Harold Bland, M.D., has completed the Children's Mercy Center for Pediatric Bioethics Certificate Program. Bland is one of 26 graduates of the program for 2013-14. The nine-month program is the only medical ethics program in the United States focusing exclusively on pediatrics.

The program is designed to help clinicians understand common pediatric bioethical issues. This year’s class included doctors, nurses, chaplains and social workers from the U.S., Canada, Norway and Saudi Arabia.

“Our Certificate Program teaches participants to analyze the ethical issues particular to pediatrics. We want to train teachers who can go back to their home institutions and help others become better clinicians,” said John Lantos, director of the Children’s Mercy Bioethics Center.

Bland is the pediatrics education director and professor of pediatrics at the Florida State University College of Medicine.

College of Medicine students doing health outreach in Immokalee, with the help of donations from the FSU community, assembled and distributed 100 care packages to migrant farmworkers and their families there.

Marshall Kapp, director of the Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine and Law at Florida State, was the featured Grand Rounds speaker at the Indiana University School of Medicine May 21. He delivered his talk as part of the Department of Dermatology speaker series.

Suzanne Harrison, M.D., is the lead author of the new American Medical Women’s Association position paper on “Sex Trafficking of Women and Girls in the United States.” The paper is designed to “provide information and recommendations for physicians and other healthcare providers who may be in a unique position to identify and care for these victims.” Harrison, associate professor in the College of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine and Rural Health, is co-chair of AMWA’s anti-trafficking committee, Physicians Against the Trafficking of Humans. Among the co-authors of the position paper are Joedrecka Brown Speights, M.D., also an associate professor in Family Medicine, and medical students Yaowaree Leavell (Class of 2015) and Daniel Miller (Class of 2016). (Read the AMWA press release.)

Richard Nowakowski, chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, was one of the invited speakers during the grand opening of Domi Station, a business incubator in Tallahassee. the 8,000-square-foot site is open to local entrepreneurs who need a place to work and brainstorm with others. Support services and coaching also are available.

Domi Station is being praised as an integral piece of the framework for an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Nowakowski was joined by College of Medicine faculty Les Beitsch and Mike Overton at the event. In his remarks, Nowakowski called the opening of Domi Station an important first step and recommended the addition of wet lab incubator space in future business plans that will promote innovation in Tallahassee.

Link to Tallahassee Democrat article: http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/money/2014/05/22/new-domi-station-incubator-is-open-for-business/9467265/

Martin Wood has been named director of the Charlotte Edwards Maguire Medical Library at the College of Medicine. He began at the library in 2009, became assistant director in 2012 and was named interim director in March after the retirement of Barbara Shearer. Wood graduated from FSU with a bachelor’s in mass communication and a master’s in library and information studies. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians. Senior Associate Dean Alma Littles said, “With a diverse background over the past two decades in libraries, technology, education, government and business, Martin has established himself as a frontrunner in the medical library field.”

Jackie Sanchez (Class of 2017) is the third-best collegiate female 9-ball player in the country. The national billiards competition was sponsored May 29-31 by the Association of College Unions International. (Read the Student Spotlight.) 

 Several FSU undergraduate students who work on research at the College of Medicine were honored at the recent Tribeta Biological Honor Society National Convention in Erie, Pennsylvania. Beta Beta Beta (TriBeta) is a society for students, particularly undergraduates, dedicated to improving the understanding and appreciation of biological study and extending boundaries of human knowledge through scientific research.

Barbara Dietrick (mentor, Dr. Tim Megraw) won second place in the oral division of molecular biology for her presentation "Determination of the genetic network involved in MCPH disease."

Also presenting at the convention were Lacy Goode (mentor, Dr. Pradeep Bhide) with her poster presentation "Translational Dysregulation as a Cause of GCHI Dopa-responsive Dystonia: Implications of Diagnois and New Therapeutics."

Rachel Davis (mentor, Dr. Choogon Lee) also competed in the poster division with her presentation "Post-translational Modifications of the Circadian Mechanism Mediated by Phosphorylation and Ubiquitination."

Megan Sweeney (mentor, Dr. Choogon Lee also competed as a oral presenter in molecular biology for her presentation. " Metabolic Regulation by E3 Ubiquitin Ligases B-Trcp1/2."

The convention offers student members a chance to report their research and to hear from outstanding graduate investigators and teachers who give invited lectures and hold informal discussions. Like graduate society meetings, the national conventions offer a chance to share current research and discuss scientific issues.

What do a glutamate receptor, brain wave frequencies and epilepsy have to do with one another? Understanding these neural inner-workings gives scientists more information to develop treatments for brain-related pathologies.

In his most recent study published in Neuroscience, Sanjay Kumar, Ph.D., wanted to know how varying stimulation patterned after brain wave frequencies affect a particular receptor he discovered and named. The FSU Receptor is a type of NMDA receptor involved in learning and memory– “synaptic plasticity.” It is distinguished from other NMDA receptors by its unique “subunit composition.”

“The FSU Receptor is roughly five times more permeable to calcium, which is a messenger responsible for activating many intracellular signal transduction pathways,” said Kumar, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences. “It activates in a way never seen with conventional NMDA receptors.”

During this study, Kumar and co-author Jyotsna Pilli, Ph.D., learned that subunit composition of the NMDA receptor enables it to respond differently to a certain kind of stimulation.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is a first demonstration that NMDA receptors are exquisitely tuned to different brain wave frequencies,” Kumar said. “Different inputs onto neurons create different firing patterns which activate specific NMDA receptors and strengthen those and only those pathways.”

The FSU Receptor is also hypothesized to be part of the problem in temporal lobe epilepsy due to the fact that it is expressed in the temporal lobe and is super calcium-permeable. Temporal lobe epilepsy is the most common type of epilepsy in adults and is often refractory to anti-epileptic drugs. Kumar and his team plan to investigate the role of the FSU receptor in temporal lobe epilepsy and use it as a target for treatment possibilities.

“An unexplained hallmark of pathology noted in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy is the loss of a vulnerable population of excitatory neurons,” explained Kumar. “Our hypothesis is that under hyper-excitable conditions, these FSU Receptors open, and let huge amounts of calcium come in. Then they become vulnerable to excitotoxicity and eventually cell death.”

Armed with a new understanding of the role of various subunits that operate the FSU Receptor, Kumar and his team are looking for answers to this puzzle.

“We want to understand what the basis for temporal lobe epilepsy is. How does temporal lobe epilepsy come about? To understand it and find a cure for it, we have to get to the nuts-and-bolts level.”

Marshall Kapp, director of the Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine and Law and Michael Nair-Collins, assistant professor of behavioral sciences and social medicine, have published new articles on "Impaired professionals" and aging research.

Details:

Marshall B. Kapp & Michael Nair-Collins, “Impaired Professionals,” in Bioethics (4th ed.), Bruce Jennings, ed. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference, Vol. 3, pp. 1628-1631 (2014).

Marshall B. Kapp, “Aging and the Aged: Research Ethics,” in Bioethics (4th ed.), Bruce Jennings, ed. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference, Vol. 1, pp. 129-131 (2014).

In addition, Kapp published:  “I’m Getting Turned Off: Emerging Consensus on Deactivating Cardiac Implantable Electronic Devices,” Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 14-21, MEDICINE & LAW (2014).