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Message from the Dean: Dean's Fund for Research CollaborationUpdate: Leadership transitionsFeedback: AAMC workshopKabul Medical School Chancellor visits OHSUPA program graduates 12th classDiscovery Spotlight: Mary Stenzel-Poore, PhDArt donated to Physiology & PharmacologyGolden Rose awardsDr. Sheppard discusses NSQIPDr. Ma elected to SAEM boardAPOM resident research training awardDr. Bhardwaj appointed Neurology Vice ChairNew emeritus faculty Dr. Zerbe publishes textbookDr. Thomas is new president of ABEMWelcome new faculty
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July/August 2008
Message from Dean Richardson: Four awardees for Dean's Fund for Research Collaboration
 Dear Colleagues:
I am pleased this month to announce the awardees for the Dean’s Fund for Research Collaboration. I established this $400,000 fund to provide seed support for initiatives that cross department lines and are positioned to attract future external funding. The Fund made four awards of $100,000 each.
Over the last several months, as we reviewed the excellent proposals, I have been considering the concept of collaboration with renewed focus. The review process itself has been helpful to me in articulating why collaboration is important to our future.
The concept of collaboration is pervasive lately; not just at OHSU but at other academic centers, in the business world and in government. Increasingly, collaboration is seen as a way to accomplish all manner of outcomes from improving intercultural understanding, more effectively using scarce resources, catalyzing new ideas, saving money and more.
Is it really that powerful? Collective hype can have an unintended effect of diminishing a concept until it becomes meaningless. We must guard against that. While not a panacea, thoughtful collaboration and team-building must be an important aspect of our own transformation.
In academic medicine, the paradigm of individual scholarly expertise and achievement has served us – and health care – well. It is no longer enough to meet the external challenges of our era. The sheer volume of accumulated scientific knowledge no longer supports the idea of solitary minds working independently around the world.
As we share knowledge and expertise, and find ways to use intellectual assets more effectively, we will cover ground more quickly, decrease (costly) duplicative efforts and inevitably translate knowledge into patient care faster. Collaboration is also important in our education and health care missions. As we move toward multi-disciplinary education, for example, we will spur the alliances of providers – physicians, dentist, nurses, physician assistants and others – necessary to create a genuinely patient-centered health care delivery system. Perhaps most important to me personally is that by fostering collaboration we will create exciting new opportunities for our faculty.
That said, collaboration is still simply a concept if our administrative structures and rewards systems remain tethered to a framework that indirectly discourages it. Change takes time and many of those same administrative structures grew up over decades in concert with requirements of external funding. However, with Vision 2020, we will make the changes that will support intellectual renewal and growth in the School of Medicine.
The Dean’s Fund for Research Collaboration is one way in which we are bridging administrative structures to encourage multi-disciplinary initiatives. Congratulations to the inaugural awardees of the Dean’s Fund for Research Collaboration.
My sincere thanks to the applicants and review committee for the effort expended on this initiative.
Best regards,
Mark Richardson
Dean, OHSU School of Medicine
Dean's Fund for Research Collaboration Awardees
Dennis Bourdette, MD, Chair and Professor, Neurology; “Pathogenesis of Axonal Degeneration in Models of Multiple Sclerosis” – Institutional Partners: Cell & Molecular Biology/CROET/Vollum, Ophthalmology
Phillip Copenhaver, PhD, Associate Professor, Cell & Developmental Biology; “A Translational Continuum of Model Systems for Evaluating Treatment Strategies in Alzheimer’s Disease” – Institutional Partners: Pathology, Neurology, CROET
Martin Kelly, PhD, Professor, Physiology & Pharmacology; “STX: A Novel CNS Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulater (NeuroSERM)” – Institutional Partners: Medicine/Endocrinology, ONPRC
Melissa Wong, PhD, Assistant Professor, Dermatology; “Identifying Molecular Signatures for Aggressive Metastatic Colorectal Cancer” – Institutional Partners: Medicine/Hematology & Medical Oncology, Molecular & Medical Genetics, Science & Engineering, Surgery/ Surgical Oncology, Pathology, Diagnostic Radiology and Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research
Update: Leadership transitions
The search for a new Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery is nearing a close. Candidates have completed the interview process. Second interview invitations are now being extended. The goal of the Office of the Dean is to have a candidate identified and in place by the end of 2008. Questions? Please contact Nicole Lockart (lockartn@ohsu.edu), Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs and Administration.
The Search Committee for the Associate Dean for Basic Science has been convened. Applications For additional information, please contact Dana Director, (director@ohsu.edu), Assistant Vice President for Research Administration and Operations. Applications will be accepted through August 22.
Office of the Dean sponsors four at AAMC workshop
The School of Medicine Office of the Dean funded a trip for four faculty members to the Association of American Medical College (AAMC) workshop, “Early Career Women Faculty Professional Development Seminar.” The seminar, located in Washington, DC, is part of the AAMC’s Women in Medicine Professional Development Series.
Stephanie Halvorson, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine; Arpana Naik, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery; Andrea Cedfeldt, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine; and Kristin Snyder, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry attended the workshop.
Dr. Halvorson said, “The AAMC conference was a wonderful, productive experience and I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to attend. I left feeling like this conference should be ‘required’ for women in academic medicine. I learned the basics of the promotion and tenure process; common pitfalls of early career – and particularly women – faculty and how to avoid them; and how better to document my activities in my CV.”
The seminar, which took place July 12-15, offered networking for women in medicine, mentoring from senior clinicians and sessions on developing a robust academic and clinical career.
Dr. Snyder said, “The key ‘take-away’ certainly seemed to be to work towards balance in your day-to-day activities to ensure growth in scholarship, service and personal health. This will lead to advancement in your academic career. I really hope we can encourage other OHSU assistant professors to take advantage of this great opportunity in the future.”
Kabul Medical School Chancellor visits OHSU
 Obaidullah Obaid, MD, Chancellor, Kabul Medical University, Afghanistan, was the guest of the OHSU Global Health Center at an August 4 forum entitled “Kabul Medical University: Building from the Ground Up.” Founded in 1932, Kabul Medical University (KMU) has 2,100 students and 237 teaching staff. Medical education is offered at no charge to successful applicants, who can take courses leading to degrees in medicine and nursing, as well as gain experience in dentistry and allied health occupations.
The buildings and academic infrastructure of Kabul’s main teaching hospital, Ali Abad, were nearly destroyed by a combination of civil war in the early 1990s and the repressive era that followed it. KMU has since relied on international assistance to reconstruct the teaching hospital and facilities for its 37 academic departments. Commenting on how much has changed under the new government, Dr. Obaid said, “women now comprise almost 40% of the student body. During the Taliban era, there were zero women.”
“Promoting awareness of these kinds of enormous challenges is a core mission of the Global Health Alliance,” said Peter Spencer, PhD, FRCPath, Director, CROET and Interim Director, Global Health Center. “As we better understand more about these and other barriers, so we can identify opportunities to increase OHSU collaboration with the global health community in order to help promote health equity for all people worldwide.”
Pictured: Dr. Peter Spencer, Dr. Maria Beebe and Chancellor Obaidullah Obaid.
Physician Assistant program graduates 12th class
The School of Medicine celebrated the graduation of 33 students from its Physician Assistant Program on Saturday, August 9. State senator Laurie Monnes Anderson gave the commencement address. Since 1995, the program has prepared physician assistants to provide primary care services in medically underserved communities both rural and urban. For 2008, U.S. News & World Report ranked the program ninth in the nation among graduate-level physician assistant programs. Last year, the program received 725 applications for 36 positions. To view a few photos of the event: click here.
Discovery Spotlight: Mary Stenzel-Poore, PhD
 Working at the interface between neurobiology and immunology
Immunologists typically focus their intellectual attention on viruses, bacteria, and parasites, and how these organisms interact with and evade the immune system. Mary Stenzel-Poore, PhD, interim Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology, is interested in how the immune system affects the body’s response to injury and repair.
Early on, Dr. Stenzel-Poore became interested in the question "how does the immune system react to injury in the central nervous system?" She decided to study stroke as a model of brain injury.
Stroke is the third leading killer in the United States, and even those who survive can be profoundly impaired. Following a stroke, a significant inflammatory response occurs which can worsen ischemic damage. Inflammation is a normal component of the immune system’s response to injury, and thus brings attention to the role of the immune system during stroke recovery.
One aspect of inflammation being examined by Dr. Stenzel-Poore ’s laboratory involves the Toll-like receptors (TLR) – molecules used by the immune system to sense impending harm, usually in the setting of infection. A normal response to injury or infection causes a robust, TLR-mediated inflammatory response, which can mean death to delicate brain tissue.
The team found that treating mice with certain TLR ligands prior to stroke reprograms the brain’s response to ischemia away from inflammation and injury, and towards cell survival and neuroprotection.
Following treatment with a TLR ligand, mice experiencing a stroke showed much less brain injury and a dampened inflammatory response. This process requires treatment in advance of brain ischemia. While it is difficult to anticipate sudden stroke, there are medical conditions that put patients at acute risk of brain ischemia. For example, coronary bypass recipients, endarterectomy patients, and pediatric heart patients all have a much higher risk of ischemic injury.
Dr. Stenzel-Poore realized that therapeutics based on her research would save brain tissue, and in many cases, lives of patients at-risk for stroke.
An example of a well known TLR ligand is Lipopolysaccaride (LPS), a bacterial endotoxin that is non-injurious in small doses, but is a potent inducer of neuroprotection. LPS binds the TLR system, and has been shown to cause increased expression of two anti-inflammatory cytokines. By examining LPS and other TLR ligands, the team discovered several promising candidates for therapeutic drugs. “Fortunately, several of these TRL ligands are currently in clinical trials or already used as treatments for other diseases, so many of the FDA drug-development studies have been done previously,” said Dr. Stenzel-Poore.
Dr. Stenzel-Poore and her team are currently working with the Oregon National Primate Research Center on pre-clinical trials for some of these molecules, with the hope of starting human clinical trials early in 2009. “We have formed a new biotech startup company, Neuroprotect, Inc., whose focus is neuroprotective therapy,” said Dr. Stenzel-Poore. The project was awarded funding from OHSU through Technology Transfer’s Bioscience Innovation Fund to collect pre-clinical data.
Dr. Stenzel-Poore started her scientific career in the very same department over 20 years ago as a graduate student, after finishing her undergraduate degree at Lewis & Clark College. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute in San Diego, she returned to OHSU as an Assistant Professor.
In addition to running an active research program, developing a new biotech start-up company, and acting as chair of the department, she is also on the scientific advisory board for OTRADI, the Oregon Translational Research and Drug Discovery Institute. She is also the permanent chair of NIH’s Special Neuroscience Research Program for Under-represented Minorities and serves on several scientific peer-review panels.
"Ocean Horizon" donated to Physiology & Pharmacology
Donated to the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology, the painting “Ocean Horizon" is on display in the 6th floor lobby of the Biomedical Research Building. In her paintings the Northern California artist, Barbara Rainforth, bridges the divide between abstract and landscape. She credits her unique perspective to a life of travel and an abiding fascination with location.
Since 1982, the artist has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Her work appears in many private, institutional and corporate collections internationally as well as in the personal collections of artists, curators and museum directors.
Pictured: the artist and the painting.
Three in School of Medicine win Golden Rose awards
Congratulations to School of Medicine faculty members Kevin Billingsley, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Surgery; Lisa Dodson, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine; and Mary Jo Rice, MD, Professor, Department of Pediatrics, who were among the five recipients of OHSU’s first Golden Rose awards.
To read more about all awardees: click here.
The Golden Rose awards recognize service that goes well beyond the scope of an employee’s job and represents one or more of OHSU’s five “Pillars” of service excellence (People, Service, Quality, Finance and Growth). Recipients are nominated by patients or co-workers.
In the School of Medicine, Dr. Rice was honored for her leadership in expanding clinical openings for new patients in Doernbecher’s pediatric cardiology program. Dr. Dodson was honored for her work in retaining health care services in the rural clinic at Elgin, OR, following the loss of the nurse practitioner who provided clinical services there. Dr. Billingsley was honored by a patient family for his care of a husband and father following a diagnosis of terminal cancer.
Brett Sheppard, MD, advocates for adoption of quality metrics
Brett C. Sheppard, MD, Professor and Clinical Vice Chair of Surgery in the Department of Surgery, recently advocated for wider adoption of the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) in Oregon as one way to improve health care quality in the state.
Speaking as part of a panel discussion on health care quality hosted by the Oregon Health Forum, Dr. Sheppard described the program’s beginnings within the Veterans Health Administration in the 1980s. Implemented in response to criticism that operative mortality rates within the VA system were higher than the national norm, the VA NSQIP program resulted in a 27% decline in post-operative mortality and a 45% drop in post-operative morbidity. The median post-operative length of stay fell from nine to four days, and patient satisfaction improved.
NSQIP relies on benchmark data based primarily on physiologic patient-based factors (including risk factors) and outcomes rather than patient billing data which is a more common, but less direct, statistical basis for quality measurements and averages. OHSU is a member of the Oregon NSQIP Consortium, whose participants practice open and honest communication, working together on quality issues that are common to members.
NSQIP was adopted nationally by the American College of Surgeons in September 2001, and has reached 18% penetration rates in Oregon, compared to 3% nationally. The Oregon program is not currently financially supported beyond the membership fees paid by participating hospitals however, and Dr. Sheppard urged a statewide discussion to address this issue and for wider adoption.
“NSQIP is a proven and valuable tool to determine the quality of surgical outcomes and assist with statewide data-driven decision making,” said Dr. Sheppard, who also serves on the Quality Institute Workgroup of the Oregon Health Fund Board. “It affords us a way to measure the safety, effectiveness, efficiency and timeliness of what we are doing for the patient. These are all key markers in elevating the quality of health care we provide to Oregonians.”
Click here for information about NSQIP.
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