CONTACT: Frank Stephenson
(850) 644-8634
fstephenson@fsu.edu

January 2009

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- This year marks the 200th birthday of pioneering naturalist Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book “The Origin of Species,” truly a landmark work that changed the world. Celebrations and tributes, both large and small, are scheduled around the globe this year, and many are already under way.

At The Florida State University, two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning author and world-renowned biologist E.O. Wilson will be among the headliners of a two-week-long celebration of what discoveries in science and the humanities have meant to modern civilization.

Wilson will join acclaimed Harvard cosmologist Lisa Randall; famed anthropologist Don Johanson (co-discoverer of “Lucy,” the world’s most famous fossil); Sean B. Carroll, noted biologist and author; and Ira Flatow of National Public Radio’s “Science Friday,” among many others, for the program, which begins March 16 and runs through March 28.

Unlike many tributes scheduled around the nation and the world, Florida State’s program, named “Origins ’09,” is designed to go beyond Darwin’s legacy and show how the evolution of ideas in fields ranging from physics to art have shaped what humans know not only about life and nature but what that knowledge poses for the future. The program will culminate in a special tribute to the origins of jazz by a collaboration of musicians and performers from Florida State’s College of Music and from Florida A&M University.

“Origins ‘09” is being sponsored by Florida State’s Office of Research and is co-sponsored by Florida State’s College of Medicine and the Tallahassee Scientific Society. It’s all part of a tribute to 2009 as the Year of Science, a national designation inspired by the 200th birthday of Darwin (Feb. 12).

Major funding for this event is being provided by the Florida Humanities Council. All events are free and open to the public. For the full schedule of events, as well as more information, visit

http://www.origins.fsu.edu

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255 or (850) 694-3735
doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

By Doug Carlson
January 2009

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A unique discovery in a Florida State University College of Medicine laboratory is the basis for research with the potential to one day help scientists learn how to stop cancer and other diseases in the tissue where they are forming.

Jamila Horabin, associate professor of biomedical sciences at the College of Medicine, has received a four-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to pursue her work. Horabin recently discovered a direct link between RNA silencing and the genetic master switch controlling the sex determination process in fruit flies.

With that knowledge, she is now seeking to fully understand how a cellular process in gene regulation called the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) might interfere with or silence the genes assumed to be at work in nearly all forms of disease and cancer. With a greater understanding of the process, her hope is that scientists will one day be able to switch off the gene activity causing cancerous tumors and cardiovascular disease.

“We want to know how RNA silencing affects fundamental gene expression,” Horabin said. “Many genes are regulated by this process, and it will have far-reaching impact if we understand how it works, which is really the hope and dream of a basic scientist.”

Myra Hurt, associate dean for research and graduate programs at the College of Medicine, said Horabin’s work has great potential for finding a new way of fighting disease.

“There are a number of genes involved with tumor development and metastasis, for example,” Hurt said. “Imagine if you could target those genes and silence them in the tissue where they are. Here is one more layer of gene regulation that we really didn’t know about until fairly recently, and now if we can understand it maybe we can use this technology to target genes involved in disease conditions very specifically and silence them.”

The fruit fly offers numerous advantages for such research. Its genome has been fully mapped, so every gene is known and can be studied for cause and effect relationships in the laboratory. Additionally, the fruit fly reaches full maturity in a matter of days, is plentiful, inexpensive and, most importantly, shares remarkable similarities to humans at the level where gene activity is regulated.

“Sometimes you find that the fly gene that you are working with is similar to a human gene that is involved in directing a disease,” Horabin said. “So if the fly gene is being regulated in a particular way, then odds are the human gene is being regulated the very same way.”

CONTACT: Veronica Jones
(850 488-3514
veronica.jones@med.fsu.edu

Jan. 15, 2009

Stephen Shore, author of “Understanding Autism for Dummies,” will join the Florida State University Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) in an effort to raise funds for the FSU Autism Project. Following a silent auction, Shore will deliver a presentation, “Life On and Slightly to the Right of the Autism Spectrum: An Inside View Towards Success.”

Shore, diagnosed with “strong autistic tendencies,” was nonverbal until age 4. With help from teachers and family, he has become a world-renowned author of books such as “Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome” and “Ask and Tell: Self-Advocacy and Disclosure for People on the Autism Spectrum.”

Shore, who earned a doctoral degree in special education from Boston University, often works with children, talking about life on the autism spectrum. He also is a speaker and consultant on adult issues relating to education, relationships, employment, advocacy and disclosure.

The FSU Autism Project was established to provide funding for services related to autism in the areas of research, training, community outreach and family needs. The fundraiser will be held:

Friday, FEB. 6
6 – 9:30 P.M.
The Carriage House at Goodwood Museum
1600 Miccosukee ROAD
TALLAHASSEE

The cost is $25 per person, $40 per couple or $50 for a family. Discounts are available for CARD clients. Hors d’oeuvres, desserts and a cash bar will be available. Early registration is recommended by Feb. 2. For more information or to register, call Veronica Jones at (850) 488-3514 or visit /autisminstitute.

Feb. 13, 2009
By: Meredith Fraser

With the economy in turmoil and stress levels running high, many smokers feel like they need their daily dose of nicotine more than ever. Some feel that those five-minute smoke breaks are the only thing keeping them sane.

But with an ever-increasing number of companies choosing to make their workplaces entirely smoke-free, sometimes simply finding a place to light up has become an ordeal in itself. Inspired by the strong trend toward smoke-free environments, companies across Florida are making it easier for their employees to find the tools and encouragement to finally kick their dangerous habit. Florida’s Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) have sponsored a public program called Quit Smoking NOW since 1999, and now privately-owned companies can hold the class for their own employees who wish to quit smoking.

Mary Dailey, tobacco program manager at the Florida State University College of Medicine, along with fellow ex-smoker Andree Aubrey , started the Quit Smoking Now (QSN) program in the late 1990s. That’s when the Florida Legislature allocated money from the state’s settlement with tobacco companies to the Florida AHEC Network to develop a smoking cessation program.

Since Dailey and Aubrey, who is director of the AHEC program based at the College of Medicine, were both ex-smokers they offered to share personal experiences and help others. Dailey and Aubrey worked with the Suwannee River AHEC staff to put together the curriculum handbook. Surprisingly, QSN became the only smoking cessation course in Florida at the time.

For years the QSN classes were based at Big Bend AHEC prior to Dailey and Aubrey relocating to the College of Medicine. The program now offers classes both for the public – held at Capital Regional Medical Center – and for companies across Northwest Florida.

Like most ex-smokers, Dailey and Audrey could relate to how difficult it is to stop. In fact, clinical practice guidelines state that the average addict will try to quit seven to ten times before finally succeeding.

Printed material for the course describes it as “a six-session program developed by ex-smokers for those who want to become ex-smokers themselves.”

“The reason we [chose that] was not to brag that we’re ex-smokers, but because the first thing you hear from a lot of people in your class is, ‘Have you ever smoked? You don’t understand where I’m coming from,’’’ Dailey said. “So even those session leaders who haven’t smoked can say, ‘No I haven’t, but this program was put together by ex-smokers. They know exactly what you need.’ That really helps people stay on track.”

In addition to the classes, AHEC and the QSN team oversee several related smoking cessation projects. One of them involves a QSN session leader, Colin Tulley, training undergraduate students at FSU to educate area middle school students about the dangers of tobacco consumption. Getting to potential smokers early has proven very effective in preventing future use, and college students are often very persuasive in swaying kids away from tobacco.

For the 21 percent of American adults who already smoke, the QSN program offers resources in addition to the six-week class: free counseling services, self-help materials and coupons for free nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Common effective forms of NRT include nicotine gum, patches, and inhalers, as well as clinically prescribed medication. QSN works closely with the Florida Department of Health (DOH), which sponsors Quitline, a toll-free, telephone-based counseling service for smokers wanting to quit.

The DOH recently held its first QSN class for employees, with two successfully graduating from the program Feb. 12. Another class is being held at the Fringe Benefits Management Company — a Tallahassee business that will go smoke-free April 1. Twenty-five employees registered and only a few had dropped out as of the fourth week — a remarkable success rate, according to Dailey. The class graduates Feb. 25.

There will be several QSN classes kicking off in the next month — one at the DOH starting Feb. 25 and one at Capital Regional Medical Center starting March 3. Both are open to the public and are free of charge.

For more information on the QSN program, contact Dailey or visit  http://www.ahectobacco.com. The Florida Quitline (1-877-822-6669) also offers information on a wide variety of tobacco-related topics.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255
doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu 

By Doug Carlson
March 2009

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- With the nation’s economic crisis contributing to greater workplace stress, providing effective mental health care for employees may be more important than ever.

Unfortunately, the approach most companies take in purchasing mental health care benefits is flawed and unlikely to produce the best outcomes for either their bottom line or their employees’ welfare, according to a Florida State University College of Medicine researcher.

Kathryn Rost, the Elizabeth Freed Professor in Mental Health at the College of Medicine, has received a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research with potential to change purchasing behavior for companies trying to provide mental health care to employees. The work has enormous potential implications that go beyond mental health. Rost is focusing on depression care management, but the findings likely will apply across a broad range of employee health care coverage.

Absenteeism and lost productivity at work due to depression costs American businesses $51 billion annually, according to a 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. At the same time, companies that purchase depression care management programs for employees have grown accustomed to basing product selection decisions on cost rather than effectiveness. Ten years of research backed by more than $17 million in NIH funding has provided Rost with clear evidence that the current approach is more costly.

“They’re saving money in one pocket and spending it out of the other,” Rost said, citing the excess absenteeism and lost productivity associated with poorly managed depression. “What we’re saying to employers is, ‘You need to purchase on the basis of value, not on the basis of cost alone.’”

Getting that message across is complicated.

The majority of companies that sell mental health care coverage have been programmed to sell cheaper plans rather than more expensive ones with greater long-term effectiveness.

“Once the vendors understand that the employers are buying only on the basis of cost, then they play the game: sell a very low-cost product and make a lot of extravagant claims on what that product will do,” Rost said.

As a result, the amount American companies invest in their employees’ mental health has dropped from 10 cents of every health care dollar spent 20 years ago to three cents on the dollar today.

“Not a lot considering 32 percent of Americans have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder during their lifetime,” Rost said, attributing the decline in spending to the employers’ inability to discern between a valuable mental health care benefit and one that isn’t.

“So they just buy the cheapest,” she said.

Changing the behavior, and ultimately contributing to better mental health support for the American workforce, is at the root of Rost’s five-year study.

Rost’s work will examine the purchasing behavior of 360 businesses in 18 U.S. cities, each with a minimum of 100 employees, providing mental health care to more than 40,000 workers. Part of the study involves educating companies to ask the right questions of vendors selling mental health care coverage. Rost’s team provides dos and don’ts when negotiating with vendors and uses role-playing to guide employers through the process of choosing the right plan.

But the 17 identified vendors of mental health care products in the United States stand to benefit from the research, as well. In addition to potentially selling products that are more expensive at the outset, the research is likely to convince more large companies of the two-year return on investment in purchasing mental health care products.

“We’re trying to train employers to understand that they don’t have to just take whatever the vendors are trying to feed them,” Rost said. “We want them to know, ‘Hey, you’ve got power here. You get to define the market.’”

March 2009

TALLAHASSEE – Florida Gov. Charlie Crist on Friday reappointed Myra Hurt to a new four-year term to the State of Florida’s Biomedical Research Advisory Council (BRAC). Hurt, senior associate dean for research and graduate programs at the College of Medicine, will have a role in determining how millions in annual research grant money from the James and Esther King Biomedical Research Program and the Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program is allocated among university and independent scientists in the state.

Hurt originally was nominated for a seat on the 11-member council by Sen. Jim King and appointed by former Gov. Jeb Bush.

Increased competition for available federal research grants makes state funding especially significant to Florida’s future, Hurt said.

“This money is especially important to young faculty scientists in the State of Florida who are the future for research in our state,” she said.

The Florida Legislature originally designated funds from the state’s 1997 settlement with the tobacco industry to be used to support biomedical research on the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure for tobacco-related diseases.

Legislation enacted in 2006, shortly after Hurt joined the council, doubled available funding to $18 million annually.

Scientists at any university or institute in Florida may apply for grant funding based on scientific merit. The advisory council is charged with developing the program’s objectives and priorities, and with recommending which research proposals should be funded.

Numerous young researchers at the College of Medicine and other departments at FSU have received financial support for their work from the King and Bankhead-Coley Programs. Examples include Yoichi Kato, Akash Gunjan, Susanne Cappendijk and Yanchang Wang from Biomedical Sciences, and Mary Gerend from Medical Humanities and Social Sciences.

Hurt, a professor in the department of biomedical sciences, said the fund will have other tangible benefits for the state.

“Growing biomedical research and the technologies that can come from that, in our state, it makes it kind of a double bonus. Not only does it fund research, but secondarily it will help grow this kind of technology and hopefully businesses in our state, which will help the economy and help all of us,” she said.

CONTACT: Joseph M. Gabriel
(850) 645-8151
joseph.gabriel@med.fsu.edu 

By Barry Ray
March 2009

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida State University historian who specializes in the history of medicine, cultural history and intellectual history has received a major award given to young scholars in his field.

Joseph M. Gabriel, an assistant professor in Florida State’s College of Medicine and a courtesy professor in the Department of History, has received the Jack D. Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Award from the

American Association for the History of Medicine

The association is North America’s oldest continuously functioning scholarly organization devoted to the study of all aspects of the history of the health professions, disease, public health and related subjects.

Gabriel was honored for his scholarly project “Gods and Monsters: Drug Addiction and the Origins of Modern America.”

In its award citation, the association stated in part that Gabriel “sets out to trace what it means to be addicted in the United States. Through graceful writing and powerful research, he incorporates intimate aspects of personal experience alongside piercing analysis of the central role of addictive substances in American military, medical, and commercial life. Gabriel’s manuscript argues that the physical experience of use of strong substances is a product not simply of social constraints but also of market forces and political anxieties.”

The award and a stipend of $1,000 are given yearly for outstanding work in 20th-century history of medicine or medical science, as demonstrated by the completion of a Ph.D. and a proposal to turn the dissertation into a publishable monograph.

For his part, Gabriel described himself as “both honored and humbled to be given this award. It’s really exciting for me to be recognized by my peers in this way. Jack Pressman was a wonderful historian, and I’ll do my best to live up to his legacy.”

Pressman was a distinguished historian of medicine and an associate professor of the history of the health sciences at the University of California, San Francisco until his death in 1997.

“Joe Gabriel brings a wonderful perspective to our young College of Medicine’s students and faculty,” said Myra Hurt, the college’s senior associate dean for research and graduate programs and a professor of biomedical sciences. “His interests and his colleagues in the area of the history of medicine have enlivened the college’s ‘Grand Rounds’ seminar series and the medical education courses in which he participates. He is a bright young colleague whose development is exciting to watch!”

Gabriel received his Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University in 2006. His dissertation was titled “Gods and Monsters: Drugs, Addiction, and the Origins of Narcotic Control in the Nineteenth-Century Urban North.” In it, Gabriel argues that the feeling of “loss of control” that is at the heart of the addictive experience grew out of complicated changes in the culture and economy of the 19th century, and that the emergence of this type of individual experience was fundamentally intertwined with the origins of narcotic control as both a scientific and political project.

Among other topics, Gabriel is interested in the changing experience of health and illness, the history of medicine and psychiatry, the history of pharmacy and pharmaceuticals, cultural history, the history of technology, and the history of pragmatism and neo-pragmatism.

He will be presented with the Jack D. Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Award at the 2009 meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, which is scheduled to be held in Cleveland on April 23-26.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255
doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

March 17, 2009

On Thursday, 73 members of the Florida State University College of Medicine Class of 2009 will find out where they will receive residency training -- a defining moment in their medical careers -- during a Match Day ceremony.

During the ceremony, the FSU students will simultaneously open envelopes, learning for the first time where they will spend the next three to seven years completing training in the medical specialty they will practice. Graduating students at allopathic medical schools across the United States receive their match information at the same time through the National Residency Matching Program, the primary system that matches applicants to residency programs with available positions at U.S. teaching hospitals.

The ceremony will take place:

THURSDAY, MARCH 19
NOON
AUDITORIUM
COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255 or (850) 694-3735
doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

By Doug Carlson
March 19, 2009

View match day recording

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-- All 73 students in the FSU College of Medicine Class of 2009 received notification today of where they will enter residency training this summer after graduation.

Thirty-three of the 73 graduating students, or 45 percent, are entering residency in primary care specialties, including family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine and obstetrics/gynecology.

Other students matched in anesthesiology, dermatology, emergency medicine, neurology, ophthalmology, pathology, psychiatry, radiology, general surgery, orthopedic surgery and urology.

“The quality of the programs to which our graduating students have matched is exceptional, validating the medical education they have received from a faculty that includes more than 1,500 of the best physicians in the state of Florida,” said Dr. John Fogarty, dean of the College of Medicine.

The residency match, conducted annually by the National Resident Matching Program, is the primary system that matches applicants to residency programs with available positions at U.S. teaching hospitals. Graduating medical students across the country receive their match information at the same time on the same day.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255 or (850) 694-3735
doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

By Doug Carlson
March 25, 2009

A Florida State University College of Medicine researcher is among the first scientists in the country to directly benefit from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 - the stimulus bill.

The National Institutes of Health, using new funds provided through the stimulus bill, has awarded Mohamed Kabbaj $400,000 for a two-year study aiming to answer critical elements of a core question related to depression: What are the molecular mechanisms implicated in chronic stress-induced depression?

Kabbaj, an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the College of Medicine, is working to establish biological bases of emotion and stress responsiveness at the genetic and other levels and to identify how those levels are affected by environmental factors. The research could lead to a greater understanding of clinical depression, which affects 340 million people at any one time, according to the World Health Organization.

"We believe that by studying the patterns of gene expression in the context of known brain circuits that appear to be associated with particular behavioral tendencies, we will begin to point to some key variables that are relevant to human anxiety disorders and major depressive disorders," Kabbaj said.

In order to study the patterns of gene expression and establish important markers relevant to human depression, Kabbaj measures emotional responsiveness and reaction to stress in rats. The mechanism to induce stress is social defeat, created by introducing subordinate male rats to the environment of an aggressive, dominant male rat. Repeated exposure creates chronic social defeat in the subordinate male, which has been found to induce long-term behavioral changes similar to depression.

Chronically defeated rats show reduced interest in pleasurable stimuli, reduced exploration and reduced mobility in swim tests. These tendencies are indicators of behavioral despair and a deficit in motivation and collectively provide an appropriate model for depressive disorders.

At the molecular level, Kabbaj has shown that these behavioral tendencies are associated with changes in a subset of genes controlled by specific biochemical factors and their DNA sequence. His work has demonstrated that chronic social defeat induced changes to proteins that wrap around DNA and caused long-term alterations in the expression of some genes thought to be relevant to depression.

Eventually his work could lead to a greater understanding of the molecular mechanism of depression and a better understanding of how antidepressant drugs work, leading to more precise and effective treatments for people suffering from depression.

The NIH grant also will allow Kabbaj to hire a technician and a research associate for work in his laboratory at the College of Medicine.