December 2005 | VOL. 12 | www.McGowan.pitt.edu

Please save the dates of Monday, March 6 and Tuesday, March 7, 2006 for the 2006 McGowan Institute Scientific Retreat.  The Retreat will be held at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort.  Check in will be on Sunday evening and departure will be on Tuesday at ~5 PM. On-line registration will be available in January.

The 2006 Retreat Program Committee is chaired by Mitchell Fink, Chair of Critical Care Medicine and the Committee includes Stephen Badylak (MIRM/Surgery), Harvey Borovetz (MIRM/BioE), Fred Busche (IBM), Patrick Cantini (PTEI), Arthur Coury (Genzyme), Albert Donnenberg (MIRM/UPCI), Michael Goldblat (Functional Genomics), Carolyn Green (OED/Pitt), Alan Hirschman, Peter Johnson (Scintellix), Michel Lotze (MIRM/Surgery), Marc Malandro (Office of Technology Management/Pitt), John Murphy (MIRM/ChE), and Doros Platika (PLSG).

This year’s focus will be on enhancing our interaction with industry, sharing our capabilities with prospective industry partners and learning about the needs of industry relative to bring regenerative medicine technologies to clinical use.  The Committee has confirmed that the keynote speaker is Gail Naughton, Ph.D., Dean of College of Business Administration, San Diego State University, and Advanced Tissue Sciences Co-Founder and Vice Chair.

Please save the dates of Monday, March 6 and Tuesday, March 7, 2006 and watch for the on-line registration that will be available in January.

 

Based on the requests of faculty and graduate students for more and different types of networking sessions, the 2nd Moleculart project was held on December 5, 2005. Our goal is to have a scientific gatherings that foster networking in a different environment. The artists for the second session were: Lena and Horacio Vodovotz, daughter and uncle of Yoram Vodovotz (Center for Inflammation and Regenerative Modeling). The artists for the first session were Veronica Garcia, wife of Alejandro Nieponice and Makiko Sakamoto (Vorp Lab). Another session will be organized in April/May 2006.

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Board of Visitors Faculty Award

Savio L-Y. Woo, W.K. Whiteford Professor in the Department of Bioengineering; Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Professor of Rehabilitation Science and Technology, has been selected a 2005-06 School of Engineering-Board of Visitors Faculty Award recipient.

The award recognizes engineering faculty who have had productive academic years in areas such as program development, leadership in development of graduate research programs, meritorious recognition by peers at the national level and special recognition as a teacher. The award carries a $4,000 grant in support of scholarly activity.

Woo’s accomplishments during the last year include serving as principal investigator on grants totaling more than $3.4 million and publishing 10 peer-reviewed articles, three book chapters and 15 referred proceedings. He also served as program director for the bioengineering department’s intramural and extramural internship/mentorship program.

Woo, who is founder and director of the Musculoskeletal Research Center, previously had been elected to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering and Academia Sinica.

His research interests include biomechanics; experimental, theoretical and numerical analyses of the nonlinear material properties of biological tissues and new nonlinear viscoelastic theories for soft tissue; homeostasis of ligaments and tendons and their change following decreased or increased levels of applied stress and motion, and the methods to enhance the healing of the tendon, ligament and meniscus

Also, Professor Woo was a theme keynote speaker at the September 2005 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society assembly in Shanghai, China. Additionally, in July 2005, he was the distinguished guest lecturer at The Herodicus Society, an elite society of only 98 members for orthopedic sports medicine. Woo was the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Distinguished Lecturer at the 2005 Annual Fall Meeting of BMES in Baltimore, Md., September 28–October 1, and he received the 2005 Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award from The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). This prestigious award was established in 1925 to honor Thurston, the first ASME president, and is given annually to the person who best encourages stimulating thinking on a subject of broad technical interest to engineers. In November, Woo was honored at the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition in Orlando, Fla., where he delivered a lecture titled “Going from In Vitro to In Vivo: The New Big Challenges for Ligament and Tendon Biomechanics Research.”

During the last year, Woo also received honorary memberships to several organizations including the Arthroscopy Association of North America, Society for Tennis Medicine and Science—which named him its first and only honorary member—and The Herodicus Society, which dubbed him “Godfather,” as he was the first PhD to receive this honor.

 

The Materials Research Society announced the “Top Five” from their 2005 Fall Meeting.  The five presentations that stood out as “hot talks/cool papers” were selected as the Top 5 Hot Talks/Cool Papers of the week … for research that translates to general public interest or applications. Although not a formal competition, this service of the Public Outreach Committee is intended to increase awareness of materials research and its importance in our everyday lives.

Included in the “Top Five” was paper L13.1 “Analysis and Design of Novel Electrospun PEUU Scaffolds for Soft Tissue Engineering” by Michael Sacks, Todd Courtney, John Stankus, Jinjuan Guan and William R. Wagner.  The paper describes a new method of producing artificial heart valves that more closely mimic the properties of natural heart valves.  The innovation involved using novel electrospinning of polyester (urethane) ureas materials.

 

Associate professor David A. Vorp was inducted to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. The major criterion for fellow nomination is a demonstrated record of individual achievement in research, development, education, manufacturing, public service, technological leadership, and/or clinical practice as they relate to medical and biological engineering. Vorp served as cochair for the Second Frontiers in Biomechanics Symposium—sponsored by the U.S. National Committee on Biomechanics—in Vail, Colo., and was named an editorial consultant for the Journal of Biomechanics. Another achievement of the Vorp lab is that postdoctoral research associate Alejandro Nieponice received an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship award for Development of a Novel Stem Cell-Based Vascular Graft.

During the joint meeting of the International Society of Biorheology and International Society for Clinical Hemorheology in Chongqing, China, Marina Kameneva, Research Associate Professor of Surgery and Bioengineering, was elected a member of the council and treasurer of the International Society for Clinical Hemorheology. Kameneva is the Director of the Artificial Blood Program at the McGowan Institute.

 

Professor Rory Cooper was chosen to receive the Maxwell J. Schleifer Distinguished Service Award from Exceptional Parent magazine. He was honored for his efforts on behalf of the special needs community at PNC Park on Disability Awareness Night, July 19, 2005.

 

Grant:	Biomechanics in Regenerative Medicine
PI:	Michael Sacks, PhD

Professor Michael Sacks was awarded a major training grant titled “Biomechanics in Regenerative Medicine” (BiRM). The goal of the grant is to provide students with a solid foundation for a productive and independent career in biomechanics in regenerative medicine. It includes a highly coordinated and mentored interdisciplinary training program with a combination of required and elective courses, research activities, and specialized training opportunities. The BiRM Training Program involves faculty from the Departments of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, Orthopaedic Surgery, and Urology, the Division of Vascular Surgery, and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as from the mechanical and biomedical engineering departments at Carnegie Mellon University. This combination of faculty research interests and course work will provide a rich educational experience as well as more training opportunities for the students than would be possible within the individual departments.

Additionally, Professor Sacks was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, in 2004 and received the School of Engineering Board of Visitors 2005 Faculty Award.

Grant:	Cardiovascular Bioengineering Training Program
PI:	Sanjeev G. Shroff, PhD

NIH awarded Professor Sanjeev G. Shroff a grant for a cardiovascular bioengineering training program, a predoctoral program aimed at educating talented students from engineering and other quantitative sciences for careers in biomedical research in the cardiovascular area—a subject in which the University is at the forefront of education and research. The new program is interdisciplinary and interdepartmental in nature. Although the Department of Bioengineering forms the core, the training faculty is drawn from a number of departments: chemical engineering, cell biology and physiology, medicine (cardiology), critical care medicine, pediatrics (cardiology), surgery (cardiothoracic and vascular), and radiology. For more on regenerative medicine training grants, please see: www.mirm.pitt.edu/innovation/me.htm

Grant:	Computer Model of the Knee
PI:	Richard Debski, PhD and Mark Redfern, PhD

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Acquisition and Assistance Field Branch has approved Assistant professor Richard Debski’s contract application Computer Model of the Knee for funding. Professors Woo and Mark Redfern are coinvestigators in this research.

 

Singer Don Ho is doing well after an experimental procedure on his ailing heart, said Dr. Amit Patel, who oversaw the procedure in Bangkok.  The 75-year-old performer underwent the new treatment in Thailand on December 6th that involves multiplying stem cells taken from his blood and injecting them into his heart in hopes of strengthening the organ.

Patel said the singer had "an extremely weak" heart that was pumping far less blood than a healthy organ before the surgery.  Ho, who suffered from heart problems for about a year and had a pacemaker implanted a few months ago.  The experimental cell processing procedure was developed by TheraVitae Co., which has offices in Thailand and laboratories in Israel, where Ho's stem cells were sent to be multiplied.

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Health care costs often increase when newer, more effective therapies are introduced to the marketplace, placing a financial burden on patients and insurers that can last for years. However, the same may not be true for a drug recently shown to greatly improve outcomes in African-American heart failure patients.  According to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, this heart failure drug is not only a promising treatment option, but one that is cost-effective as well.  A team of researchers led by Derek Angus, M.D., M.P.H., professor of critical care medicine, examined data from the African-American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT) study in order to determine the trial participants’ ongoing health care costs. A-HeFT, the results of which were published November 2004 in the New England Journal of Medicine, compared outcomes in patients who took a medication with two active drug ingredients, isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine (ISDN/HYD), to those in patients receiving a placebo regimen. The trial demonstrated the effectiveness of ISDN/HYD for treating heart failure in African-American patients.

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The seminar series under the leadership of Kacey Marra has announced the Spring 2006 program.  The series is cosponsored by the Department of Bioengineering, the McGowan Institute and Musculoskeletal Research Center.  The presentations are every Thursday in Scaife Hall, Auditorium #5 at 4:00 PM.

Jan. 12th	Frederick J. Schoen, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Pathology and Health Sciences and Technology Harvard Medical School Executive Vice Chairman, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Topic: Reparative and Regenerative Approaches for Cardiovascular Disease
Jan. 19th	George A. Truskey, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University Topic: TBA
Jan. 26th	Cameron N. Riviere, Ph.D. Associate Research Professor, The Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University Topic: TBA
Feb 2nd	TBA
Feb. 9th	Lorraine Gudas, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmacology Weill Medical School of Cornell University Topic: TBA
Feb 16th	Andres J. Garcia, Ph.D. Director, Cellular and Biosurface Engineering Laboratory Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences Georgia Institute of Technology Topic: TBA
Feb 23rd	Van C. Mow, Ph.D. Chairman, Department of Biomedical Engineering Columbia Univeristy Topic: TBA
Mar. 2nd	Michelle LaPlaca, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology / Emory University Topic: TBA
Mar. 9th	No seminar presentation – Spring Break and McGowan Institute Retreat
Mar. 16th	Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering Columbia University Topic: TBA
Mar. 23rd	Patrick E. Crago, Ph.D. Allen H. and Constance T. Ford Professor Chairman, Biomedical Engineering Case Western Reserve University Topic: TBA
Mar. 30th	Kevin D. Costa, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering Columbia University Topic: TBA
Apr. 6th	Jeffrey A. Weiss, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering University of Utah Topic: TBA
Apr. 13th	Moshen Makhsous, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Dept. of Physical Therapy & Human Movement Sciences Northwestern University Topic: TBA

Keep up to date on the seminar series on the McGowan Institute web site

 

McGowan@pitt.edu