniformed Waves listens.

According to Barbara Andrews-Jenkins,her colleague in the NJMS Institute ofOphthalmology and Visual Sciences, “Sylviais considered the wise sage

with stories of her life during theDepression, travels to Cuba, and her mili-tary days as a Wave in the Navy. She couldvery easily retire and live in Florida or any-where else she chose, but she faithfully riseseach morning and reports to work no matterwhat the weather looks like.” This year,Garden State Woman magazine presentedVoorheis with their Woman of the Yearaward. “We are so proud of her,” saysAndrews-Jenkins.

Voorheis, who recalls purchasing her firstnew car, a Plymouth Special Deluxe, forapproximately $1,700 in 1950, takes pridein her independence and her work. Duringthe week she gives her time, shares herexpertise and, in return, reaps the rewards.“I am most grateful for having lived ablessed life and still being able to work withsuch caring young people who make melook forward to each day.” —KAYLYN KENDALL DINES

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LCOURTESY OF SYLVIA VOORHEIS 17

PETER W. CARMEL, MD, professor andchair, neurological surgery, was presented the2008 Distinguished Service Award during theannual meeting of the American Associationof Neurological Surgeons (AANS) on April 29in Chicago. Carmel, who has served as anactive member of AANS since 1971, was rec-ognized for his outstanding commitment anddedication to neurosurgery.

STANLEY COHEN, MD, professor and chair,pathology and laboratory medicine, hasassumed the role of President-Elect andTreasurer of the American Society forInvestigative Pathology, one of the largestprofessional societies representing experi-mental and investigative pathologists. He was also appointed Treasurer, Federation ofSocieties of Experimental Biology.

JOEL DELISA, MD, professor and chair,Department of Physical Medicine andRehabilitation, received the “OutstandingMedical Educator Award” by the Edward J. IllExcellence in Medicine Association, Inc., forhis significant contributions.

PATRICIA FITZGERALD-BOCARSLY, PHD,professor, pathology and laboratory medi-cine, has been appointed scientific director ofthe NJMS Flow Cytometry Core Laboratory.Fitzgerald-Bocarsly, whose research involvesinnate viral immunology and cancer immu-nology, is also Chair, National Institute ofHealth AIDS Immunology and Pathogenesisstudy section and was awarded an NIHShared Instrumentation Grant.

NJMS faculty members HARVEY OZER, MD,professor, microbiology and molecular genet-ics, and director of the NJMS/UH CancerCenter; PETER FREDERISKE, PHD, assis-tant professor, pharmacology and physiology;and EMILIA VITALE, PHD, associate profes-sor, pediatrics, were among several UMDNJphysicians and scientists who shared$350,000 in research grants announced bythe UMDNJ Office of Patents and Licensing.

Voorheis commuted to Newark when her round-trip fare

was 10 cents and has tried retirement twice. (Too boring.)

Quirk still walks seven blocks to the PATH each morning

before catching the campus shuttle bus at Penn Station.

(And makes the reverse trip later that day.)

Voorheis (far right), was featured in a 1943 edition of Life.

Inside

George Heinrich, MD

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LJOHN EMERSON 19

the NJMSAdmissions Office

By Joni Scanlon

Each year, tens of thousands of would-be doctors engage in fierce competition

for a coveted spot in one of the nation’s 129 accredited medical schools. These

impressive academic achievers are without a doubt among their generation’s

best and brightest. Yet most will find their hopes dashed by harsh reality: there are only

so many seats to go around. It can be a heart-wrenching process—as the Office of

Admissions staff at NJMS knows all too well.

This year alone, almost 5,000 applicants sought admission into NJMS’s fall 2008

entering class. That’s 5,000 applications and personal statements to be painstakingly

reviewed by a subcommittee of the school’s 17-member admissions committee, a vol-

unteer group composed of faculty members and students. Of these, 15 percent of the

applicants are invited for an hour-long, one-on-one interview with one of about 60 fac-

ulty members who volunteer hours of their time each year for this crucial admissions

function. Finally, fewer than 200 applicants ultimately matriculate at NJMS—and sev-

eral thousand receive “letters of regret” in the mail.

JOHN EMERSON

But the numbers tell only part of the story. Betweenthe lines are tales of individual strength, incredible per-severance against the odds—and, heartbreakingly—ofhard-fought journeys thwarted by rejection. Above all,it’s the story of the seven dedicated individuals inNJMS’s Admissions Office, who are committed toguiding students and doing everything they can totreat each one as an individual and not a mere statistic.

Indeed, whatever the method or media, each mem-ber of this small staff skillfully interacts with thousandsof nail-bitingly nervous applicants each year. It’s a jobthat requires superb people skills; more so, it requirescompassion and empathy. That’s why, despite incredi-ble logistical difficulties, Associate Dean of AdmissionsGeorge Heinrich, MD, insists on an open-door policy.

In keeping with this policy, prospective applicantshave an opportunity to seek individual consultations

with either the Associate Deanof Admissions or the Directorof Admissions Mercedes Riveroto discuss prospects for admis-sion, the overall process, as wellas academic requirements.

“I make sure that anybodywho wants to see me gets to seeme,” says Heinrich. “Applyingto medical school is a horribleprocess,” he adds. “The pres-sure these poor young peoplefeel is incredible. The stakes areso high, and it’s so very hard toget in. So we owe it to ourcommunity to be accessible.”

The office’s open-door poli-cy extends to everyone—fromadmitted students figuring outtheir next steps to those strug-gling painfully to understandrejection. “If a prospectiveapplicant reaches out to us—regardless of what their creden-tials are—it’s our responsibilityto guide them in the most

thoughtful yet direct manner possible,” says Rivero. Primarily, Riverosays, prospective applicants come in for advice on ways they canstrengthen their application or, if they plan to reapply, what to do withtheir time off between applications.

20 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

Who’s Whoin Admissions

There is a culture of caring and compassion thatpermeates the entire staff of the Office ofAdmissions at New Jersey Medical School.

Applicants anxiously awaiting an admissionsdecision instinctively recognize it, as do studentscomfortably ensconced in their programs, whoenthusiastically keep the admissions staff informedof their progress throughout their medical schoolyears and even beyond.

An alumnus of NJMS himself, Associate Dean ofAdmissions George Heinrich remembers his days asa student, and feels a need to give back to theschool he loves and appreciates. “I’m here becauseI know I couldn’t have had a better education any-where else,” he says. “I value the opportunity tocontinue to help NJMS grow and to get evengreater recognition through the excellence andaccomplishments of its graduates.”

Mercedes Rivero, (above) and with GeorgeHeinrich, MD, (below)

These consultations elicit unexpected results at times, she says:“We’ve had applicants realize that they just weren’t ready and neededmore time to pursue personal interests before making the big leap intothe medical school application process.” Other times, says Heinrich,an applicant realizes they’ve received bad, possibly outdated, advicefrom someone who may have been familiar with the admissionsprocess several decades ago.

This Doctor Makes House CallsThis commitment to personalized service extends to the way studentsare notified of their acceptance. When he came on board 15 years ago,Heinrich began personally phoning each admitted student to tellthem the good news. “I was looking for a way to distinguish NJMS,”he says, “and then I remembered how anxious I felt checking my mail-box every day when I was applying to medical school. Was it a thickenvelope? A thin envelope? I decided to personally call everyone whowas accepted.”

Heinrich, who once tracked down a student in a remote African vil-lage, likes to say that no one gets into NJMS without talking to himfirst, and enjoys knowing that most NJMS graduates remember theexact moment they received his call. “Getting into medical school is awonderful moment, one of the most important moments in some-one’s life,” he says. “If we expect passion from our students, we haveto demonstrate our own passion.”

Finding the ‘Magic Formula’Many applicants look for a magic recipe, that serendipitous formulathat will help them leapfrog over equally impressive candidates. But it’snot a formula anyone in the NJMS Office of Admissions can easilyprovide.

“We encourage applicants to pursue activities that are personallyrewarding, as well as academically and professionally challenging,”Rivero adds. “Medical school is a tremendous commitment and it isimportant that they have a clear understanding of what it will take tobe successful in medical school and become compassionate healthcareproviders.” For her part, Rivero says she is drawn by opportunities tomake a broader impact on society by guiding young people towardfulfilling their dreams.

Above all, the admissions committee is looking for something hardto define—but easy to spot: A true passion for medicine.

“We look at each applicant in a very holistic way,” says Heinrich.“Obviously, everyone we interview can succeed academically. But wehave the luxury of looking at everything—their communication skills,their passion, their caring. Our job is to select people we think willprovide something special to other students and to their patients ashealthcare providers.”

“The intangibles are important,” Rivero adds. “In fact, they’re justas important—at times more important—than the tangibles.” �

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L 21

Meet the Rest of the TeamAdmissions Coordinator Lisa Houston serves as the liaisonbetween NJMS and AMCAS (American Medical CollegeApplication Service). She also coordinates NJMS’s joint-degree programs with several undergraduate schools. “Lisais a great resource and a seasoned admissions profession-al,” says Rivero.

Tiffanie Hart attends recruitment fairs and career panelsand has become the face of NJMS admissions. “She has agreat approach to guiding prospective applicants,” Riveronotes.

Luciana Wheeler, responsible for the interview schedulingprocess, is the first person prospective students meet whenthey come in for their interview. Rivero describes Wheeleras “welcoming and reassuring and making every effort tomake their interview experience a smooth one.”

Jenneice White is the office’s primary administrator and,says Rivero, “does an impressive job at keeping the admis-sions office operational and functional.”

Lonnie Wright has been an admissions counselor for morethan 35 years and is highly regarded by not only prospec-tive students in search of his advice but by many currentNJMS students, faculty and staff. Wright tried to retire, butcame back part-time after finding himself beset by phonecalls from students and faculty members—now alumni—heonce recruited and advised. “He has a wonderful gift inthat he is a great motivator and an inspiration to work withand learn from,” says Rivero.

In addition to the office staff, 120 volunteers make NJMS’spersonalized approach to the admissions process possible.

The Admissions Committee is composed of 17 membersdrawn from NJMS’s research and clinical faculties, adminis-tration and three members of the student body (represent-ing second-, third- and fourth-year students).

Approximately 60 faculty members volunteer their timeto conduct one-on-one interviews with applicants.

An additional 30 second- to fourth-year students are partof a new initiative in which students interview applicants,providing valuable insight.

Fifty volunteer student tour guides—led by four studentcoordinators—lead tours of NJMS’s facilities, including theanatomy lab, University Hospital and student housing.

“Our decisions are constantly validated by students’extraordinary accomplishments,” says Rivero. “The admis-sions process is rewarding because it is the result of effortby a team whose contributions are representative of thestrong collaborative spirit at NJMS,” she adds.

GORDON STUDER

It’s graduation day. The excitement rising inthe NJMS amphitheater on Wednesday night, April 30, fills the airlike birdsong on an early spring morning—a little shrill but upliftingnevertheless. In fact, the students listening to their very last lecturebefore the beginning of the official ceremony to award completioncertificates could hardly be happier, even if they were actually finish-ing medical school. This is the Mini-Medical School graduation, but,believe me, there’s nothing “mini” here: the students’ drive to learn isoff the charts; their expectations are high; the lectures are chock-fullof information; the homework reading assignments are “meaty”; theenergy in the room is amazing; and the faculty is top-notch. It’s diffi-cult to pull yourself away from the comforts of home during the dark,cold nights beginning in late February for nine Wednesday eveningsof three-hour sessions that demand real intellectual focus. For mostwho attend, this follows a full day of school or work, afternoon sports,child care responsibilities and sometimes a fairly long trip to get toUMDNJ’s Newark campus. No time for dinner, but the program

planners have thought of everything—providingsandwiches, fruit and water to sustain their stu-

dents. It takes an A-1 faculty and highlymotivated students to make this thingwork—and truly, it does work. With anattrition rate of next-to zero, this may bethe most dedicated and successful classof learners on the planet.

This is the ninth year of Mini-Medical School at NJMS and the

momentum shows no signs of abating. Anew group gathers here each winter, butthere are some who choose to return a sec-ond year, or even a third. And then there’sone exceptional student by the name ofIrving Bender who comes year after yearto expand and update his knowledge ofmedicine. The students’ ages range from15 to 75. Some are high school studentsinterested in healthcare careers. This year’steens came from many towns, includingBelleville, Colonia, Fort Lee, Livingston,Montclair, Paramus and Teaneck. And theprogram has been in existence just longenough to lay claim to some former Mini-Medical School attendees who have grad-uated from college and are now NJMSstudents, serving as volunteer preceptorsto give the “next generation” the benefit oftheir experience.

If you think the material is “dumbeddown,” just ask the 21 notable lecturers,all faculty members of NJMS, and the 41

22 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

DoctorWho?Taking the Mini-version of Med School

BY EVE JACOBS

medical students who help plan andrun these Wednesday line-ups.Ah—and don’t forget the weekendcourses and other “extras”—whenfour to six hours of a Saturday orSunday fly by in a whirl of activi-ty. These include sessions on basiclife support (BLS), cardio-pul-monary physiology, how to accesscomplex and up-to-the minutemedical information, and pathol-ogy (complete with organs andbody parts to observe andtouch). There are also tours ofthe Trauma/Emergency Depart-ment at UMDNJ-UniversityHospital and general tours ofthis academic health center,which is the primary clinicaltraining site for NJMS medicalstudents and residents, and ano-cost health screening clinicfor Mini-Med participants,which is credited with spottingpotentially serious medical conditions in prior years’ attendees. This—the Grand Prix of continuing educa-tion programs—is as close to the real thing as you’re going to get without committing yourself to the grueling demands of the realthing. Or maybe you are planning to attend medical school, and thenwhat you’ll get is a privileged look inside a world that few others everexperience.

The Mini-Medical School binder weighs almost five pounds. Iknow—I put it on the scale. Inside is a wide array of backgroundreadings and also short bios acknowledging the lecturers’ credentials.It’s bulk can be somewhat daunting, but if you’re brave enough to divein, you’ll find articles with such titles as: Local Therapy and Survivalin Breast Cancer; Localized Prostate Cancer; Insurgent Micrometas-tases: Sleeper Cells and Harboring the Enemy; Botulinum Toxin forSpasticity After Stroke; Can Cervical Cancer Be Prevented?;Periodontitis: A Risk Factor for Coronary Heart Disease?; IntegrativeMedicine: Bringing Medicine Back to Its Roots; Miracle Workers?Why We Expect Doctors to Do the Impossible; and a chapter fromthe Handbook for Mortals —Guidance for People Facing SeriousIllness. All are well worth your time.

Mini-Med is not unique to NJMS, although its spin is surely all itsown. Credit for that goes to its originator, Jacob Jay Lindenthal, PhD,DrPh, professor of psychiatry at the school, who is also director andfounder of its Institute for the Public Understanding of Health andMedicine, and a widely exhibited photographer, and second-in-com-mand Michael Grabow, MS, MBA. The history of “mini-meds” in

America is less than two decadesold. The first such program wasfounded by John Cohen, thenChancellor of the University ofColorado in Denver, who had beenteaching immunology and medicineat the school for 20 years. The storygoes that on the Monday when thevery first Mini-Med was announcedto the public, more than 1,200 peo-ple called to register by day’s end.

About 10 years ago, the idea tookoff nationwide. With the whittlingdown of the time physicians canspend with each patient, and thesimultaneous flowering of health andmedical information on the Web (butfor most of us, minus a filter to sift outwhat is inaccurate, dated, extraneous orpoorly explained), this was an idea thattook root at precisely the right time.Mini-Med schools are flourishing at theUniversity of Virginia, the University ofArkansas, Johns Hopkins, the Universityof Chicago Medical Center, Washington

University in St Louis, Boston University,in fact, at roughly half of the country’s medical schools and academichealth centers.

Although the NJMS Mini-Med is based on the same premise as theothers (that the public has an intense hunger for medical knowledgeand is willing to travel and give up an evening of TV to gain thisknowledge), it is also strikingly different. It’s longer (nine sessionsrather than the usual four or five); each session is more intense (thereare two to four speakers each night plus an hour of small group dis-cussion); the medical students help to plan each year’s curriculum andserve as group discussion leaders, guiding conversation and sharingtheir expertise (they are simultaneously learning how to explain com-plex medical information to those not as well versed in this lingo); andthe program encourages participants to take the next step and learnbasic medical skills, such as CPR, so that they, in turn, can be aresource in their communities.

While each year’s line-up of lecturers and topics is different, the2008 roster will give you some insight into what you can expect if youdecide to take the Mini-Med challenge in 2009. And while attendingevery session is truly encouraged and well worth the effort, all of this year’s lectures are available (for the first time) on the Web on the iTunes University site. If you want to access any of them, go to the New Jersey Medical School home page and click on the Mini-Med iTunes button. You can also use this Web address:http://njms.umdnj.edu/minimed. �

23N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L

Night 1: Patient Rights – Lois Hull; Patient Safety: Are You thePilot or the Passenger? – Vincent J. Barba, MD; Donnett Brown,RN, MSN, MBA; Alan Levin, RN, MSN, MBANight 2: Surgical Treatment of Breast Cancer – Kevin Clark, MD;Gastrointestinal Tumors: A Trip from North to South – Lawrence E.Harrison, MD

Night 3: Neoplasms of the Genitourinary Tract – Georgi Guruli, MD;

Medical Treatment of Breast Cancer – Robert Wieder, MD, PhDNight 4: Spasticity Associated with Stroke and Brain Injury – ElieP. Elovic, MD; Rehabilitation of Learning and Memory FollowingBrain Damage – John DeLuca, PhDNight 5: What’s New in Contraception and Sterilization? – DeniseN. James, MD, MPH; New Guidelines for Pap Smear Screening andHPV Vaccine – Natalie E. Roche, MDNight 6: Assessment and Management of Trigeminal Nerve Injury –Vincent B. Ziccardi, MD, DDS; Periodontal Medicine: TheRelationship of Periodontitis and Systemic Disease – James Rynar,DDS

Night 7: Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Introductionand Overview – Adam Perlman, MD, MPH; Acupuncture Today –Cynthia Y. Paige, MD; Mind Body Medicine: Yoga Science andPractice – Susan Gould Fogerite, PhD, and Lynn R. Miller, JD;Herbal Medicine: The Safe Use of Popular Herbs – Dale Bellisfield,RN, AHG

Night 8: Surviving a Heart Attack: The Scientist, the Doctor andthe Patient – Christopher Depre, MD, PhD, and Pallavi Peter, MDNight 9: I May Be the Doctor But You Are the Patient – MichaelJaker, MD; Informed Consent and the Patient’s Choices – JanetHarris Smith, MS

COURTESY OF CHARLES PRESTIGIACOMO, MD, AND WENZHUAN HE, MD24 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

And, the answer to the puzzle is? A more accurate way to predict whether aneurysms will break,

bleed and wreak havoc on victims. Charles Prestigiacomo, MD, is the NJMS leader of this eclectic mix

of extraordinary talent culled from within UMDNJ, as well as collab-orations with researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology(NJIT) and Delaware State University. “I just love science. And thereis so much to learn if you look outside your own field,” he says. Whichis exactly why he sent an e-mail to the head of the biomedical engi-neering department at NJIT in August 2002, shortly after he arrivedto practice, research and teach at NJMS.

A specialist in neuroendovascular surgery as well as cerebrovascularmicrosurgery, Prestigiacomo doesn’t have an engineering backgroundbut has always been interested in how aneurysms form and why theyrupture. This is his passion. “Not all aneurysms bleed,” he explains. Infact, bleeding from a brain aneurysm, or subarachnoid hemorrhage,occurs in a relatively small proportion of the population, but it affectspatients, about 30,000 a year, during the most productive years oftheir lives, between ages 30 and 65. And there is a 50 percent chanceof dying from these strokes. Even if the patient doesn’t die, “He or shecould be debilitated somehow from this bleeding. Aneurysms hit youearly and they hit you hard.” Signs and symptoms of an aneurysm canbe non-existent until it ruptures or grows large enough to impinge onsurrounding physical structures of the brain. And aneurysms are oftendiscovered by accident in routine physical examinations during an X-ray, ultrasound, or CT scan being done for another reason. “The bestthing we can do is find them and figure them out before they pop likea blister,” says Prestigiacomo.

Meanwhile, his simple e-mail to David Kristol, PhD, chairman ofthe NJIT Department of Biomedical Engineering, asked, “Is thereanyone in your department who might be interested in aneurysms?”Within an hour, he had his answer from Driscoll and Hans Chaudhry,PhD. “Love to talk to you.”

Soon after, he was on his way down the street in Newark to NJITfor meetings, collaborations and entrée into a world of pure mathe-matics, computational fluid dynamics, elasticity and biomechanicalproperties of membranes. “It was great. I like math and I like engi-neering though I was a biology major and a classics minor back in col-lege. These guys are pure mathematicians.” His excitement about thefruit of the collaborations is still evident years later as he recalls howserendipitous the conversations became. “At one point during a dis-cussion, someone said, ‘Hey, a friend of mine is an optical physicistwith a machine that can calculate the thickness or springiness of tis-sue by how it reflects light and the levels of tension. Maybe we canapply this to aneurysms.’” That machine, by the way, is still too big todrag into the operating room at University Hospital. However, plansare underway to size it down. This neurosurgeon is even working withexperts who study solar flare activity using mathematics to predicteruptions on the sun’s surface. The belief is that this predictive tech-nology can be applied to the understanding of volatile aneurysmsinside the body.

These exchanges were electric. Prestigiacomo taught the biomedicalengineers everything he knew about aneurysms and soon, the teamwas giving back, studying the alveoli of the lungs as a simple modelfor aneurysms, looking at anatomic features, shapes, dimensions, allkinds of parameters applicable to aneurysms, and posing all the right

B Y M A RYA N N B R I N L E Y

This almost sounds like a riddle but it’s no joke.What do you get when you combine the expertise of a membrane elasticity

theorist, an optical physicist, mathematicians, specialists in solar flare activities

in outer space, biomedical engineers skilled in computational fluid dynamics,

and an NJMS associate professor of neurosurgery?

The

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L 25A 22-year-old patient’s scan showing the large aneurysm in the center.

PETE BYRON

theoretical questions. The pulsations and pressures along the inside ofa blood vessel’s wall can cause weaknesses that result in a bubble orblister. “That’s an aneurysm,” explains Prestigiacomo, who soonadded research professor of biomedical engineering at NJIT to his listof academic titles. “I started lecturing to their students,” he says.

There are four types of aneurysms: abdominal aortic, thoracic aortic,cerebral and peripheral. Each of these has different mechanisms of for-mation and different risks for bleeding. However, all can have cata-strophic consequences. Imagine blood flow beating at this weak spot ina vessel at a pressure of 120, 130, 140 mmHg, at least 60 times aminute, over the course of an entire lifetime. “It’s an interesting diseaseprocess and frightening to a lot of people because there is a genetic com-ponent. Yes, you can be born with this weakness in a blood vessel wall.”But 95 percent of the time, a ruptured aneurysm is not due to heredity.

Other, possibly more important, environmental components affectthe outcome of this fragile spot in the vascular system, including highblood pressure, excess emotional or physical stress, the physics of

blood flow and of course, cigarettesmoking which deteriorates connec-tive tissue. “There is definitely anassociation between smoking andruptured aneurysms.”

In general, an aneurysm hasabout a one percent per year chanceof bursting, but the likelihood ofthis happening is also dependent onthe location, as well as things likesize and shape, according to

Prestigiacomo. The debate in the medical literature about what countsmost in this rupture risk is ongoing and this neurosurgeon is right inthe middle of the deliberations. In fact, it was the impetus for his seek-ing out his dream team. “Some people say that size is the most impor-tant factor,” he says. “The bigger the aneurysm, the higher the chanceof bleeding.” Others believe that location is more important. Those inthe back of the brain are said to have a higher chance of bleeding thanones in the front. And shape is a factor as well. For instance, ananeurysm with two piggy-backing blisters resembling Mickey Mouse’s

ears would be more imminently dangerous than one looking like asmooth-shaped sphere.

Unfortunately up until now, too often such issues have been exam-ined independently or not at all. “No one else has looked at so manyphysical factors,” Prestigiacomo explains. His aneurysm answer is “nota simple linear equation but a combination of statistical analysis withpure geometry.” Size, location, configuration and shape should all fittogether into a mathematical formula, or what he calls a “magic algo-rithm.” By putting together all this critical information, all the bio-morphometric data about a patient’s aneurysm, the team believes theirmodel can save lives and become the standard of care. “We can nowcreate the person’s aneurysm on the computer, and we are developingroutines to submit these models to flow studies, watch for shifts inweakness and predict potential to rupture.” In the future, this willonly take moments to do. And in his research, Prestigiacomo is alreadyup to a sensitivity of 80 percent accuracy. He’s created a database,applied a predictive scale and is putting so much information into theformula that he can safely say, “We’re going for near-perfect accuracy.”

When a patient is identified as having an aneurysm, “The treatmentwe offer now is surgery, but that carries a risk, so why would we wantto expose someone to this risk if I could say comfortably, ‘You’ve gotnothing to worry about. I’ve done the calculations and I’m 100 percentsure that your aneurysm will not rupture.’ This is a big deal. I could tella patient, even someone with a 2 mm bubble, let’s just follow this.”

A scientific paper, coauthored with Jeffrey Catrambone, MD, andWenzhuan He, MD, both NJMS neurological surgeons, has just beenaccepted for publication and the team is also exploring patent optionsfor the equation. Information about Prestigiacomo’s aneurysm workwas also distributed in the press kits for physicians gathered for anational meeting of the American Association of NeurologicalSurgeons in 2006. He explains, “What was published in the press kitis the fact that we can detect aneurysms with 99.6 percent accuracy byusing a safe, non-invasive technology called CTA. What is usuallydone now is catheter-based angiography which is invasive and carriesa risk of vessel injury and stroke.” Pleased with the national feedbackso far, he wants to change the way aneurysms are assessed.

Hundreds of patients’ histories have gone into generating the data-

26 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

Charles Prestigiacomo, MD

HE CALLS THE

MATHEMATICAL

FORMULA

A “MAGIC ALGORITHM.”

base for this new mathematical tool. Some remain quite unforgettablefor this doctor. While he can’t yet use current patients in this study atthis stage, rescuing real people in the midst of trauma is what this clin-ical researcher does best. Sitting at his bank of computers on the eighthfloor of the Doctor’s Office Center, he quickly pulls up the scan of a22-year-old from south Jersey. Oh, does he remember this young man!

He was in his car when the call came in describing a grade Vaneurysm measuring 3.18 centimeters in diameter. “You mean mil-limeters, don’t you?” he recalls asking. It wasn’t millimeters, however.It was centimeters. That’s almost an inch and a half. “This young manhad gone to bed the night before with a headache and never woke up,”his doctor explains.

The visual proof of this event still looks like a bomb has explodedinside an unsuspecting brain and is stark and center there inPrestigiacomo’s computer files. He points out the massive hemorrhagethat made the patient so unstable and his pulmonary status so badthat placed on his back, he’d develop edema immediately. Rushed toUH—because the emergency team in southern New Jersey knewexactly where the right experts were—“he was almost dead. I said tothe mom, ‘I don’t know if there is anything I can do.’ But she insist-ed, ‘This is my child. He’s my boy. Do whatever you can. I’ll under-stand if he doesn’t survive. I’ll let him go. But I can’t let him go nowwithout at least trying. I’d like you to try.’”

In describing this case, Prestigiacomo can’t stop referring to thededication and expertise of the best neurological surgery residents inthe country: his own. “Our residents are amazing.” Under PeterCarmel, MD, this NJMS Department of Neurological Surgery pro-gram has expanded from “6 to 14 residents in just 5 1/2 years,” heexplains. “They are devoted to patients.”

Unable to do anything but try to stabilize the patient for three longdays, the team managed him in a 45 degree, semi-seated position.Finally, “We got him to a point where we could lay him flat and keephim oxygenated enough so I could do an angiogram.” The hemor-rhage was so huge that the entire damaged artery had to be blockedoff in his brain and filled with tiny metal coils, which are still quiteclear on the CT scan on the computer. “I just kept shoving them in,one after another, sacrificing the whole vessel,” he explains.

Though this patient survived the procedure and was sent off torecovery, miracles were hardly expected by anyone. “We were always onthe same page,” Prestigiacomo recalls. And the family’s willingness tolet him go had “clinched my decision to do everything possible.” Hecould have been paralyzed. He could have been brain dead. He mightnot ever wake up. “You can’t grow new blood vessels in your brain,especially when the one which was destroyed was as big as this one.”

Three weeks into recovery, this mom insisted that her son was wig-gling his thumb in response to her coaxing. “I usually discount fami-ly members who report things like this. But I told her, ‘Let’s go seehim together and I’ll just watch. I’ll let you do the talking.’” And rightthere in his room, with a little gentle cajoling, he did move his thumb,indicating that he was there inside mentally, trying to communicate.

“I saw it myself,” Prestigiacomo says, remembering his surprise.Perhaps even more amazing about this story is that the patient got wellenough to go on to college. “He’s not perfect but he would have died.”

Becoming just one more of those sad aneurysm statistics CharlesPrestigiacomo is determined to change. �

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L 27

Who’s Who in thisAneurysm CollaborationHans R. Chaudry, PhD • research professor, NJIT,Department of Biomedical Engineering

John Federici, PhD • professor, NJIT, Department of Physics

Dawn A. Lott, PhD • professor, Delaware State University,Department of Mathematical Sciences

Demetrios T. Papageorgiou, PhD • professor, NJIT,Department of Mathematical Sciences

Michael Siegel, PhD • professor, NJIT, Department ofMathematical Sciences

NEUROLOGICAL SURGERY RESIDENTS

Paul Schwartz, MD

Aria Sabit, MD

James Thurmond, MD

Koji Ebersole, MD

Daniel Yanni, MD

Gaurav Gupta, MD

Lana Mitchel, MD

Reza Karimi, MD

Alexandrios Zousia, MD

Antonios Mammis, MD

Krystal Tomei,MD

James Barrese, MD

Jethwa Pinakin, MD

JOHN EMERSON28 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

Lee B. Reichman, MD, MPH

T he disorder may come as a surprise. It’s tuberculosis, whichtraces its history as far back as ancient Egypt but consti-tutes a worldwide public health crisis today.

“It’s a catastrophe in the making,” according to Lee B. Reichman,MD, MPH, executive director of The New Jersey Medical SchoolGlobal Tuberculosis Institute (GTBI). “More people die of TB thanany other infectious disease, and it is the leading killer of peoplewith HIV. There is a global threat because countries are missingtheir TB control target. Interest is waning. Detection of new caseshas slowed worldwide, and there’s a $2.5 billion deficit in TB con-trol funding.”

In the U.S., new TB cases declined at a rate of 7.3 percent a yearfrom 1993 to 2003. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report-

ed 13,293 cases in 2007 vs. 25,000 in1992. But that rate of decline dropped to3.8 percent annually from 2003 through2007. “And today’s cases are harder to treatdue to increased multiple drug resistance,” saysReichman.

The Institute is an international player in this TBemergency. Reichman spent six months last year as sen-ior advisor to The Stop TB Partnership housed at WorldHealth Organization (WHO) headquarters in Switzerland—and astechnical advisor to George Sampaio, former president of Portugaland the UN Secretary General’s special envoy on tuberculosis. Theytraveled extensively together to raise TB awareness.

Current TB treatment involves a combination of four drugs (iso-niazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutal), usually taken forsix months in order to kill all Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria andprevent mutation into drug resistant organisms. However, the CDCis supporting research at the Institute into new drug regimens thatwould lower treatment time from six months to two months, and beless toxic.

These four drugs are given under direct observation five days a

Quick: Can you name the disease that kills 1.7

million people a year and causes 9.2 million new

cases annually—yet is preventable and curable?

By Florence Isaacs

THE BATTLE TO STOP ACATASTROPHE IN THE MAKING

INSIDE OURGLOBAL TBPOWERHOUSE

week. Reichman explains, “The trouble is most people stop takingtheir medicine, which results in a relapse and drug-resistant TB.Multiple drug resistant (MDR)-TB is caused by inappropriate pre-scription of medication by practitioners or inadequate drug takingby patients. At our Institute, adherence rates for clinic patients are98 percent to 99 percent, despite the fact that many are homeless,alcoholics, drug abusers, or HIV-positive.”

Another reason for the rise in MDR-TB in the U.S. is theincrease in foreign-born popula-tions from countries where TB iscommon. “More than 58 percentof TB patients are born else-where,” says Reichman.

In 2005, the CDC charged theInstitute with strengthening the

public health response to TB inthe northeastern U.S.

CDC has fundedGTBI to

expand pro-grams and build a regional network of TB

consultants. This Northeastern RegionalTraining and Medical Consultation Center(RTMCC), one of four throughout thecountry, covers 16 states from Indiana toMaine and the cities of Philadelphia,Baltimore, New York, and Detroit.GTBI is also New Jersey’s stipulatedconsultant on MDR-TB and the state’smedical professionals are required to call

the Institute about all cases of MDR-TB. The GTBI toll-free number—1-800-

4TB-DOCS (482-3627)—is answeredMonday through Friday, 9 a.m. –5 p.m., with

voice mail available 24/7. Calls are taken on arotating basis by Reichman; Reynard J. McDonald,

MD, medical director of the Institute; Bonita T.Mangura, MD, director of research; Alfred Lardizabal, MD,

assistant director of research; George McSherry, MD, co-director,pediatrics; Kevin Fennelly, MD, MPH, interim director, Division ofPulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, NJMS; and John Bernardo,MD, medical director, Division of TB Prevention and Control,Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

In 2007, this Infoline received 331 inquiries from medical con-sultants in health departments, doctors, nurses and other healthcareworkers; and 46 calls from the public. “Typical calls relate to treat-ment, screening or diagnosis. For example, a provider may ask howto handle side effects like nausea in someone being treated for activetuberculosis, or want to know which alternative drugs are best for anMDR patient,” says Chris Hayden, retired director of communica-

tions and education at CDC’s Division of Tuberculosis Elimination,who is now a GTBI consultant.

Because some physicians rarely see TB, they may not understandrecommended procedures for confirming diagnosis. In one case, afather of three young children was hospitalized with active infectiousTB. His children had tuberculin skin tests to screen for TB infectionand when all three tested positive, the next step should have been achest X-ray to rule out active disease.

Instead, their pediatricianordered a gastric aspirate ofstomach fluid, a less reliable andinvasive diagnostic procedurethat requires restraining thechild. Tests on the initial aspi-rates were negative. The infec-tion control expert on the casecalled the Infoline when thepediatrician wanted to repeat theprocedure a few weeks later. Thequestion was whether the ordeal

was necessary. GTBI’s pediatric TB specialist indicated it was not,and neither was the first procedure. So, the call saved the childrenfrom another trauma, and got them the X-rays they should have hadinitially.

GTBI provides workshops, courses, downloadable training mate-rials for health professionals, and educational information for thepublic. “Sixty-one percent of our training, including Web-basedtraining, is off site. We train doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, disease investigators, and outreach workers,” says Nisha Ahamed,MPH, GTBI’s education and training director.

Originally established in 1992 as the New Jersey Medical SchoolNational Tuberculosis Center, GTBI offers outpatient services in theWaymon C. Lattimore Practice. The clinic specializes in pediatriccases, MDR-TB, and HIV patients with TB. Recently, a gratefulpatient treated by McDonald anonymously endowed an annual lectureship, and the first Reynard McDonald World TB Day Lecturewas delivered at NJMS on March 25 by Michael D. Iseman, MD, aleading international TB authority, who trained with McDonald atHarlem Hospital Center more than 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, GTBI’s international activities are growing. TheInstitute offers program development, education, training andresearch to ministers of health in other countries. And supported bya grant from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, the Institute hasdeveloped free courses on TB for journalists in Russia, thePhilippines, Romania, Germany, Lithuania, and Latvia.

There’s no time to waste. Extensively drug resistant XDR-TB,which is even more serious than MDR-TB, is now found in 45 coun-tries. South Africa is battling an epidemic. “We need people to recog-nize that TB can be stopped, and it’s in our best interests to supportglobal control,” says Reichman, “But we have to act now.” �

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LCOURTESY OF THE CDC 29

The Institute offers programdevelopment, education, trainingand research to ministers ofhealth in other countries.

Growing Great

Researchers

UTZ HERBIG, PHD, HUMAN SKIN EPITHELIUM; (INSERT) DEBORAH LAZZARINO, PHD, STEM CELLS IN HUMAN MAMMARY DUCT

The art of mixing the clinical and scientific sides of cancer medicine

Gwen Mahon, PhD,looks up from herdesk and sees a whaleswimming, its body

awash in circles and swirls. Inuit-inspired, she calls her painting“Ode to British Columbia,” a fan-ciful appreciation of the mammalsseen from the ferry which crossesbetween Vancouver and Victoria.On another wall is another bridgeto her native Canada: a framedscene of sheep, luminous and grazing under starlight in a field of deepblues and oranges—a reminder of her sister’s place in Chilliwack, about100 kilometers east of Vancouver. On other walls, other images shinebrightly. A faculty administrator at the New Jersey Medical School –University Hospital Cancer Center, Mahon loves painting, creatingimages from nothing and vibrant colors.

Outside her office in Newark, artful images of human cells hang ona corridor wall. Their colors—the result of staining, when a scientistattaches dyes to antibodies that light up red, green, blue as they recog-nize different proteins in a cell’s architecture—are striking, almost flu-orescent, like Mahon’s paintings. She has pulled together this hallwayart exhibit by calling on basic scientists, students and clinicians to sub-mit their work, turning scientific applications into art and forming abridge to the paintings of Newark artists, which hang on the oppositewall. The outpouring from Mahon’s scientist-artists and their Newarkneighbors prompted plans for a gallery opening held in late spring.

Enthusiastic and energetic, Mahon relishes when people cometogether. She is the anti-stereotype of an isolated researcher alone ather bench in the lab—work she pursued for 15 years before becom-ing director of research program development and planning for theNJMS-UH Cancer Center.

Her colleague Charles Cathcart, MD, NJMS assistant professorand medical director of radiation oncology at the Cancer Center, is astudy in über organization. His day goes something like this: Up at5:30 a.m. for a short run, he makes lunch for his six kids—thoughthe 17-year-old is on his own—before showering and sharing school

drop-offs with his wife, also a can-cer doc. A clinician as well as ateacher, Cathcart sees radiationoncology patients and students allday. In late afternoon, he picks upthe kids and piles them back intothe minivan, shuttling to pointslike dance, basketball and soccerbefore gathering the troops fornightly family dinner at 7 p.m.Dishes are not as daunting as pin-ning down nimble children for

baths, books and bedtime. While others, he said, might be bored totears by the routine of his typical day, he loves every second of it. Hislife is fun, alive and maybe the antidote to radiation oncology, wherehe doesn’t see many happy endings.

Mahon and Cathcart are people-driven. Called by science, medi-cine and the humanity of cancer patients, they are also the point in theroad where the bench meets the bedside. Stemming from the traditionof physician-scientists, this bench to bedside idea is also referred to astranslational research and is gaining ground across the countrythrough innovative programs like the one Mahon and Cathcart testedthis past spring with graduate students and NJMS faculty members onthe Newark campus through the UMDNJ-Graduate School ofBiomedical Sciences.

Talk to this duo and they’ll tell you, this translational course is aboutforming a bridge between scientists and clinicians so each can learn thelanguage and feel of the other’s country. Such interplay between inves-tigators and clinicians is designed to inspire people’s work, to get themthinking even further outside their boxes and to offer a rich connectionand understanding of what is happening to a person living with can-cer. The hope is that it will lead to innovative science and discoveries,linking biomedical science with clinical applications.

When Mahon was involved in a faculty mentoring program, she real-ized that both clinicians and scientists felt that something was missing.“Collaboration between the clinic and the lab was something everybodywanted but there was no clear mechanism to do it,” Mahon says.

She got an idea and in Cathcart, she found an ally.

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LEMMA BI, PHD, HUMAN BREAST TISSUE 31

By Mary Ann D’Urso

JOHN EMERSON

When she approached him about offering Masters and PhD stu-dents a translational research program, Cathcart was all for it. Theyliterally brainstormed for an hour and came up with the framework,including his lecture series, Introduction to Clinical Oncology; atten-dance at weekly tumor board conferences, where doctors from alloncology disciplines collaborate on patient cases and protocols; andsix months of multidisciplinary shadowing rotations, whereresearchers and docs are paired up.

Having worked in a lab for two years between college and medicalschool, Cathcart has long favored giving basic scientists a clinicalvocabulary and a sense of how physicians think about problems.Several years ago he invited researchers to attend the weekly tumorboards. “People would come and discover that our languages were sodifferent. I think we scared researchers out of the room to somedegree,” says Cathcart. He likens translational researchers to engineerswho design and refine cars. At the end of the day, these engineers alsodrive in traffic or get flat tires. “They understand the practical side ofwhat they’re trying to fix,” he explains.

Cathcart says he hopes that his course, which will resume nextspring as a graduate school requirement for the Cancer ResearchTraining Program, will break down barriers. He wants basic scientiststo feel confident approaching clinicians for whatever they might need,from cancer tissue samples to more information and feedback.

Emerging as a field of its own, largely due to National Institutes of

Health (NIH) initiatives and funding that began in2004, translational research training was once aimedprimarily at medical students. Back in the day whenscience was not as sophisticated technologically andmedicine not so specialized, a physician could regular-ly build time for lab research into his or her schedule.Today, given the time spent pursuing careers as eitherPhD scientists or MDs—on average 18 years fromundergraduate through post-doc or residency work—plus money and insurance issues, compartmentaliza-tion happens. The opportunity for PhD level scientiststo receive training in clinical medicine is gainingground because a cancer researcher’s career could endup spanning academic, pharmaceutical and biotech-nology areas.

“By building bridges and demystifying things onboth sides, you present the opportunity for somethingelse to happen down the road,” explains Harvey Ozer,MD, director, NJMS-UH Cancer Center. “I feel thatthe program provides an added dimension for attract-ing outstanding students and faculty. Its success willprovide a further indication that the Cancer Centerserves as a force for innovation as well as excellence.”

Lawrence Harrison, MD, associate director of clin-ical services at the Cancer Center, agrees. “The more the clinician andthe basic scientist communicate, the more relevant the researchbecomes,” Harrison says. He ought to know. According to his col-leagues, Harrison, who is also chief of surgical oncology and a princi-pal investigator heading one of the center’s 12 labs, is one of those rareexceptions on today’s medical landscape: He’s fluent in both lan-guages. Harrison was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from theNew Jersey Commission on Cancer Research to continue laboratorystudies aimed at helping patients with terminal abdominal cancers.

This training program, Harrison says, offers a context for the basicscientists and provides a window into the clinical world where theirresearch will have an effect. “The scientist sees the clinical problem,the clinician has a better understanding of the researcher and mostimportantly, the patient will eventually benefit from the collabora-tion,” says Harrison, one of 10 docs who signed up within hours to bea clinician mentor in the shadowing program.

Real and raw is how Mahon describes the lectures and her atten-dance at the tumor boards. “Literally, for two nights I couldn’t sleepthinking about these people and I had done cancer research for 15years. I was aware of these diseases,” she says.

Cathcart didn’t pull any punches.“I love the patients. I wanted to impress these basic scientists with

the sheer volume of cancer, with how many people die every minute.Here at UH, we are largely taking care of people no one else wants to

32 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

Charles Cathcart, MD, and Gwen Mahon, PhD

treat. They are diagnosed with cancer in late stages because they don’thave insurance coverage for routine screenings, which could have ledto an earlier diagnosis with a better outcome. I feel like I’m curing veryfew people,” Cathcart says.

“I wanted to frame how pervasive this disease is in our communityand show pictures of patients who are very brave, very accepting. Theyappreciate anything you can do for them,” he explains. Seeing picturesof patients. Listening to their stories. Hearing about Newark’s localand ethnic issues. Learning how to tell someone they’re going to die.Understanding how doctors speak to each other. All of it is exposurethat scientists would not otherwise have.

Pedro Rodriguez, a fifth year PhD student who was in the new pro-gram, reports, “In a matter of minutes, you are introduced to a personwith a family and a past. In many cases, you learn how the doctorsplan to take action in treating these patients and sometimes the prog-nosis can be dismal.

“To have some connection to the clinical side can be profound. Youget motivated and inspired. You remember who you’re doing this workfor. Sadly, in the lab, people tend to forget this,” says Rodriguez,whose research concentrates on cancer cell signaling, the molecularlanguage of cancer cells.

Deborah Lazzarino, PhD, NJMS assistant professor, neurology andneurosciences, also participated in the course and says she became“much more aware of how limited the tools are when aggressive meas-ures don’t work.” Lazzarino wants to establish an ongoing collabora-tion with a breast cancer clinician so she can look at gene expression.

Rodriguez also hopes to collaborate with clinicians and obtain realpatients’ tissue samples. “It’s a huge thing to be able to work with

patient samples because they are more relevant,” Rodriguez explains.Researchers prefer these real cells because they retain their unique lin-eage and profile. Over time, commercially available cancer cell linesused most often in labs worldwide become very different from theirtumor of origin.

Like the tumor boards, the shadowing rotations will further drawscientists into the world of cancer doctors and their patients. “Theimpact is almost overwhelming for the non-clinician,” Cathcartexplains. “Not to overstate it, but I think that a non-clinician leavesthe patient’s room after face-to-face encounters realizing that they are1,000 times more powerful interactions than they originally thought.”Participants like Lazzarino are often in awe of the positive attitude andpsychological balance physicians maintain while dealing with suchdisheartening real-life situations.

According to Ozer, the course and translational work will form abridge to the 220,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art Cancer Center,originally conceived as the building that would, in its very design, pro-vide a shared space for researchers and clinicians in which to seepatients. Since October 2006, scientists and their labs, which fallunder the medical school’s umbrella, have set up shop on four of thecenter’s nine floors. About 100 people, including 13 faculty investiga-tors from nine medical school departments and 35 graduate students,call it home. Their funding now totals $7,695,000 a year. The centeralso houses NJMS core facilities and common labs.

Course lectures, seminar series and tumor conferences regularlymeet at the center, which will eventually be home to clinical oncolo-gists and staff who will treat patients there.

Receiving a Best of 2006 award for its innovation in architecturefrom New York Construction, a publication for the tri-state construc-tion area, the $79 million center includes features such as open labdesign and informal group spaces—infrastructures that support trans-lational work. Designated as an NIH Center of Excellence, the centerserves the city of Newark, which is visible, like the natural lighting,from many angles of the building and to many scientists at theirbenches.

By year’s end, two more labs are expected to relocate there and twonew faculty recruits doing cutting-edge science will join the CancerCenter. “We have a ripe opportunity to recruit new talent,” Cathcartsays. “Here, the scientists and clinicians help each other out. We’re inthe trenches together.”

For Mahon, patient-driven research is today’s touchstone for bring-ing basic science to clinical care. “PhD scientists are often isolatedworking on cures for diseases. They don’t necessarily know what it’slike to be a patient or what it’s like for doctors to treat patients.” InCanada, she had trained at the Terry Fox Laboratory in Vancouverwhere investigators saw patients as part of their education and clini-cians routinely attended lab meetings and lectures. The stark cells sheinvestigated as a cancer researcher have a human face, which is neverfar from her focus and still inspires her work, just like the art on theCancer Center walls. �

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L 33LEROY SHARER, MD, INSIDE A DERMOID TUMOR IN THE PINEAL REGION OF THE BRAIN

Research analyst Lori-AnnePhillips, MS, handled the printingand trimming of all the art in the show using the Cancer Center’sown poster printer.

calendar

MFXINC.COM34 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

When we look back, we’ll see that this was the year that became

the tipping point in medicine. In 2008, we are experiencing

the perfect storm. Many of our citizens are moving into their

retirement years and planning on Medicare for healthcare

needs. At the same time,

Medicare Part A has gone into

the red zone, collecting only

94 percent of the funds need-

ed to pay bills. Starting July

1, 2008, there is a 10 percent cut in reimbursements. In

addition to this brew, there is a chance for universal healthcare, motivated

by election year promises, which can only increase the expectations of the

American public’s thirst for entitlements.

As healthcare providers—and I hate that name—we are going to be

asked to be the executioners for both the government and the insurance

companies to deny and ration care. All this is happening when we are

being asked to do more for less, while accepting increased liability risk

and the misdirected hostility of those we are trying to help.

This is not what I signed up for when I became a physician three

decades ago. Ninety-five percent of American citizens are in no position to

pay the necessary taxes to fund this operation because in the last 10 years

they have lost ground in their quality of life. The remaining top 5 percent

are not about to pick up this tab, especially when no one has ever been

asked to be responsible for their medical and lifestyle decisions.

Will the healthcare system crash and burn? I doubt that. Yet, we have

reached the point where there will have to be a change in direction and

acceptance of responsibility sooner, rather than later. How we react in the

next two years will set the tone for the next 25 years, in my opinion. As

physicians, now is the time to be proactive, so take the time to write to your

congressmen and senators. Let them know why the system is not working

and why they will be responsible when it fails. Between us and our patients,

we can make a difference!

— Joseph V. DiTrolio, MD’79

A Messagefrom thePresident

NJMS CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Summer/Fall 2008August 10SHARE’s Annual Cares Day Covenant House, NewarkContacts: Mamoona Khokhar,khokhamt@umdnj.edu Shashi Kapadia, kapadisn@umdnj.edu

August 11Orientation for Class of 2012

August 14White Coat CeremonyMSB, Courtyard at 4 p.m.

September 23Annual “History of Medicine” Lecture Featured speaker: T. Jock Murray, MD “History of Multiple Sclerosis”MSB/ B-610 at NoonContact: Allen B. Weisse, MD, 973-379-2322

September 25 – 27Pavlovian Society Annual MeetingSheraton Suites on the Hudson, WeehawkenContact: Richard Servatius, PhDservatrj@umdnj.edu.

October 28Scholarship Awards DinnerGrand Foyer at 6 p.m.Contact: Dianne Mink, 973-972-6864

December 6Autism Gala /Concert benefitting NJMS Autism Center and NJDS Special Care Treatment CenterFeaturing the Soweto Gospel ChoirNJ Performing Arts Center, Newark at 6 p.m.Contact: Andrea West, 973-972-1039

December 10Bridging the Gap: Model Systems to PathogensNew York Academy of Sciences, New York at 4 p.m.Contact: Barry Kreiswirth, 973-854-3100kreiswba@umdnj.edu

January 29 and 30Symposium on Human Variation: A Driver of Personalized MedicineHyatt Regency, New BrunswickContact: Peter P. Tolias, PhD, toliaspp@umdnj.edu

A L U M N I F O C U S

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O LAL SUNDSTROM 35

N E W S O F S P E C I A L I N T E R E S T T O N J M S G R A D U A T E S

T H E W H O , W H A T , W H E N & W H E R E I N

A Ballroom TraditionA beautiful spring evening at the Sheraton Parsippany Hotel served as a wonderful

backdrop for the Alumni Reunion and Golden Apple Awards Dinner Dance on April5. More than 325 students, faculty, staff, alumni and guests filled the ballroom.

Michael Ivan’08, Student Council President, and NJMS Interim Dean Robert L. Johnson,MD’72, opened an evening of dining, dancing, honoring the award recipients, and reminisc-ing that continued into the wee hours.

The Charles L. Brown Award was presented to Richard G. Pozen, MD’74; the HonoraryAlumnus Award was received by Julie Ferguson, MPA, NJMS registrar and assistant dean forstudent affairs; and Hugh Evans, MD, was the recipient of the Distinguished Professor Award.

Following a tradition that has been continued for many years, the students honored facul-ty and staff for their outstanding service and commitment to the school and its students.Golden Apple winners are chosen by each class and in the fourth and fifth years, faculty andresidents are picked. An administrator is also singled out.

(Below, clockwise, l. to r.) 1: Heather Platt ’08, Thomas Christian, MD, ’06, Christina Pisani, MD, ’06,and Sean Ciullo ’08. 2: First year students. 3. Fourth year students. 4. Natalie Uy ’07 with her mom,Constancia S. Uy, MD, pediatrician and Golden Apple winner.

GoldenApple WinnersFirst Year: David Defouw, PhD, RichardFeinberg, PhD, and Shamshad Gilani, PhD

Second Year: Richard Howland, PhD,Kenneth Klein, MD, and Lester Sultatos,PhD

Administrator: Julie Ferguson, MPA

Third Year Faculty: Alan Beitler, MD, Jo-Ann Reteguiz, MD, and AnandSrinivasan, MD

Third Year Residents: Timothy Mainardi,MD, Nagarani Ramasubramaniam, MD, andMaheswari “Maggie” Senthil, MD

Fourth Year Faculty: I. Thomas Cohen, MD,Ralph Oriscello, MD, Ziad Sifri, MD, andConstancia Uy, MD

Fourth Year Residents: Zeyad Baker, MD,Thomas Christiano, MD, and ChristinaPisani, MD

RICHARD Pozen, MD, ’74, along withAnn Silver Pozen, has created The

Pozen Scholar Summer StudentCommunity Service Internship which willprovide stipends to NJMS students doingcommunity service work in Newark. Theywill be asked to record their thoughtsregarding the organization, the delivery ofservices and the barriers impeding high-quality local healthcare.

“This is about giving back and givingthanks for the great opportunity that I hadin medical school,” said Pozen, explaininghis decision to donate $1 million to fundthese community projects.

At NJMS, Pozen “thought the educationand the caliber of teaching and of my fellowstudents were excellent. The city hospitaland the VA hospital experiences were veryhands-on and when I started my internship,my clinical skills were advanced.”

After a residency in internal medicine atMontefiore Hospital and a cardiology fel-lowship at Georgetown University, he joinedthe faculty of the University of Miami.Then, he went into private practice for 13years before leaving to expand the companyhe had begun five years earlier, which pro-vided management services to insurancecompanies for cardiology procedures. Pozenlater co-founded iHealth Technologies, acost control management firm that advisesinsurance companies how to pay claimsaccurately and consistently.

Pozen has remained grateful to NJMSthroughout his life. After his brother’suntimely death, Pozen endowed a scholar-ship in his name, the Michael W. Pozen,MD, scholarship. Because of his commit-ment to NJMS, he stipulated that thisrecent gift fund a program of social rele-vance that actively involves medical stu-dents. He hopes the endowment will giveothers access to the kind of experiences hefelt were so valuable. “I’m interested in mak-

ing sure other students have that great edu-cation, and at the same time, I want them tounderstand the social responsibility that goesalong with the profession.”

Pozen has found his career path to beboth “stimulating and rewarding,” and he ishappy to be able to continue giving back.“My advice to those starting out: Focus onwhat you’re interested in and what makesyou happy. If you’re enjoying your work,that’s good. Be open to new experiences.”

TOP: AL SUNDSTROM; BOTTOM: DAN KATZ36 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

A L U M N I F O C U S

Oh, The Places You Will Go…Fifty dedicated doctors showed up for the Alumni Association-sponsored Career Nights on February 18 and 21 to share theirprofessional wisdom with students.

Dorian Wilson, MD, aliver transplant surgeonand director of theHealthcare FoundationCenter for Humanismand Medicine at NJMS,gives Gaurav Gandhi’11the inside story.

Kenneth Swan, MD, general surgery and vascular surgery, hassuggestions for TomasWalsh’11, PaigeLuhn’09 and JosephWeiner’11.

To Send Med Students into Newark“This is about giving back…and being open to new experiences.”

Richard Pozen, MD,and Ann Silver Pozen

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L 37

C L A S S N O T E S

1960’SDaniel D. Cowell, MD’60, serves assenior associate dean for graduatemedical education and professor ofpsychiatry at the Marshall UniversitySchool of Medicine, Huntington, WV.His wife, Diana, is a hospice socialworker and his son Dana, who gradu-ated from West Virginia University inMay 2006, taught overseas and is plan-ning a career in law enforcement.

Michael A. Parmer, MD’64, residespart-time in FL and part-time in VTand works two weeks each month as asurveyor. He and his wife Margaret areenjoying their four grandchildren.

Milton Armm, MD’65, was selectedby the Greater Bridgeport MedicalAssociation as recipient of the 2008Physician of the Year award. Physiciansare selected for this award in recogni-tion of their dedication to improvingthe quality of life and healthcare with-in the greater Bridgeport, CT, commu-nity. Dr. Armm is a urologist practic-ing at Bridgeport Hospital and St.Vincent’s Medical Center.

Frank A. Mitros, MD’69, is pleasedthat his son Joe, a first-year resident,and his son Chris, a second-year med-ical student, have joined him in thepathology department at theUniversity of Iowa Medical School.

1970’SRichard W. Huss, MD’71, writes thathe is practicing clinical allergy/immunology at ENTAA Care withoffices in Glen Burnie, Annapolis andOdenton, MD.

John Kindzierski, MD’72, is the resi-dency program director, Departmentof Obstetrics and Gynecology, at St.Barnabas Medical Center, Livingston,NJ.

John Bach, MD’76, professor in theDepartment of Physical Medicine andRehabilitation at NJMS, is the authorof “Tracheostomy for AdvanceNeuromuscular Disease,” published inChronic Respiratory Disease 2007.

Are You in this Picture?So what is the real story behind this photograph? How did a group of NJMS medical

students and faculty, wearing their white coats, find themselves in front of a movie theater

showing Goodbye Columbus, which made its debut in 1969? And who is the tall guy in

the double-breasted suit standing to the right? If you have answers, please let us know.

This, of course, is a new photo-feature designed to take you back in time.

Email: njmsalum@umdnj.edu

38 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

C L A S S N O T E S

Randall Case, MD’77, (above), hasleft his position at IBM, where he ledthe Clinical Transformation Consult-ing Service, to join T-System, Inc., aclinical documentation and care coordi-nation information system company,where he is vice president of productmanagement and chief solutions officer.

Scott B. Baron, MD’79, is currentlychairman, Department ofCardiovascular Services, and director,Cardiac Emergency Services at MercySan Juan Medical Center inCarmichael, CA.

Andrew Freedman, MD’79, present-ed a poster at the Academy of SleepMedicine’s national meeting in June2007 entitled “Mandibular Advance-ment Titration in Sleep Apnea.”

1980’SRobert P. Rubens, MD’80, is vicepresident of medical affairs for MyriadPharmaceuticals, Inc., in Salt LakeCity, UT. Dr. Rubens also holds anMBA from the University ofWashington.

Linda J. Griffith, MD’81, announcesthat her article, “Good Palliative Carefor a Patient with Schizophrenia Dyingof Emphysema,” was published inPsychiatry in August 2007. A compan-

ion piece appeared in December 2007.Dr. Griffith is medical director,Consolidated Care, Inc., Champaign,Logan, and Union counties, OH, anda clinical assistant professor, BoonshoftSchool of Medicine, Wright StateUniversity, Dayton, OH.

James M. Jeffries, MD’83, opened hispractice in plastic surgery at LickingMemorial Reconstructive andCosmetic Services in Newark, OH.Dr. Jeffries volunteered with Healingthe Children, a nonprofit group thatprovides services to children inNairobi, Kenya. He also devoted timeto the Philippine-American Group ofEducators and Surgeons.

Henry M. Ushay, MD’86, is nowmedical director of the PediatricIntensive Care Unit of the Children’sHospital at Montefiore Hospital,Bronx, NY.

Jock Nash McCullough, MD’87, acardiothoracic surgeon, has leftHackensack University Medical Centerto join his mentor and former partner,Dr. M. Arisan Ergin, chief of cardio-thoracic surgery at EnglewoodHospital and Medical Center. Theywill work with Dr. James Klein atEnglewood’s Heart and VascularInstitute of NJ.

Paul E. Kovatis, MD’89, anorthopaedic surgeon, was featured inNJ Monthly’s Top Doctor edition asone of the top orthopaedic surgeons inNJ and one of only two orthopaedistsselected from Hackensack UniversityMedical Center. Dr. Kovatis is also amember of the Board of Governors,Medical Board and CredentialsCommittee at Hackensack UniversityMedical Center and is the past presi-dent of the Bergen County MedicalSociety, the youngest physician to everattain that position.

1990’SPatrick Foye, MD’92, associate pro-fessor in the Department of PhysicalMedicine and Rehabilitation, co-authored “Osteoarthritis andTherapeutic Exercise,” with ToddStitik, MD, professor, and GregGazzillo. The article appeared in the

American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine,September –October 2007.

Kimberly Odell, MD’93, is busy jug-gling her career as a part-time facultymember at JFK Family Medicine inNJ, parenting two sets of twins:Joseph and Olivia, 7; Alexa andMarissa, 2; and being a wife to Chris.

Sean Studer, MD’93, recently joinedthe staff at Newark Beth Israel MedicalCenter as medical director of the newlung transplant program.

Ron S. Bakal, MD’95, practices gen-eral urology with primary emphasis ononcology, kidney stones and inconti-nence, with offices in the Bronx,Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Beth Belof-Jasko, MD’98, announcesthe birth of Nathaniel Lewis inJanuary 2007. Dr. Belof-Jasko and her

Your News from Old FriendsHow are you? What are you doing with your life? Send us an update, a photo, a story idea or just your latest address. Pulse magazine is your way to stay intouch. Mail this form to: Alumni Association of New Jersey Medical School, 185 South Orange Avenue, MSB-B504, Newark, NJ 07101–1709. Photos arewelcome. You can also send your news via e-mail to: njmsalum@umdnj.edu orfax us at (973)972-2251.

Name Graduation Year

Home Phone Office Fax

E-Mail Address

Mailing Address

What I Have Been Doing (enclose photos)

I would like to be a representative for my class.

Please join the Alumni Association of New Jersey Medical School.General Dues $65.00Resident in Training $15.00Lifetime Membership $1,000.00

Visit http://njms.umdnj.edu/, click on Alumni and Alumni Association and thenOnline Dues Payment to pay your dues online.

The Lifetime Membership is being offered to our alumni as a means to perpetu-ate the goals of the Alumni Association and enable its members to sustain theirsupport in a more meaningful way. All categories of membership will afford youthe opportunity to keep connected with us. You will continue to receive all mem-bership benefits, including NJMS Pulse magazine, information about upcomingevents and reunions, and library privileges.

N E W J E R S E Y M E D I C A L S C H O O L 39

husband opened their own medicalpractice, Riverview Family Medicine,P.A., in June 2007 in Riverview, FL.They are both board certified familyphysicians.

David Greenspun, MD’99, a board-certified plastic surgeon, is residingand practicing in New York City. Dr.Greenspun specializes in microsurgicalbreast reconstruction. He was recentlymarried to Rachel Schneider, a psy-chotherapist and clinical social workerin NY.

Susan Walsh, MD’99, writes that in2006 she began her position as clinicalinstructor in pediatric emergency med-icine at Yale University School ofMedicine in New Haven, CT.

2000’SJulie Yeh, MD’00, joined the facultyand family medicine residency pro-gram in the Department of Family,Community and Preventive Medicineat Drexel University College ofMedicine in Philadelphia, PA. She wasmarried to psychologist Mark Moorein February 2007.

Mary Leigh Ann Daniels, MD’06,competed in the Nike Women’sMarathon in a San Francisco fundrais-er in October 2007 as a member ofthe Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’sTeam in Training. Dr. Daniels ran inmemory of Jordan Blair, a youngpatient she lost to leukemia.

Lowell Gurey, MD’06, and KerenBakal, MD’07, are happy toannounce their engagement.

with support from other grants.And it’s kept them talking—afactor that may lead to break-throughs in repairing the nervoussystem and curing what wereonce thought to be irreversibleconditions.

“By continuing to support usas a group, Kirby has forced usto interact. We might not havekept up that interaction withoutthat gift,” Townes-Andersonsays. “Out of this has come atleast two joint grant applica-tions…It’s resulted in multiplejoint publications, concrete col-laborations, because of a mutualinterest in understanding howneurons communicate.” For thepast three years, the group hasheld “Kirby Day” to bring every-one together to share informa-tion and ideas.

“Basic research support, eitherfor the young scientists whohave yet to secure stabilizedNIH funding or for the mostcutting-edge work, is crucial. Itrequires patience and persist-ence,” Kirby says.

The gifts from the F.M. KirbyFoundation go 100 percenttoward research and have helpedprovide support for 25 graduateand eight post-doctoral studentsover the past six years. To date,research done by the KirbyGroup has produced more than40 publications and 70 abstracts,Townes-Anderson says.

Kuzhikandathil, who workswith the neurotransmitterdopamine, underscores theimportance of interaction within

the Kirby Group. “While we areall studying different aspects ofsynaptic plasticity, we use differ-ent model systems and differenttechniques. This has allowed usto see some of the broader andpotentially practical implicationsof the work we do,” saysKuzhikandathil, NJMS andGSBS assistant professor, phar-macology and physiology.

Kuzhikandathil’s collaborationwith Rameshwar, whose researchfocuses on generating functionalneurons from adult stem cells,has advanced the developmentof a potentially novel method totreat Parkinson’s disease.

Townes-Anderson is develop-ing a drug that would preventblindness after retinal detach-ment, a condition that is usuallycaused by a blow to the head.The drug works by stoppingphotoreceptors from destroyingtheir synapses when retinaldetachment occurs. “We are cur-rently testing it,” she says.

The synapse is the placewhere a signal passes from aneuron, like a photoreceptor, toanother cell. “In the last 10 to15 years it has been found thatthose points of contact are notstatic. The communicationbetween the nerve cells is plastic,it can change, and that’s a goodthing,” Townes-Andersonexplains. “When you learnsomething, you have to createnew connections.” —JENNIFER S. DOKTORSKI

The Alumni Association and the NJMS community extend deepest sympathies tothe families and friends of:

Christine Haycock, MD, professor, surgery, in January at the Center forHospice Care at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Wayne. Haycock graduated in 1952from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, andserved in the U.S. Army during WWII in the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps. Thefirst female intern at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, she was also thefirst woman to transfer directly from the U.S. Army Nurse Corps to theU.S. Army Medical Corps.

Robert Hobson, MD, professor, surgery, in January. A Vietnam veteran andgraduate of the George Washington School of Medicine, Hobson completeda residency and fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He joinedthe NJMS faculty in 1975 and held various leadership positions in theDepartments of Surgery and Physiology.

Kavita Patel-Joseph, physician assistant in the musculoskeletal oncologydivision of the orthopaedic department, in January. She graduated fromPenn State in 2002 and received her physician assistant degree in 2005 fromArcadia University. The Orthopaedic Department and the Patel-JosephFamily have created an award in her honor that will be presented annually toa physician assistant or nurse who exemplifies her excellence and dedicationto patients.

James P. McLean, MD’02, in a snowboarding accident in January inBreckenridge, CO. McLean practiced rehabilitation medicine at theUniversity of Kansas Hospital and resided in Leawood, KS.

Conor Michael Moran, ’10, second-year student, last December. A summacum laude graduate of The College of New Jersey, Moran was rememberedin a service sponsored by the Alumni Association. His father, Robert Moran,MD, said the best way to pay tribute to his son’s memory was to “live asfully as you can.” This student is also survived by his mother, Ann McNeal,MD, a sister, and a brother.

i n m e m o r i a m

Kirby Continued from page 40

F O C U S O N P H I L A N T H R O P Y

JOHN EMERSON

“The communication between neurons isthe absolute key to living, all of our behav-iors, everything,” says Ellen Townes-Anderson, PhD, UMDNJ-New JerseyMedical School (NJMS) professor, neuro-sciences and ophthalmology, and associateprofessor, UMDNJ-Graduate School ofBiomedical Sciences (GSBS), in Newark.Life experiences, big and small, dependupon the signals passed through cells in ourbrain and other parts of the nervous systemknown as neurons.

For the past six years, gifts from the F.M.Kirby Foundation, Inc. of Morristown, NJ,totaling nearly $1 million, have been the keyto fostering communication and connectionsbetween Townes-Anderson and a team offour other neuroscientists, who all run theirown labs, as they seek to understand theoften devastating results when the nervoussystem is damaged—a condition that affects50 million people in the U.S.

“Lots of diseases cause a break in commu-nication between neurons. We are trying to

understand how these diseases cause a dis-ruption and how you can repair it —makethem grow back together again,” Townes-Anderson says. Creating new connections,or synapses, between neurons is critical intreating and curing such disorders asHuntington’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s,and reversing the effects of spinal cord, headinjuries or stroke, she says.

Dillard Kirby, the F.M. Kirby Founda-tion’s executive director, explains that formore than 10 years his family’s foundationhas had a “keen interest in basic neuro-science, both as it relates to neurodegenera-tive diseases but also in regard to injury andrepair.” In addition to Townes-Anderson’sgroup, other gifts (beginning in 2000) bringthis foundation’s support of neuroscienceresearch at NJMS to more than $1 million.“We recognized that on a relative basis neu-roscience, broadly, has been underfundedboth via public and private dollars. Certainlythe tighter NIH (National Institutes ofHealth) budget of recent years has caused aneven more dramatic gap and we felt itimportant that private philanthropy be thereto help,” Kirby says. The foundation has alsosupported UMDNJ’s Cancer Institute andthe Scleroderma Research Fund.

The Kirby Group of NJMS researchersalso includes Annie Beuve, PhD; PranelaRameshwar, PhD; Eldo Kuzhikandathil,PhD; and Joseph McArdle, PhD, plus theirrespective students. Faced with waning feder-al dollars, Townes-Anderson says the founda-tion’s support came at a critical time. But thegifts have also given the Kirby Group roomto be creative and try riskier approaches toresearch, options that are not always possible

40 P U L S E S U M M E R 2 0 0 8

F O C U S O N P H I L A N T H R O P Y

How Kirby Makes

All the Right Connections(Clockwise from left): EllenTownes-Anderson, PhD, JosephMcArdle, PhD, Annie Beuve, PhD,and Eldo Kuzhikandathil, PhD

AMEMORY triggered by a song on the radio. The ability to

take one step or run a marathon. The taste of ice cream

on a summer day. It’s all about connections.

Continued on page 39

The Foundation of UMDNJ is helping to make New Jersey ahealthier place to live and work. Thanks to the generosity of theFoundation’s many donors, future clinicians receive outstandingeducations, today’s patients receive the best medical care andresearchers work to fulfill the promise of tomorrow’s cures.

We would like to express our gratitude to the following donors,and the many others, who have contributed to the Foundation’ssuccess through their gifts to New Jersey Medical School:

• The Angel Family Foundation, for ensuring that needy children with asthma have the medications they depend on

• Dr. Richard Pozen and Ann Silver Pozen, who establishedthe Pozen Community Scholars program at New JerseyMedical School to enhance and expand community serviceopportunities for NJMS medical students

• Marie Toohey and Gerard E. Toohey, Sr., for investing ingroundbreaking neuroscience research

They realize that the Foundation of UMDNJ, as a New JerseyHealth Foundation affiliate, has the financial strength and abilityto build partnerships between medical school resources andinterested donors to make a real difference in the lives of New Jersey residents.

Learn how you can help endow the health of New Jersey.Contact Elizabeth Ketterlinus, vice president of development, at (973) 972-2486 or at ketterel@umdnj.edu.

difference…

N e w a r k . N e w B r u n s w i c k . S t r a t f o r d .

www.umdnj.edu/foundation

Endowing Health…

to make a

University of Medicine and Dentistry of New JerseyNew Jersey Medical School185 South Orange AvenueP.O. Box 1709Newark, New Jersey 07101–1709

http://njms.umdnj.edu

Non-profit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PA I DPermit No. 5287

Newark, New Jersey

Made of O-gauge die-cast metal, the Rapid

Surgical Response Train has 8 curved tracks, 8

straight tracks, steam locomotive, coal car, NJMS

medical supplies boxcar, helicopter, caboose and

transformer. The accessory car is an operational

handcar on a depressed flat car.

Special Package Deal—Train PLUS New Accessory Car

$350 includes shipping

Accessory Car ONLY (for those who already own the train)

$75 plus shipping

To order, call 973-972-6864 (outside NJ call 800-477-7040) or email njmsalum@umdnj.eduProfits support student scholarships and programming.