Molecular and Medical Genetics

Molecular and Medical Genetics

MMG News Updates

Dr. Brendan O'Connell presents COVID research for ASHG

ASHG Meeting 2020 O'Connell

Dr. Brendan O'Connell presented sequencing data research on Oregon SARS-CoV-2 to the American Society of Human Genetics during their 2020 Virtual Meeting this week. Full article here. 

PKAN Breakthrough

PKAN MRI

Drs. Hayflick, Hogarth and Jeong publish breakthrough article towards treating patients with PKAN. "The OHSU team has been working closely with PKAN patients and families and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the last four years to develop the treatment in an accelerated, low-cost model. The researchers say this approach will not only enable them to get a promising compound to patients faster, but will also allow them to keep its eventual cost to families to a minimum." Learn More

OHSU leads new rare disease consortium

Cary Harding

The new Hyperphenylalaninemia Disorders Consortium will bring together researchers, patients and families to identify promising avenues of research ultimately leading to multi-site clinical trials across the country. [Dr. Cary] Harding said the consortium is already planning its first national gathering in July 2020 in Vancouver, Washington. Learn More

Dr. Rosalie Sears is inaugural recipient of Krista L. Lake Chair in Cancer Research

Rosalie Sears Krista Lake

See the full story on the OHSU 96,000 Square Miles blog and help us offer Dr. Sears a warm congratulations!

Top Doctors of 2019

Caleb Rogers, M.D. 120

Congratulations to Dr. Caleb Rogers for being selected as part of Portland's Top Doctors of 2019. Portland's top doctors are chosen each year by their peers by posing the question, "to whom would they trust the care of their own loved ones?" Thank you to these doctors and to all of our MMG clincians for the excellent quality of care that they provide for our patients.

Graduate Student Published in The American Journal of Human Genetics

Taylor Mighell 120

Taylor Mighell, neuroscience graduate student in the O'Roak lab, has recently been published in The American Journal of Human Genetics with his paper titled, "A Saturation Mutagenesis Approach to Understanding PTEN Lipid Phosphatase Activity and Genotype-Phenotype Relationships".  Also listed as authors on the paper are Sara Evans-Dutson and Dr. Brian O'Roak. See the full article here.

Dr. Paul Spellman Appointed Interim Director of Computational Biology

MMG

Dr. Paul Spellman has been appointed to the position of interim director for the School of Medicine's Computational Biology program. He is taking over for Dr. Adam Margolin who is departing for a position in the Icahn School of Medicine. Dr. Spellman brings to the program experience as co-leader of the Quantitative Oncology Program and co-director of the Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research Center, both in the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute. The appointment is effective February 15th, 2018. 

2018 Technology Transfer and Business Development Award Winners

Congratulations to MMG faculty and a graduate student who were recognized for contributing to innovation, entrepreneurship, industry partnership, patenting, and technology commercialization: Andrew Adey, Ph.D., Markus Grompe, M.D., Cary Harding, M.D., Susan Hayflick, M.D., Stephen Lloyd, Ph.D., Amanda McCullough, Ph.D., Ryan Mulqueen, Hiroyuki Nakai, M.D., Ph.D, Paul Spellman, Ph.D., Mitchell Turker, Ph.D., J.D., Richard Weleber, M.D. Great work!

Grants Awarded in 2019

  • Mushui Dai, Ph.D. – NIH R01 award titled “Novel roles for USP36 in ribosome biogenesis”
  • Martina Ralle, Ph.D. – NIH R21 award titled “Development of novel markers to contextualize X-ray fluorescence microscopy”
  • Melanie Gillingham, Ph.D. – NIH R01 titled “The Natural History of LCHAD Retinopathy”
  • Cary Harding, M.D. – NIH U54 titled “Hyperphenylalaninemia Disorders Consortium of the Rare Disease Clinical Research Network”
  • Michael Heskett, Graduate Student in the Spellman lab – NIH F99/K00 titled “Role of novel cis-acting long non-coding RNAs in DNA replication timing and chromosome stability in cancer”
  • Penny Hogarth, M.D. – NIH R01 titled “A phase 2 study of a vitamin metabolite for PKAN”
  • Hiroyuki Nakai, M.D., Ph.D. – NIH U01 titled “Gene Therapy for Diabetes”
  • Rosalie Sears, Ph.D. – NIH U01 titled “Comparative analysis between patient-derived models of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas and matched tumor specimens”

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