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PROMOTIONS
Professor:
(Click on a Professor's name to view a brief bio)
Mohamed Sayegh, MD
Jane Weeks, MD
Associate Professor:
John Saltzman, MD
Assistant Professor:
Pasi Janne, MD, PhD
Assistant Clinical Professor:
Robert Buxbaum, MD
NEW FACULTY APPOINTMENTS
Instructor:
Brian Ash, MD
Roberto Belluci, PhD
Pankaj Bhargava, MBBS
Ann Buchmann, PhD
Louise Eldeiry, MD
Raffi Karagozian, MD
Igor Leykin, MD, PhD
Larisa Litovchick,
MD, PhD
Samia Mora, MD
Giovanni Tonon,
MD, PhD
Jainxin Xie, PhD
AWARDS
BWPO
Physician Recognition for Community Service
Phyllis Jen, MD
BWPO
Physician Recognition for Leadership
Michael Lambert, MD
Samuel Goldhaber, MD
PCHI Nesson Award
BWH Hospitalists
Association of Black Cardiologists
Dr. Herbert W. Nickens Epidemiology Award
Michelle Albert, MD
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Marc A. Pfeffer, MD, PhD, Interim Chair, Department of Medicine
invites you to a
Reception
Celebrating
the Holiday
Season
December 21, 2004 6:00pm, Cabot Atrium
45 Francis Street
Let the NIH Repay Your Student Loans!
Applications for
NIH Loan Repayment Program (LRP)
due
December 15, 2004
Click here for more details.
2005
Ellison Medical Foundation's
New Scholars Program
Click here for more details.
Videos of
Medical Grand Rounds Available
ONLINE!
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Department of Medicine
INTRANET
Click here to Subscribe to Your Medicine Online
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YOUR MEDICINE ONLINE
welcomes your comments and feedback.
Letters to the editor and a response will be posted in future issues.
email SooJin Kim
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Daring to Dream
 This month, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first successful kidney transplant in December 1954 with an interview with Barry Brenner, MD, one of the world’s leading nephrologists, for his reflections on the story of nephrology at the Brigham.
Dr. Barry Brenner is clearly a man who dares to dream. For years Dr. Brenner, now emeritus chief of nephrology, would wake from a sound sleep at 3 AM to scribble an urgent thought on the index cards next to his bed, then act on it as soon as possible. During his quarter-century tenure, Dr. Brenner’s vision has led the Renal Division to become one of the largest and one of the most sought-after training programs in the world. We interviewed Dr. Brenner to learn more about how this happened.
DOM: How did you decide on renal medicine?
BB: I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and my parents were shocked that I wanted to study medicine; no one in the family had ever done a four-year degree. After medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, I was an intern at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where resident daily conferences were scholarly presentations called “morning prayers.” I found myself reading Strauss and Welt’s Diseases of the Kidney for pleasure. Robert Berliner, of the famous renal and electrolyte lab at the National Institutes of Health, happened to visit “my” morning prayer, on renal disease, and asked me afterwards, “What are you doing with the rest of your career?” After residency I moved to the NIH, where whatever I touched became widely recognized. Then in 1967 I flew to San Francisco after a conference and fell in love with the city. I told my wife, “We’ll leave the NIH, but only to go to San Francisco.”
Read More...
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Dr. Jim Kim at the
World Health Organization
The crowd in the Bornstein Amphitheatre on November 12 was standing room only, as Dr. Jim Kim made a long-awaited return to the Brigham and presented Medical Grand Rounds on The Global Response to HIV/AIDS. Director of the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Kim has devoted his professional career to working on the health problems of the poor. In this interview with Your Medicine Online, he shares his insights into the global battle against HIV/AIDS and gives us his perspective on working with the World Health Organization. Read More...
Kidney Transplantation
50 Years Later
Recently, your Medicine Online sat down with Dr. Mohamed Sayegh, director of the Transplant Research Center, a joint effort between BWH and Children’s Hospital, and Co Chair of the Scientific Program at the recently completed 50th Anniversary Celebration of the first kidney transplant. The anniversary celebration took place at BWH on Thursday, December 9 and Friday, December 10, 2004. Read More... |
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Medicine Awards Five Young Investigators |
 Top row, left to right: James Brugarolas, MD, PhD, Catherine
Wu, MD, Karin Hoffmeister, MD.
Bottom row, left to right: Laura Mauri, MD, Kai Xia, MD.Photo taken by: Brian Bator at Mainframe Photographics
James Brugarolas, MD, PhD, along with Karin Hoffmeister, MD, Laura Mauri, MD, Catherine Wu, MD, and Kai Xia, MD, PhD, gathered at the Eppinger Library on November 23, 2004 to congratulate each other as the recent recipients of the Department of Medicine’s Young Investigator in Medicine (YIM) Awards.
The Award Selection Committee, made up of basic, translational, clinical and health services researchers, received eighteen impressive applications from highly qualified and talented researchers throughout the Department of Medicine. Due to this excellent response, the YIM Awards, which were originally intended for three individuals, were given to five distinguished researchers on November 1, 2004. Two of these awards were established and made possible through the generosity of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and one is funded by the HMS Wellington Endowment. In addition, the Department of Medicine funded two more awards. “I wish we could have funded all of them. The five people we did select work in very different areas. What is similar about them is the high quality of work and their potential to contribute to science and hopefully to patient care,” said Robert Handin, MD, Executive Vice Chairman and Chair of the YIM selection committee.
The recipients of the YIM Awards each commented on the significant impact their mentors have had on their research and careers. Dr. Hoffmeister noted “optimal mixture of freedom, support and monitoring” she has received from her mentors and colleagues, Thomas Stossel, MD, and John Hartwig, MD. Dr. Xia has been mentored by Thomas Roberts, PhD, and Jerry Trier, MD, who gave “invaluable and insightful advice” in her career and research. In speaking about his mentor, William Kaelin, MD, Dr. Brugarolas says he has learned a tremendous amount and “admires his analytic skills and scientific rigor.” Dr. Mauri credits her mentor, Richard Kuntz, MD, with “ providing focus and collaborative support” for her research career. Dr. Wu’s mentor, Jerome Ritz, MD, in addition to senior colleagues from both BWH’s Hematology Division and the Division of Hematologic Oncology at DFCI, have always been supportive of her work and generous with their time and mentorship.
Dr. Brugarolas, (pictured top left) an Instructor in Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology received the YIM Award for his outstanding work on Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, which affects about 1 in 10,000 individuals and results from mutations in either of two genes, TSC1 or TSC2. The receipt of this award will support his research focused on understanding how TSC1 and TSC2 function normally to suppress tumor formation. Dr. Hoffmeister, (pictured top right) an Associate Biologist and Assistant Professor in Medicine in the Division of Hematology, has spearheaded a basic science project that solved a half century-old mystery and has immediate translational impact. Her work explained why blood platelets procured for transfusion cannot be refrigerated. She developed a method to refrigerate platelets and defined new frontiers for platelet research. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Hoffmeister’s lab work and the bedside dimensions of this problem are closely intertwined.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital is an ideal place for Dr. Mauri, (pictured bottom left) an Instructor in Medicine in the Clinical Biometrics Division and the Cardiovascular Division, to combine her patient care experience in the cardiac catheterization laboratory with design and analysis of clinical trials in interventional cardiology. She works in the Brigham and Women's Hospital Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory where she performs percutaneous coronary interventions. The YIM Award will provide support for developing novel trial designs to keep pace with rapidly advancing medical technology, and acquiring evidence for the use of drug-eluting stents and other new strategies in interventional cardiology to prevent myocardial infarctions.
The YIM Award will provide Dr. Wu, (pictured top center) an Instructor in Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology, support for her ongoing clinical trials to develop a less toxic and safe way of performing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation on patients with red blood cell disorders, such as sickle cell disease or thalassemia. She is working to provide a cure for these illnesses by performing stem cell transplants, so that the patient’s own diseased red blood cells can be stably replaced by a donor’s normal red blood cells.
Dr. Xia, (pictured bottom right) Instructor in Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms of gastrointestinal malignant transformation mediated by major oncogenic protein kinases. The support from this award will help her to concentrate on investigating the roles of three kinases (Raf, Src, and PI3K) in colon cancer development, with the ultimate goal of developing new target-specific chemotherapeutic agents in treating metastatic colon cancer.
Outside of the lab and clinics, this group of scientists somehow finds the time and energy to invest in other passions. Dr. Wu has trained in classical piano and, until recently, sang with the Back Bay Chorale. Dr. Brugarolas enjoys discussing philosophy and reading Russian Literature. Dr. Xai loves to devote her time to hobbies such as swimming and playing the dulcimer. Additionally, Dr. Mauri enjoys running, and in the past, has ran for Team Brigham in the Boston Marathon.
Receiving this award means a great deal to all five winners. Dr. Brugarolas says that “this award is a particular source of pride as it was made possible through the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, [which is] a foundation dedicated to a lofty ideal and striving to serve the underprivileged.” Each YIM Award recipient shares in the Foundation’s values and hopes to participate in its mission in some way.
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