TALLAHASSEE, Florida – A dozen years after becoming one of only four U.S. medical schools to devote an entire academic department to geriatric medicine, the Florida State University College of Medicine is naming a new chair for that department.
     Paul Katz, currently vice president of medical services and chief of staff for Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System in Toronto, Canada, will replace Kenneth Brummel-Smith in May. Brummel-Smith has served as the first and only chair of the department since the school’s founding.
     Brummel-Smith will continue in his role until Katz’s arrival, and then will remain on the faculty, focusing on teaching, research and advocacy in aging-related issues.
     “I am very pleased that Dr. Katz Is joining us to help us further our mission of training future physicians who will be responsive to and understand the needs of the aging patient,” said J. Fogarty, FSU College of Medicine dean.
     “With his clinical and teaching skills, national reputation for excellence, and superb academic credentials, he is the perfect person to lead our geriatrics department into the future."
     Brummel-Smith arrived as a past president of the American Geriatrics Society, and Katz brings outstanding qualifications to the position as well.
     Among other achievements, he is past president of the American Medical Directors Association, the national association of professionals practicing long-term care medicine committed to the continuous improvement of patient care.
     Katz, a widely published author and noted speaker on aging issues, also currently is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He previously served as chief of the Division of Geriatrics/Aging at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and for 16 years was medical director at Monroe Community Hospital, a highly regarded academic nursing home in Rochester, N.Y.
     ”I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work with the stellar faculty that comprise the Department of Geriatrics and help build upon their many great accomplishments,” Katz said. “FSU is truly unique in recognizing the importance of geriatrics to the well-being of society as a whole. The university not only demonstrates how young physicians can successfully be taught the core principles of geriatrics but, importantly, how such knowledge is translated into high-quality care at the bedside.
     “I am looking forward to being part of this process as well as further integrating the Department of Geriatrics into the community.”
     Katz also spent five years as chief of staff for research at the Canandaigua Veterans Administration Medical Center and Rochester VA Clinic.
     He graduated with an M.D. from the University of Michigan, where he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, and completed a geriatric medicine fellowship from SUNY Buffalo at the VA Medical Center in Buffalo, N.Y.
     Katz is co-editor of the textbook Practice of Geriatrics and Psychiatry in Long-Term Care and is a senior editor for the Springer Series: Advances in Long-Term Care. One of his co-editors is Marshall Kapp, director of Florida State’s Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine and Law.
     “I've known Paul for 30 years,” Kapp said. “Through his scholarship, organizational leadership, and example he has been and continues to be a key figure in the national education of medical students and physicians to care competently and compassionately for older people, especially in the long-term care context.”
     Katz currently is co-lead investigator on a $3 million grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to create a new nursing home-focused Centre for Learning, Research and Innovation. He also previously held grants totaling more than $6 million from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Veterans Administration and the Health Resource Service Administration (HRSA).

Paul Katz (photo courtesy of Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System)

CONTACT: Ron Hartung
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

Jan. 22, 2015

FUTURE PHYSICIANS OF RURAL AND UNDERSERVED FLORIDIANS TO RECEIVE CPR CERTIFICATION

More than 150 eighth- through 10th-graders from rural and medically underserved areas across Florida who participate in the Florida State University College of Medicine’s SSTRIDE program will be trained and certified in CPR on Friday, and for some it will be their first time on a college campus.

SSTRIDE (Science Students Together Reaching Instructional Diversity and Excellence) began in 1994 in Leon County to encourage students underrepresented in the medical field, often minorities, to take interest through classes and after-school activities. It has grown to include Gadsden, Madison and Okaloosa counties. In the past year, SSTRIDE expanded to five new schools and Orange County. This is the first year all five counties will be represented at the training, and students will wear scrubs with their county’s new official SSTRIDE logo.

SSTRIDE operates on the basis of studies showing that physicians return to practice in areas similar to their hometown. More than half of SSTRIDE participants choose a science, math or health major upon entering college. Over 60 percent attend medical school, and more than half choose a primary care residency, increasing their likelihood of hometown practice.

Scheduled to participate along with the students are Thesla Berne-Anderson, director of outreach and advising at the College of Medicine; Tracey Alexander, assistant director of outreach and advising; Roosevelt Rogers, Leon SSTRIDE coordinator; Darel Robinson, Gadsden SSTRIDE coordinator; Selena Phillips, Madison SSTRIDE coordinator; Kathryn Thompson, Orange SSTRIDE coordinator; Penny Eubanks, Okaloosa rural SSTRIDE coordinator; and Barry Hartin, Southeastern School of Health Sciences CPR trainer, and his team. The training will take place:

FRIDAY, JAN. 23

10 A.M.

FSU OGLESBY UNION, ROOMS 312–315

75 N. WOODWARD AVE.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

Directions: From downtown Tallahassee, travel west on Tennessee Street and turn left on Woodward Avenue. The Oglesby Union is on the left. Parking is available in the parking garage on the right.

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CONTACT: Ron Hartung
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

Feb. 6, 2015

FLU DISCUSSION TO BE HELD AT FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE

Three faculty members from the Florida State University College of Medicine will lead a public discussion of the influenza virus Monday evening. Topics will include the biology of the virus, its treatment and its prevention. A question-and-answer session also will take place.

The discussion, “The Flu: Biology, Prevention and Treatment,” is free and open to the public.

Speakers include:

• Claudia Blackburn, MPH, RNC, CPM, health officer from the Florida Department of Health and assistant professor in the medical school’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine.

• Ricardo Gonzalez-Rothi, M.D., professor and chair, Department of Clinical Sciences.

• David Meckes, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences.

The event will take place:

MONDAY, FEB. 9

6 P.M.

FSU COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AUDITORIUM

1115 W. CALL ST.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

Directions: From downtown Tallahassee, travel west on Tennessee Street. and turn left on Stadium Drive. The College of Medicine is at Stadium and Call Street. Limited press parking may be available by RSVP in a parking lot off Call between the College of Medicine and the Psychology Building. Additional parking is available in the parking garage at Stadium and Spirit Way.

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CONTACT: Ron Hartung, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

March 2015

FSU DEPARTMENTS COLLABORATE TO IDENTIFY ‘MASTER REGULATOR’ IN CELL DIVISION

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Three years after discovering that a single, unidentified mechanism was modifying about 800 proteins simultaneously during cell division, Florida State University researchers have identified that mystery enzyme.

It’s TOPK, an enzyme that belongs to the family of protein kinases — which orchestrate much of the networking and signaling in cells. The discovery, led by College of Medicine researcher Raed Rizkallah in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, is significant because it advances our understanding of cell division and could lead to therapies that pinpoint cancerous cells without destroying healthy ones.

“This is a very promising target for cancer treatment,” said Myra Hurt, senior associate dean of the College of Medicine. “Some of the new generation of cancer drugs are kinase inhibitors.”

Rizkallah, who works with Hurt, also collaborated with the medical school’s Translational Science Laboratory and FSU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The paper appeared in the online edition of Oncotarget, a specialized journal that publishes cancer-related research.

Other researchers had detected TOPK at high levels in many types of cancer, but Rizkallah is the first to identify its functional significance to dividing cells.

Proteins are the workhorses in cells, according to Rizkallah.

“Some continuously interact with the DNA, but not during that stage where cells are dividing. Something makes them back off — an enzyme or enzymes,” he said. “The shutting down of gene expression during cell division has been known for a long time, but people haven’t fully understood all its underlying mechanisms.”

So it was a challenge to learn the identity of this “master mitotic regulator” that can modify such a large family of proteins at the same time. Rizkallah used a fishing analogy to describe his work.

“We had the fish: Enzyme X,” he said. “We had the bait” — a molecule that the Hurt lab had found to attract the enzyme. “But it wasn’t on a hook, so we couldn’t pull out Enzyme X to examine and identify it. A chemical modification by chemistry Associate Professor Greg Dudley and his graduate student helped us put a hook in it.”

Next, he needed the cutting-edge help of the mass spectrometer in the Translational Science Lab, which analyzed exactly what was in the purified complexes. Then Rizkallah went down a list of 40 to 50 candidate proteins, comparing each one with what he knew about Enzyme X. Finally, he concluded that Enzyme X was actually TOPK. Now he’s following up on how TOPK is activated and how it’s regulated in cancer cells.

“Working with Raed has been extremely satisfying for graduate student Paratchata Batsomboon and me,” Dudley said. “It's one thing to think that the chemistry we develop can impact biomedical research in due course. It’s quite another to know that the fruits of our chemistry labor are going directly into biomedical experiments across campus. Intercollege collaboration adds value to both programs.”

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CONTACT: Doug Carlson, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

March 18, 2015

FLORIDA STATE MEDICAL STUDENTS TO MEET THEIR MATCH

On Friday, the 115 members of the Florida State University College of Medicine Class of 2015 expect to find out where they will receive residency training — a defining moment in their medical careers — during a Match Day ceremony.

The 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 M.D.-granting medical schools across the United States receive their match information at the same time through the National Resident Matching Program, the primary system that matches applicants to residency programs with available positions at U.S. teaching hospitals.

The ceremony will take place:

FRIDAY, MARCH 20

NOON

RUBY DIAMOND CONCERT HALL

WESTCOTT BUILDING, 222 S. COPELAND ST.

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA

The ceremony can also be viewed online. Visit /matchday for parking and map information, as well as details about the webcast.

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

By Doug Carlson
March 20, 2015

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MEDICINE ANNOUNCES MATCH DAY RESULTS

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Graduating students in the Florida State University College of Medicine Class of 2015 received notification today of where they will enter residency training this summer.

Sixty-five of the 113 students (58 percent) who matched with a residency program did so in a primary care specialty, including internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics and obstetrics/gynecology.

Other students matched in emergency medicine, general surgery, anesthesiology, psychiatry, orthopedic surgery, diagnostic radiology, radiation oncology, neurological surgery, neurology, otolaryngology, pathology, plastic surgery and urology.

Five students matched in Tallahassee – four with the College of Medicine’s internal medicine residency program at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and one with TMH’s family medicine program.

“Once again our students matched at spectacular places, both here in Florida and across the country,” said John P. Fogarty, dean of the College of Medicine. “We're very, very proud of our super docs who are the next generation of patient-centered physicians to graduate from Florida State.”

Thirty-three percent of the students who matched did so in Florida, a state that ranks 42nd nationally in the number of available residency slots. To help address the issue the College of Medicine is partnering with several institutions around the state to sponsor more residency programs, including a planned new internal medicine residency program at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

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.

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For information about Florida State’s Match Day history, visit
http://med.fsu.edu/index.cfm?page=alumniFriends.whereTheyMatched

To see where past College of Medicine graduates are practicing, visit
http://public.med.fsu.edu/alumni/alumni.aspx?class=2005

CONTACT: Ron Hartung, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

March 2015

TESTOSTERONE NEEDS ESTROGEN’S HELP TO INHIBIT DEPRESSION

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In popular culture, the phrase “battle of the sexes” seems to pit the male hormone (testosterone) against the female (estrogen). Now a Florida State University College of Medicine researcher has documented a way in which the two hormones work together to protect low-testosterone males from the effects of anxiety and depression.

Specifically, the testosterone must first be converted into estrogen. That’s the latest discovery from the lab of biomedical sciences Professor Mohamed Kabbaj. With a six-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, he is investigating the ways in which anxiety affects the sexes differently.

Women are 70 percent more likely than men to experience depression during their lifetime, according to the NIMH. It also reports that “major depressive disorder” affects more than 20 million U.S. adults each year.

So far, the link between testosterone conversion and anxiety/depression has been detected only in laboratory animals. But Kabbaj says the results are potentially promising for humans as well.

“Maybe in the future, when we are trying to develop an antidepressant that works in low-testosterone males, we can target some of the mechanisms by which testosterone acts, since it has numerous side effects,” he said.

Testosterone acts on many receptors and pathways in the brain, so the challenge is to come up with a drug that provides only the effect you want.

“A number of treatments are available for depression, but the drugs are not effective in all patients and the side effects can be serious, especially on the heart,” said biomedical sciences Professor Pradeep Bhide, director of the College of Medicine’s Center for Brain Repair. “Therefore, there is an urgent need for safer and more efficacious drugs to treat depression. Dr. Kabbaj’s research is offering new insights into the causes of depression and the role of hormones in this disorder. Such insights are critical for the development of new drugs and diagnostic tests.”

Kabbaj’s latest paper was published in Biological Psychiatry.

He already knew that testosterone had a protective effect on males, just as estrogen and progesterone do on females. He also knew that most testosterone was converted into estrogen in the brain. What he didn’t know was that those anxiety- and depression-inhibiting effects couldn’t be produced unless the testosterone was first converted to estrogen.

“There is an enzyme in the brain that ‘mediates’ the conversion of testosterone into estrogen,” Kabbaj said. “We inhibited that enzyme in a specific brain area implicated in the regulation of mood. And when you do that, you lose the antidepressant effect of testosterone. So the conversion is very important.”

His lab targeted the hippocampus area of the brain, where testosterone acts through what’s known as the MAPK pathway to induce its antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects.

“But we have to be careful about that pathway,” Kabbaj said, “because it’s also implicated in cellular growth and cancer. Therefore, we’re looking for other pathways that don’t have these effects. It’s complicated. Nothing is ever simple, but we’ll get there.”

The co-authors of the Biological Psychiatry paper are (or previously were) affiliated with the College of Medicine: Nicole Carrier, Ph.D. alumna; Samantha Saland, graduate student; Florian Duclot, research faculty; Huan He, research faculty; and Roger Mercer, director, Translational Sciences Laboratory.

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 CONTACT: Ron Hartung, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 645-9205; ronald.hartung@med.fsu.edu

March 31, 2015

FSU IS KEY PLAYER IN NATIONAL PUSH TO HELP DIVERSE COMMUNITIES TARGET AUTISM

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Researchers are enlisting the help of black churches and federally funded nutrition programs in the quest to identify young children who may show signs of autism.

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded $10.4 million to a team of researchers led by Florida State University Distinguished Research Professor Amy Wetherby to implement a community-based approach to early intervention.

Her team’s five-year, $10.4 million project — “Mobilizing Community Systems to Engage Families in Early ASD Detection & Services” — includes researchers not only at Florida State but also Emory University, Weill Cornell Medical College and Drexel University.

Data released in March by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated one child in 68 was identified with ASD. Symptoms vary widely, from a mild degree of social impairment to intellectual and language disabilities. Research suggests that early and intensive intervention can reduce those challenges, but early screening and referral to treatment are not routinely provided in pediatric settings. Wetherby and her colleagues are determined to make them more available.

“We can do this,” said Wetherby, director of FSU’s Autism Institute. “We know how to find these children early. We just need to help build the capacity of communities to do this.”

The NIMH has asked for a set of effective strategies engineered for rapid adoption and implementation on a broad scale. Here are highlights from the Wetherby team’s proposal:

•Because problems in minority and low-income children often are traditionally detected later than in other children, underserved families are a crucial part of this project.

•Because underserved families often don’t have a strong relationship with a pediatrician, this project will test other, more familiar venues where children can be screened — such as black churches and the federally funded Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.

•Because states differ in the intervention services they offer, this project involves screening 9,000 children in each of four states: Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New York.

“NIH (the parent agency of NIMH) has historically funded hard-science research,” Wetherby said. “Although they were making major gains, there’s a lot of discussion about what is actually changing in the lives of children. So they decided to try changing things in the community. Everything we do at the Autism Institute is community-based.”

With her help, communities learn what to look for as their children develop.

“Parents may not be aware of the early social communication milestones, like gestures,” Wetherby said. “By 16 months they should have 16 gestures. They should be reaching, waving, clapping, blowing a kiss, all before they have words. Part of what we’re doing is teaching parents these milestones — so they’ll understand that a child who hasn’t mastered them by 18 months needs to get referred, to follow up, to get help.”

In Florida, the researchers will screen children in Fort Myers, Sarasota, Naples and the surrounding rural counties — including Immokalee, a largely Hispanic farmworker community where the College of Medicine helps to operate a health education site.

“You’d think that screening should be done by a pediatrician or family physician,” Wetherby said. “But because we’re interested in underserved populations and minorities, we thought, ‘Where are other places they would go that might be effective?’ So we’re targeting three community systems. Primary care practices are one. Second are federal programs such as WIC and Early Head Start. Third are churches, through our collaboration with the National Black Church Initiative, a network of 34,000 churches across the country to reach families.”

With volunteers already in place, one of the black church group’s initiatives connects minority families with health care. Wetherby said the churches’ child development specialists will get ASD training through the Web-based Autism Navigator course, developed at the Autism Institute. Then on Sundays they can invite families with children 9 to 18 months old to get screened — and, when appropriate, refer them to primary care.

Someone in the participating physician’s office also needs to get the Autism Navigator training. “It’s automated in a way that will save them time,” Wetherby said. After all, the NIMH is looking for systems that will work in the real world, where time is scarce.

“Based on the estimates, we should be helping to identify roughly 411 children who have autism,” she said. “If we can identify those children within 18 months and get them into good early intervention, 90 percent of them, if not all, should then be able to be ready for regular kindergarten. It doesn’t mean they don’t have autism, but it means they’re doing well enough that they can function, learn and succeed. So it’s going to help the community at each site involved in this project. But more importantly, the research findings are going to help children all over the world.”

Two other College of Medicine faculty members are co-investigators in the project. Joedrecka Brown Speights, associate professor of family medicine, will help shape the research questions and help the team work more effectively with minority and low-income families. Heather Flynn, associate professor of behavioral sciences and social medicine, will help engage families more effectively through a technique called motivational interviewing.

Besides Wetherby, the principal investigators are Ami Klin, Emory; Catherine Lord, Weill Cornell; and Craig Newschaffer, Drexel. Among the co-investigators are Elizabeth Slate, FSU; the Rev. Anthony Evans, NBCI president; and Leon Rozenblit and David Voccola, Prometheus Research.

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CONTACT: Doug Carlson, FSU College of Medicine
(850) 694-3735; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

Kim Savage, Sarasota Memorial Health Care System
(941) 893-7649; kim-savage@smh.com

April 15, 2015

FLORIDA STATE AND SARASOTA MEMORIAL ANNOUNCE PHYSICIAN TRAINING PROGRAM

SARASOTA, Fla. – The Florida State University College of Medicine and Sarasota Memorial Health Care System unveiled plans to create an internal medicine residency program in Sarasota.

The program, expected to produce as many as 10 new internal medicine physicians a year when at full capacity, will be the first allopathic residency program between St. Petersburg and Fort Myers along Florida’s southwest coast. The area is in need of more physicians to take care of a population that grew by 20,000 people between 2010 and 2014 and is home to more than 100,000 residents age 65 and older.

“Ten years ago we brought medical education to Sarasota in a community-based approach that is the foundation for how we teach our medical students,” said John P. Fogarty, M.D., dean of the College of Medicine. “This year we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of our Sarasota Regional Campus. During this time we’ve built relationships throughout the local medical community, and the one we’ve developed with Sarasota Memorial has led us to this important next step.

“This new internal medicine residency program is a significant part of the commitment to producing future physicians for Sarasota and this entire region.”

The residency program will be based at Sarasota Memorial Hospital with the Florida State University College of Medicine as its institutional sponsor.

“Creating a residency program is the next logical step in Sarasota Memorial’s progression to becoming a teaching hospital, but it’s also an important move for our region,” said Steve Taylor, M.D., chief medical operations officer for Sarasota Memorial. “Without more residency programs, the physician shortage that Florida is experiencing will only worsen as our population swells and our existing physician workforce retires.”

First, the program will need to hire a director and apply for accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). If all goes according to plan, the program could begin taking applications from prospective residents as early as 2016 and admit its first residents in 2017.

Medical school graduates are required to complete residency training in their chosen specialty in order to gain board certification and become independently practicing physicians. Numerous studies have shown that most physicians end up practicing near where they completed residency training.

At present, Florida ranks 42nd nationally in its percentage of medical residents, despite being the third-most populous state in the country. Alaska, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming – the only states with fewer per capita medical residents – have a combined population roughly half the size of Florida’s.

In an effort to provide more graduate medical education opportunities in the state, the FSU College of Medicine has partnered with a number of hospitals to sponsor new residency programs. In the past five years, the College of Medicine has sponsored new programs in Tallahassee (internal medicine) and Fort Myers (family medicine). In addition, programs in general surgery and dermatology are pending accreditation in Tallahassee, where Florida State also sponsors a fellowship for advanced training in procedural dermatology.

The new program in Sarasota will be the seventh residency program sponsored by Florida State.

“The College of Medicine commends Sarasota Memorial Health Care System for recognizing the return on investment to the patient community by training more primary care physicians,” said Joan Meek, M.D., associate dean for graduate medical education at the FSU College of Medicine.

“The reality is that health care cannot be provided to those who need it without enough providers to do the job,” Meek said. “Sarasota Memorial understands that reality.”

Third- and fourth-year students from the medical school’s Sarasota campus do clinical rotations on a year-round basis under direct supervision of community physicians at area health centers and physician offices, including Sarasota Memorial.

To date, 795 physicians have graduated from the FSU College of Medicine, which first accepted students in 2001. Internal medicine and family medicine are the top two residency program choices for College of Medicine alumni.