University of Washington School of Medicine
Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center
Department of Pediatrics Newsletter

DATE : 2006-04-06


ITEMS COVERED IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

Important Dates
Fellows’ Research Day Awards
Faculty News
Faculty Publications


Important Dates

Friday, April 28-Monday, May 2, 2006: PAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Stop by the Children’s booth (#1010) on the second floor near the Scientific Posters.

Monday, May 1, 7:00-9:00PM: UW Department of Pediatrics/CHRMC Faculty and Alumni Reception at PAS. San Francisco Marriott Hotel, Room: Yerba Buena Gardens Salon 11. Invite your colleagues and friends and plan to join us! No RSVP necessary.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006, 8:00AM-1:00PM, Center for Urban Horticulture: The Department of Pediatrics will be holding its first annual Proficiency in Teaching Workshop for fellows and junior faculty. The objective of this interactive workshop, taught by faculty from both inside and outside the Department, is to introduce participants to different learning styles and offer core principles of teaching and practical tips for presentations in both small and large group settings. The course is designed to be relevant to both clinicians and basic scientists. Details and an agenda will follow, but please mark your calendars now!

Wednesday, May 17, 2006: SAVE THE DATE for the next Faculty Meeting. Sound Café: 5:30-6:00 buffet dinner, 6:00-8:00 program on Professionalism.

Fellows’ Research Day Awards

The third annual Fellows’ Research Day was a huge success thanks to the fellows who participated and the faculty who attended the event. Over 140 Fellows and Faculty attended the event this year. The following fellows were selected to receive the $1,000 educational awards provided by Dr. Jim Hendricks and the Office of Research. The awardees were selected by the organizing committee and the keynote speaker, Dr. Gary Freed. Congratulations to all who presented this year.

2006 Fellows Research Day Award Recipients

  1. Pamela Statler, MD, Neonatology. Pharmacokinetics of high dose erythropoietin in blood and brain of neonatal rats after brain injury
  2. Iain Asplin, MD, PhD, Critical Care. Toll-like receptor 2 and MyD88 are required for defense against virulent group B Streptococcus
  3. Maneesh Batra, MD, Neonatology. Geographic and occupational risk factors for ventricular septal defects
  4. Jessica Pollard, MD, Hematology-Oncology. FLT3/ITD involvement in a CD34+/CD33- hematopoietic progenitor population correlates with disease resistance in pediatric AML
  5. Jaya Sahni, PhD, Immunology. Extracellular magnesium stimulates the activity of nutrient and insulin- regulated protein kinase mTOR
  6. Jacob Garcia, MD, Hematology-Oncology. High resolution cell surface proteomics yields quantitative data on surface proteins in more and less mature SY5Y neuroblastoma cells
  7. Marcella Mascher Denen, MD, Neonatology. Does morphine treatment of neonatal stress affect adult pain and stress responses?
  8. Petra Volna, PhD, Immunology. Analyzing target sequence specificity of homing endonucleases by flow cytometry
  9. Sheela Sathyanarayana, MD, General Pediatrics. Plastic toys, pacifiers, and personal care products: Potential predictors of infant phthalate exposure
  10. Jason Mendoza, MD, General Pediatrics. Television viewing is associated with obesity in preschool-age US children
Faculty News

Congratulations to Jean Sanders, MD for her appointment as holder of the Gerald and Gloria Swanson Family Endowed Chair in Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplantation Research.

Congratulations to Michael Cunningham, MD, PhD for his appointment as holder of the Jean Renny Endowed Chair on Pediatric Craniofacial Medicine.

Congratulations to Angela J. Peck, MD, Infectious Disease Fellow, who recently received not one, but two fellowship awards. One is from PIDS (Pediatric Infectious Disease Society) and the other is from MedImmune. These are both very prestigious awards and a real testament to the quality of her research. Angela will be honored at the PIDS banquet on May 1 in San Francisco.

Congratulations to Amanda Jones, PhD, and Ravin Seepersaud, PhD, Division of Infectious Diseases, on their recent publication: Ravin Seepersaud, Rachel H. V. Needham, Cathy S. Kim, and Amanda L. Jones. Abundance of the {delta} Subunit of RNA Polymerase Is Linked to the Virulence of Streptococcus agalactiae. J. Bacteriol. 2006;188 2096-2105. http://jb.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/188/6/2096?etoc

Congratulations to Sing Sing Way, MD, PhD, Acting Assistant Professor in Infectious Diseases, who recently had a K08 Grant funded from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD). KO8 HD051584, Induction of Th1-type Protective Immunity to Listeria, 4/1/06-03/31/2020.

Mark Del Beccaro, MD, has been selected as Co-Chair of a Work Group for the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT). Congratulations, Mark!

Congratulations to Bonnie Ramsey, MD, who was elected to the Association of American Physicians (AAP). She will be recognized at the AAP dinner on Saturday, April 29, 2006.

Congratulations to Sing Sing Way, MD, PhD (Acting Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases) who is the recipient of the 2006 Wyeth Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development (30K per year for 2 years). The research proposed primarily involves a new direction of research that Dr Way is undertaking aimed at understanding how inflammation affects the function of regulatory T cells.

Tom Jones, MD, has been named as the pediatric cardiology member of the Cardiac Catheterization and Intervention Committee of the American College of Cardiology and has also been reappointed to the Executive Committee of the Section on Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery, American Academy of Pediatrics. Congratulations, Tom.

Congratulations to Dan Doherty, MD, PhD and Soren Gantt, MD, PhD, who have each been named as clinical research scholars by the NIH Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Career Development Program at the UW. The program, known as the K-12 program, was established by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2004 to accelerate and strengthen clinical research across the nation. The UW is one of seven institutions selected by the NIH to train outstanding individuals to become clinical research leaders. Daniel Doherty, Pediatrics: Joubert disease and other hindbrain malformations. Soren Gantt, Pediatrics: Maternal-fetal transmission of HIV.

Mark Smith, MD, and the corps of volunteers who have worked with the projects in Chiapas will be honored with the Health and Human Rights Leadership Award by Doctors of the World. Mark will be presented with this award in New York in May. Each year Doctors of the World-USA recognizes the work of individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership in the cause of health and human rights, whether in the role of public servant, the mobilization of an industry, or through volunteer service as a health professional. Congratulations, Mark, for this honor.

Congratulations to the following faculty members for their election to the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR):

Rita Mangione-Smith, MD
Sam Moskowitz, MD
Tom Brogan, MD
Beth Ebel, MD, MPH
Ian Glass, MD
Laura Richardson, MD
Joan Roberts, MD
Anne Hing, MD
Lenna Liu, MD

Congratulations to the following faculty members for their recent promotions effective July 1, 2006:

Doug Diekema, MD, MS- Professor
M. A. Bender, MD, PhD- Associate Professor
Thomas Brogan, MD- Associate Professor
Brian Johnston, MD- Associate Professor
Danielle Zerr, MD- Associate Professor

Faculty Publications

Congratulations to Dr. Hans Ochs on his recent publications:

Worlein J, Leigh J, Larsen K, Kinman L, Schmidt A, Ochs H, Ho R. Cognitive and motor deficits associated with HIV-2(287) infection in infant pigtailed macaques: a nonhuman primate model of pediatric neuro-AIDS. J Neurovirol 11:34-45, 2005.
Nicolay U, Kiessling P, Berger M, Gupta S, Yel L, Roifman C, Gardult A, Eichmann F, Hagg S, Massion C, Ochs H. Health-related Quality of Life and Treatment Satisfaction in North American Patients with Primary Immunedeficiency Diseases Receiving Subcutaneous IgG Self-infusions at Home. J. Clin. Immunol 26:65-72, 2005.

Troy Johnston, MD, will be presenting the following abstract on behalf of the Congenital Cardiovascular Interventional Study Consortium. This is a multi-institutional consortium developed to study interventional catheterization techniques for the treatment of congenital heart disease.

Johnston TA, Moore P, Jones TK, Forbes TJ, Hellenbrand W. Integrated Imaging Follow-up of Stent Implantation for Coarctation of the Aorta. Accepted for oral presentation at the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions 29th Annual Scientific Sessions.

Congratulations to Ted McMahon, MD, for his poem “Poker Face” published in the March JAMA (JAMA, March 1, 2006, Vol 295, No. 9, pg. 973).

Congratulations to the faculty from Interventional Cardiology on the following publications. A special congratulations to Kelly Evans, MD, Pediatric Resident, who is the first author of one of the articles:

MacMillan MA, Jones TK, Lupinetti FM, Johnston TA: Balloon Angioplasty for Blalock-Taussig Shunt Failure in the Early Post-Operative Period. Catheterization and Cardiovascular Diagnosis 66:585-89, 2005.
Johnston, TA, Farra, H: Double Lumen Aortic Arch in Association with Tetralogy of Fallot. Accepted Images in Paediatric Cardiology.
Evans K, Jones TK, Johnston TA: Novel Use of the Amplatzer Duct Occluder for Percutaneous Closure of a Large Subclavian Artery to Innominate Vein Fistula in a Neonate. Accepted Congenital Heart Disease.
Latson LA, Jones TK, Jacobson J, Zahn EM, Rhodes JF. Analysis of factors related to successful transcatheter closure of secundum atrial septal defects using the HELEX Septal Occluder. Am Heart J accepted for publication
Jones, TK, PFO: Technique and Strategy. SIS 2005, Summer in Seattle Interventional Cardiovascular Symposium, Seattle, WA. Webcast available at: http://www.sis.org/hi_2005/0721_jones/player.html

*Please let us know of your latest publications, awards, and honors by emailing Brooke Freed (brooke.freed@seattlechildrens.org).