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University of Washington School of Medicine
Online News
Vol. 12, No. 22
May 30, 2008
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To view an archived version of Online News on the UW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:
* Guest message from retiring WWAMI faculty member Frank Seitz, recipient of Lucille Logan teaching award
* UW’s Ning Zheng in pharmacology and FHCRC’s Adrian Ferre-D’Amare named Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators
* Foldit computer game allows anyone to help make medical discoveries by playing with protein folding
* Washington Academy of Family Physicians (WAFP) Foundation honors several people at UW School of Medicine
* UW Medicine holding All-WWAMI Academic Retreat for Education June 9
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GUEST MESSAGE: FRANK C. SEITZ, WWAMI FACULTY MEMBER AT MONTANA STATE
Frank C. Seitz, a faculty member at the UW and Montana State University in the WWAMI medical education program, has received the Lucille Logan Award for Excellence in Medical School Teaching from the MSU-Bozeman WWAMI program. Seitz, the course chair for the System of Human Behavior course at Montana State and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the UW, is retiring this year. He gave the following speech at a dinner in his honor earlier this month.
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My decision to retire from WWAMI has nothing to do with any slackening of my commitment to medical education. As one of the original faculty in the innovative regional medical school program involving Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, I have served for 35 years teaching 700 Montana State University medical students. I am just getting warmed up. If I have learned anything, it is that medicine is a wonder-filled genie that must not be trapped within a bottle. We must teach and practice beyond the walls of traditional education. For proof, we only need look at the front page of the newspaper or listen to the 5 o’clock news:
* Forty-seven million Americans do not have medical insurance or the ability to pay for medical care for themselves and their families.
* Two hundred thousand Gulf War veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and/or brain injuries for which we do not have adequate treatment.
* Ethical and moral dilemmas abound in the production of medications that do not live up to their television ads and promises. Some drugs designed to treat depression and anxiety have now been determined to produce major side effects that have been previously suppressed in the pharmacological literature.
We are flooded with medical issues that move beyond the microscope and test tube; they can no longer be ethically or legally ignored. I myself can no longer ignore them. Running the risk of becoming another Don Quixote, I nonetheless charge these problems with pen in hand, trusting in a better result than just jousting with windmills. Medical problems involve real people in real pain; they bleed real blood. They need to be championed. Time will tell if you or I prove to be worthy defenders.
You have provided the élan vital for my professional career. I thank you, along with the students who have preceded you, for that inspiration. I prefer not to dwell on the past, but I must thank all who have been so instrumental in allowing me to contribute to medical education, not only in Bozeman, but hopefully with a ripple effect across the years in the lands of WWAMI and beyond.
I would like to leave you with the thought jotted across the cover of my course textbook, Behavioral Medicine Made Ridiculously Simple, which was written by me and designed by my wife. The cover pictures a hand scrawling on a prescription pad; its words refer to the people whose lives you will be changing – your patients: It simply reads, “More than just a bag of bones – treat accordingly.”
Frank C. Seitz, Ph.D.
MSU course chairperson, System of Human Behavior
UW Clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences
Adjunct professor of medical science, Montana State University
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UW AND FHCRC RESEARCHERS NAMED HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE INVESTIGATORS
The UW's Ning Zheng, associate professor of pharmacology, and affiliate faculty member Adrian Ferre-D’Amare of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are among 56 researchers around the country who were selected this week as Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators. The positions allow biomedical researchers to continue working at their institutions and receive several years of guaranteed funding from HHMI for ambitious research projects that may not normally be supported by traditional granting organizations.
The addition of the new investigators from 31 institutions around the United States represents a commitment of more than $600 million from HHMI. The UW and FHCRC have a total of 17 HHMI investigators in their ranks, which is one of the largest groups in the country.
Some of Zheng’s research has focused on TIR1, a plant cell receptor that also plays an important role in human health and disease. His lab’s explanation of the receptor’s structure was a cover story in the journal Nature last year. Zheng is also studying compounds that can restore the function of disease-associated defective ubiqutin ligases, which fail to grab onto proteins like normally functioning ligases. Ubiquitin ligases are believed by many scientists to be potential next-generation drug targets because of the role they play in so many biological pathways.
Ferre-D’Amare is an associate member of the FHCRC in the Basic Sciences Division and an affiliate associate professor of biochemistry at the UW. A molecular biologist, Ferre-D’Amare studies catalytic RNAs, which help speed up biochemical reactions, and riboswitches, which are RNAs that act as genetic switches for biological processes.
HHMI chose the 56 scientists from among 1,070 applications submitted in a nationwide competition, which was announced in 2007. Researchers with 4 to 10 years of experience as faculty members at more than 200 institutions were eligible to apply. To evaluate the applications, HHMI assembled review panels of distinguished biomedical scientists.
This is the first time that HHMI opened up a general competition to the direct application process. Prior institutional approval was not part of the process, as it had been for previous HHMI investigator competitions. There are more than 300 HHMI investigators leading laboratories at 64 institutions around the country, and the scientists are at the top of their respective fields. More than 100 of them are members of the National Academy of Sciences, and 12 have received the Nobel Prize.
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FOLDIT COMPUTER GAME ALLOWS ANYONE TO HELP MAKE MEDICAL DISCOVERIES
Gamers have devoted countless years of collective brainpower to rescuing princesses or protecting the planet against alien invasions. Now, researchers at the UW will try to harness those finely honed skills to make medical discoveries, perhaps even finding a cure for HIV.
A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes -- key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines. After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science. The free program is at http://fold.it.
The game was developed by doctoral student Seth Cooper and postdoctoral researcher Adrien Treuille, both in computer science and engineering, working with Zoran Popović, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering; David Baker, a UW professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; and David Salesin, a UW professor of computer science and engineering. The game was presented recently at a Games for Health meeting in Baltimore.
Proteins, of which there are more than 100,000 different kinds in the human body, form every cell, make up the immune system, and set the speed of chemical reactions. We know many proteins' genetic sequence, but don't know how they fold up into complex shapes whose nooks and crannies play crucial biological roles.
Computer simulators calculate all possible protein shapes, but this is a mathematical problem so huge that all the computers in the world would take centuries to solve it. In 2005, Baker developed a project named Rosetta@home that taps into volunteers' computer time all around the world. But even 200,000 volunteers aren't enough. Rosetta@home works well on small proteins, but struggles with larger proteins.
Rosetta@home and Foldit both use the Rosetta protein-folding software. Foldit is the first protein-folding project that asks volunteers for something other than unused processor cycles on their computers or Playstation machines. Foldit also differs from recent human-computer interactive games that use humans' ability to recognize images or interpret text. Instead, Foldit capitalizes on people's natural 3-D problem-solving skills. Those intuitive skills may not necessarily be the same ones that make someone a top biologist.
Foldit has recently been opened up to the public, and participants there will be facing off against research groups around the world in a major protein-structure competition held every two years. Beginning in the fall, Foldit problems will expand to involve creating new proteins that we might wish existed -- enzymes that could break up toxic waste, for example, or that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
Eventually, the researchers hope to present a medical nemesis, such as HIV or malaria, and challenge players to devise a protein with just the right shape to lock into the virus and deactivate it. Winning protein designs will be synthesized in Baker's lab and tested in petri dishes. High-scoring players will be credited in scientific publications the way that top Rosetta@home contributors already are credited for their computer time.
The research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc., and through fellowships at Nvidia Corp. and Intel Corp.
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WAFP HONORS UW SCHOOL OF MEDICINE STUDENTS, RESIDENT, AND FACULTY MEMBER
The Washington Academy of Family Physicians (WAFP) Foundation has recently honored UW medical students, a medical resident and a faculty member with some of its annual awards.
Kristen Kelly, a second-year resident at the Harborview Medical Center satellite of the UW Family Medicine Residency, has been awarded the Dr. Roy H. Virak Memorial Scholarship by the WAFP Foundation. Each year the scholarship is presented to a deserving second-year Family Medicine resident both to reward and to encourage the quest to serve as a shining example of a family physician. Kelly came to the Harborview program with a distinctive track record of service and community focus: she was a 2005 Pisacano scholar, and she earned her M.P.H. at UC Berkeley, where her thesis subject was the intersection of community health and clinical medicine. She spent a year and a half in Honduras caring for poor and orphaned children, and in Seattle she has been engaged in a program addressing the needs of the Somali immigrant community as it interfaces with the medical system. Her passion is to develop a system of communication and delivery of care that will enable immigrant populations to access needed care.
The foundation has awarded its $1,000 Diverse Constituencies Scholarships to UW medical students James Imani Dupree and Joseph Angel. The scholarships are awarded to first-year medical students who are interested in working with diverse populations and underserved communities and have demonstrated an interest in the family medicine specialty.
James Imani Dupree is dedicated to serving others, and prior to entering medical school he thrived on doing just that, serving others while an Army officer during two tours of duty in Iraq. During his first deployment, Dupree was able to work with Iraqi community leaders to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure. His experience and his passion for serving and helping others have directed him to pursue medicine.
Joseph Angel developed a passion to help others as he grew up in an impoverished community in New Mexico, watching his ill father receive poor treatment in local hospitals. During a work-study opportunity in Santa Fe, Angel observed encouraging and powerful relationships between doctors and their patients, inspiring him to pursue medicine to ensure that his and other vulnerable communities will be better served. He looks forward to educating his fellow health-care workers about important medical issues unique to the GLBT and Latino populations.
Graduating medical student Derek Jackson has been awarded the Alfred O. Berg Student Award for Excellence in Family Medicine Research. He merited the award for his project entitled Understanding the Barriers to HIV/AIDS and STD Prevention in Male Latino Immigrants in Rural Southwest Idaho. The award is given to fourth-year medical students for projects that display scientific rigor, clear reporting, relevance to family medicine, and potential impact on patient care, policy, public health, or education.
The foundation honored Roger A. Rosenblatt, professor and vice chair of family medicine, as the first recipient of its Family Medicine Educator of the Year Award. The award recognizes an academy member for excellence in teaching, the development of innovative teaching models, and the implementation of an outstanding educational program. Rosenblatt directs the School of Medicine’s Rural/Underserved Opportunities Program (R/UOP). He is well-recognized for his excellent research and scientific leadership, and is known as an outstanding educator and enthusiastic mentor to countless students and junior faculty.
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UW MEDICINE HOLDING ALL-WWAMI ACADEMIC RETREAT FOR EDUCATION JUNE 9
UW Medicine is hosting a retreat for administrators and faculty to focus on the education of medical students at the UW. The All-WWAMI Academic Retreat for Education (AWARE) is scheduled for June 9. The theme of this year’s meeting is Teaching and Evaluating Professionalism.
The retreat, which is held every two years, is intended for UW and WWAMI course chairs, clerkship directors, deans, and faculty and staff in education and clerkship programs. The program includes several speakers discussing professionalism and education and workshop sessions on a wide variety of topics.
The retreat is free, and registration is required. For more information or to register to attend, visit:
http://depts.washington.edu/gowwami/AWARE/
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Justin Reedy, editor:
206-685-0382, jreedy@u.washington.edu
Online News is copyright 2008. All rights, including electronic
redistribution, are reserved.
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