College of Medicine faculty receive Comprehensive Health Studies program grants - Pennsylvania State University

HERSHEY, Pa. — Penn State College of Medicine leaders awarded $286,732 successful aviator backing to researchers arsenic portion of extremity 1 of its strategical plan, which is focused connected becoming a recognized person successful patient-centered, translational sciences done broad wellness studies. The projects question to unlock the analyzable interactions of genetics, biologic processes, socio-economics and beingness circumstances to amended the knowing of quality wellness and mechanisms of disease.

Ten module received effect backing for their projected probe projects to code wellness challenges faced by today’s patients and communities done caller interdisciplinary and patient‑centered research.

“The ideas enactment distant by our module are genuinely caller and enactment different strategical program initiatives,” said Dr. Kevin Black, interim dean. “From treatments for devastating neurological conditions to addressing wellness disparities successful our communities, our module are moving unneurotic to lick pressing nationalist wellness problems and make caller therapeutic strategies for our astir challenging diseases.”

Goal One of the College of Medicine’s strategical program is to go a person successful translational sciences. Interim manager for the goal, Cynthia Chuang, MD, and interim subordinate director, Amy Arnold, said awarding these archetypal aviator funds was an breathtaking measurement toward the enactment of the Center for Comprehensive Health Studies.

“Penn State has a affluent past of bringing unneurotic researchers from antithetic disciplines to lick a assortment of society’s challenges,” said Arnold, subordinate prof of neural and behavioral sciences. “The Center for Comprehensive Health Studies volition harness that tone to absorption connected solving analyzable problems successful medicine that can’t beryllium addressed by a circumstantial objective oregon technological discipline.”

The College of Medicine awarded 3 types of effect grants to investigators. Catalyst Awards and Collaborative Pilot Awards, which assistance researchers make innovative probe ideas, and Collaborative Program Awards, which beforehand collaboration among established researchers to lick large technological and wellness challenges.

The extremity of the awards is for module to make probe ideas into proposals that pb to outer backing from the National Institutes of Health and different starring probe backing institutions, and construe those discoveries into improved wellness and wellness attraction for the diverseness of communities the College of Medicine and Penn State Health serve. The funds volition besides bring researchers from antithetic disciplines unneurotic to code assemblage wellness needs, a halfway constituent of the College of Medicine’s ngo since its founding.

“We congratulate our colleagues for receiving these funds that volition not lone assistance them research caller ideas, but besides interaction the wellness of communities successful cardinal Pennsylvania and beyond,” said Chuang, prof of medicine and nationalist wellness sciences. “These projects are conscionable the opening of what we envision volition 1 time beryllium a robust collaborative radical of scientists, clinicians and assemblage members coming unneurotic to make solutions to analyzable wellness problems.”

2022 Comprehensive Health Studies Pilot Funding Awards

Catalyst Awards

• Ephraim Church, MD – adjunct prof of neurosurgery, radiology and neurology; director, cerebral revascularization programme  
  • Project title: Cerebral bypass and moyamoya illness programme wellness studies
  • Project summary: Moyamoya illness is simply a poorly understood and devastating cerebrovascular illness that causes repeated strokes successful young people. Church aims to physique a moyamoya illness referral halfway that conducts robust translational probe to amended recognize the illness and analyse caller attraction strategies.
  • Amount awarded: $10,000
• Scott Simon, MD – subordinate prof of neurosurgery
  • Project title: The interaction of familial saltation successful robust metabolism connected intracerebral hemorrhage betterment and outcomes
  • Project summary: Iron is simply a cardinal constituent of humor and erstwhile the encephalon bleeds, the robust released into the encephalon plays an important relation successful however harm occurs. One cistron that regulates robust besides impacts the people of different encephalon illness similar Alzheimer’s. Simon proposes to amended survey however this cistron affects betterment from intracerebral hemorrhage, oregon bleeding successful the brain.
  • Amount awarded: $10,000
• William Calo Perez, PhD, JD, MPH – adjunct prof of nationalist wellness sciences
  • Project title: Implementation Science Collaborative (ISC)
  • Project summary: Calo Perez seeks to found an Implementation Science Collaborative that volition supply acquisition and enactment probe connected the signifier of implementation subject — methods and strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based aesculapian signifier and probe into regular usage by wellness attraction providers. This task volition besides convene a collaborative radical of module and trainees to make a shared probe docket for implementation science.  
  • Amount awarded: $10,000
• William Curry, MD, MS – prof of household and assemblage medicine and nationalist wellness sciences
  • Project title: Engaging individuals, communities and wellness systems to trim interaction of determinants of wellness causing disparities successful bosom crab screening and bosom crab successful southbound cardinal Pennsylvania
  • Project summary: Breast crab is the astir communal crab among women successful Pennsylvania, which has a little bosom crab screening complaint than the nationalist average. Curry volition usage wellness informatics to bring wellness systems and section communities unneurotic to make amended bosom crab screening strategies successful southbound cardinal Pennsylvania.
  • Amount awarded: $6,732

Collaborative Pilot Awards

• Aleksandra Zgierska, MD, PhD – Jeanne L. and Thomas L. Leaman, MD, Endowed Professor and Vice Chair of Research successful the Department of Family and Community Medicine; prof of household and assemblage medicine, nationalist wellness sciences and anesthesiology and perioperative medicine
• Alice Zhang, MD – superior attraction probe fellow, household medicine doc and objective teacher successful the Department of Family and Community Medicine
  • Project title: Not conscionable for snacks: vending machines arsenic an innovative method to code diseases of despair and wellness disparities successful cardinal Pennsylvania
  • Project summary: Zgierska and Zhang volition collaborate with module crossed campuses and assemblage partners to pilot‑test the usage of astute vending machines arsenic a mode to trim harmful outcomes from diseases of despair successful cardinal Pennsylvania communities. Potential benefits see improved prevention of opioid overdose, and sexually‑transmitted and different infections, including HIV and COVID-19.
  • Amount awarded: $50,000; with an further $35,000 successful enactment from the UPMC Pinnacle Foundation.  
• Nandakumar Nagaraja, MD, MS, FAHA – subordinate prof of neurology
  • Project title: Multi-shell diffusion imaging to measure the ischemic halfway and foretell outcomes successful acute ischemic stroke
  • Project summary: Nagaraja’s task volition heighten post‑stroke imaging techniques to amended diagnosis and transportation of changeable therapies. The extremity is to much accurately find areas of the encephalon that are dormant pursuing a stroke. Improved imaging accuracy could assistance doctors much precisely place patients who could payment from reperfusion therapy, which restores humor travel to definite areas of the brain.
  • Amount awarded: $50,000
• Smita Dandekar, MD – subordinate prof of pediatrics; director, puerility crab survivorship clinic
  • Project title: Exercise involution coupled with modular crab attraction to trim chronic symptom successful teen and young big (AYA) crab survivors
  • Project summary: One successful 4 long‑term puerility crab survivors acquisition chronic pain, which tin summation the hazard of opioid usage and misuse. Dandekar’s task volition measure whether integrating an workout involution programme into modular station crab directed attraction could pb to an betterment successful chronic symptom outcomes and a alteration successful the request for medications to negociate chronic symptom successful AYA crab survivors.
  • Amount awarded: $50,000
• Todd Schell, PhD – prof of microbiology and immunology  
  • Project title: Schweinfurthin-mediated enhancement of immunotherapy for cancer
  • Project summary: Immune-based therapies person accrued the endurance of patients with deadly cancers specified arsenic metastatic melanoma and lung cancer, yet much than fractional of patients neglect to respond to immunotherapy. Schell’s squad antecedently identified earthy products called schweinfurthins that amended immunotherapy successful a preclinical melanoma model, but however they amended therapeutic outcomes is unknown. Schell’s squad volition survey however schweinfurthins interaction tumors to recognize which immune cells lend to effectual therapy, place tumor types that are apt to respond to schweinfurthins, and place an improved method to synthesize a caller schweinfurthin.
  • Amount awarded: $50,000

Collaborative Program Award

• Dino Ravnic, DO, MPH, MSc – subordinate prof of surgery
  • Project title: A multidisciplinary attack to vascularized insubstantial engineering
  • Project summary: Bone nonaccomplishment is simply a predominant occupation aft events similar traumatic injuries oregon crab surgeries. Reconstructive procedures are often suboptimal and different attempted therapies person not translated to objective use. Ravnic proposes to assemble a collaborative probe squad that volition code the request for caller therapies by processing thick, engineered bony flaps.
  • Amount awarded: $50,000