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University of Washington School of Medicine
Online News
Vol. 11, No. 16
April 20, 2007
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To view an archived version of Online News on the UW
Medicine Web site, visit:
http://www.uwmedicine.org/Global/NewsAndEvents/somnews/index.htm
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This week’s news:
* UW’s Wesley Van Voorhis coordinating new open-access database aimed at spurring development of drugs for infectious diseases in the developing world
* UW Medicine launches centralized database for provider profiles
* April issue of Academic Medicine features UW faculty member’s discussion of communication and relationship-building skills in medical education; March issue featured UW medical student urging better inclusion of global health into medical curriculum
* Plant discovery may yield clues for cancer treatment, UW researchers and colleagues find
* REMINDER: Ceremony on April 30 will honor the late Robert Petersdorf, pioneering administrator at UW School of Medicine and longtime leader in academic medicine
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UW RESEARCHER LEADING OPEN-ACCESS DRUG TARGET DATABASE PROJECT
An international network of researchers announced this week the release of a new Web-based resource designed to facilitate the development of medicines to fight infectious diseases afflicting the developing world. The project, called the Drug Target Prioritization Database, may be accessed at http://TDRtargets.org
This is the first such system to assemble so much comprehensive information that is pertinent to drug target discovery for parasitic and bacterial diseases, according to Wesley Van Voorhis, UW professor of medicine and coordinator of the Drug Target Prioritization Network. The consortium includes a global team of academic laboratories, research centers, and industry scientists, focusing on the pathogens responsible for malaria, tuberculosis, African sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and worm infections such as schistosomiasis and filariasis -- all of which are in desperate need of new treatments.
Together, these diseases are responsible for billions of infections in the developing world, and more than six million deaths per year. Since poor countries often don't have the funding or infrastructure to support health research and drug development, new collaborations like this one are working to improve the situation, providing a resource that brings together scientists from all over the world.
The network's goal is to identify and prioritize drug targets against diseases that predominantly affect developing countries. The database is unique in that it allows any researcher, in both developed and developing countries, to have access to this kind of information. The network was established in 2005 by the WHO-based Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR).
The Web site will allow users to search a database of chemicals that might act against disease pathogens, using many different criteria tailored to their own needs or capabilities. For example, a university lab specializing in a particular class of drug targets can focus on that area when searching for new candidate targets.
The network includes investigators from the Universidad Nacional de General San Martín, the Sanger Institute, the University of Melbourne, the University of Pennsylvania Genomics Institute, and the University of Washington. In-kind support and information relevant to target structure, essentiality, and likelihood of targets to be modulated by drugs, has been provided by Pfizer, Inpharmatica, the University of California, San Francisco, and New England Biolabs. The database also takes advantage of genomic-scale datasets made publicly available by genome sequencing centers and other researchers around the world.
Van Voorhis may be reached at wesley@u.washington.edu
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UW MEDICINE LAUNCHES CENTRALIZED DATABASE FOR PROVIDER PROFILES
Health Sciences/UW Medicine News and Community Relations and UW Medicine IT Services have recently launched a centralized database to manage biographical profiles of UW Medicine providers. The database replaces the Web-based “Find a Physician” tool on the UW Medicine public web site. This tool will now make it possible for each provider to have a single online biographical profile, rather than multiple profiles maintained separately in different places. While the initial phase only includes clinical faculty, future phases of this project will include non-clinical research faculty as well.
Each profile will pull standard information from a School of Medicine database. This includes information on education and certification in fields that cannot be edited. Additionally, there are opportunities for faculty to include additional information about their practice philosophy, areas of interest, languages spoken and much more. Faculty will be asked to update their biographies as they go through the re-appointment cycle. Each will be contacted via email and will be provided a link to a simple tool that will allow for the addition or updating of information .
Once completed, individual departments and divisions will be able to link to this biography to ensure that information about a faculty member is consistent throughout UW Medicine. At present, it is not unusual for faculty to have up to four different free-standing biographies.
Each provider will also have the opportunity to have a new portrait taken for the profile. Everyone is encouraged to have a new portrait taken to ensure a professional look to UW Medicine's Web presence. An NCR staff photographer is available to work with individuals or departments to arrange times and places for photo shoots. All providers will be given a high-resolution digital copy of their portrait to use for publications or other purposes.
A sample profile can be seen by visiting the following site:
http://medical.washington.edu/bios/view.aspx?CentralId=159606
For questions or more information, please contact Eric Tognetti, Web manager for UW Medicine at togneter@u.washington.edu
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UW FACULTY MEMBERS AND MEDICAL STUDENT FEATURED IN ACADEMIC MEDICINE
A UW School of Medicine faculty member is one of several authors featured in the April issue of the journal Academic Medicine. The issue includes a collection of articles and an accompanying editorial on innovations in medical education. The authors, who are from many different academic medical institutions around the nation, highlight successful solutions and strategies for the challenges faced in the field of medical education.
Sharon Dobie, UW associate professor of family medicine, wrote a viewpoint article for this issue of Academic Medicine. Her piece is titled “Reflections on a Well-Traveled Path: Self-Awareness, Mindful Practice, and Relationship-Centered Care as Foundations for Medical Education.” In the article, she discusses how students enter medical school hoping to have good relationships with their patients. Along with medical residents, however, they are exposed to a hidden curriculum that places biomedical knowledge above and, at times, at odds with cultivating awareness and relationship skills that are important to the patient-physician relationship. Using examples from narratives gathered in workshops and on work rounds with students and residents at the UW School of Medicine, Dobie explores the concepts of relationship-centered care, self-awareness and mindfulness as proposed cornerstones of a new foundation for medical education.
Last month’s issue of Academic Medicine featured authors from the UW. Medical student Paul Drain was the first author on the article “Global Health in Medical Education: A Call for More Training and Opportunities,” and was joined by King Holmes, UW chair of global health; Daniel Hunt, former head of academic affairs at the UW medical school; and other academic medicine colleagues. The article includes a review of evidence showing the benefits of global health education in medical schools, and calls for several steps that schools can take to meet students’ interest in global health.
The text of Academic Medicine is available for UW faculty, staff, and students, through the UW Libraries system. Go to http://www.lib.washington.edu/ to access the journal, or visit the journal’s Web site directly at http://www.academicmedicine.org/
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PLANT DISCOVERY MAY YIELD NEW APPROACH IN TREATING HUMAN CANCERS
For the first time, scientists from the UW School of Medicine, Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Cambridge have determined how a plant hormone, auxin, interacts with its hormone receptor, called TIR1. Their report, featured in the April 5 issue of the journal Nature, also may have important implications for the treatment of human disease, because TIR1 is similar to human enzymes that are known to be involved in cancer.
The findings represent a huge advance in plant biology that will probably have important implications for agriculture in the future, the authors said, but could also play a role in new research on human cancers.
Until now it was believed enzymes like TIR1, called ubiquitin ligases, could only be controlled through protein-protein interactions. Ubiquitin ligases influence growth and light response in plants, poison mitigation in yeasts and also cancerous cell division in humans. The mechanism through which auxin works gives scientists a new pathway to study in trying to target ubiquitin ligases with therapeutic compounds.
The scientists extracted and purified TIR1 from the common plant model Arabidopsis. They determined the enzyme’s three-dimensional structure through a method called X-ray crystallography, in which crystals of the protein are bombarded with X-rays. This project is the first of its kind to find the structure for a plant hormone receptor. The scientists repeated the X-ray treatment to learn where auxin binds on the enzyme. They found that auxin is a sort of “molecular glue” that improves the ability of TIR1 to bind a peptide target.
Because the architecture of TIR1 is highly conserved among other ubiquitin ligases, including those in human cells, the scientists expect other ubiquitin ligases may be affected by small molecules like auxin. Organic chemists could, hypothetically, synthesize such molecules as a new type of cancer drug.
Ning Zheng, UW assistant professor of pharmacology, led the research. The team included other scientists from the UW, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Cambridge.
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REMINDER: CEREMONY APRIL 30 TO HONOR THE LATE ROBERT PETERSDORF
A ceremony scheduled for April 30 will honor the late Robert G. Petersdorf, a physician and administrator who led tremendous growth of the UW Department of Medicine in the 1960s and 70s and became a national leader in academic medicine. Petersdorf died last September at age 80.
The celebration of Petersdorf's distinguished career is scheduled from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., Monday, April 30, in Hogness Auditorium, Room A-420 of the UW Health Sciences Center. A reception will follow the presentation. The event is free and open to all.
The presentation will cover Petersdorf's many contributions to academic medicine through the different phases of his career, including his training at Yale University, his tenure at the UW, and his time at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The event will include remarks from Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, dean of the UW School of Medicine; James Wallace, UW professor of medicine; Harry Kimball, senior advisor to the dean of medicine at the UW; William Bremner, the Robert G. Petersdorf Professor and Chair of Medicine at the UW; and speakers from the AAMC, Brown University, and the University of California, San Francisco.
For more information, contact Barbara Mahoney at bmahoney@u.washington.edu or 206-543-7718. Parking for the event has been arranged in the S-1 parking lot behind the UW Health Sciences Center; check in at the gate for entry to the parking lot.
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Justin Reedy, editor:
206-685-0382, jreedy@u.washington.edu
Online News is copyright 2007. All rights, including electronic
redistribution, are reserved.
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