Department of Medicine at the
University of
Colorado Denver
First Quarter 2008 News
New Departmental Faculty Member/Program Leader Rubin Tuder-We are very pleased to announce the recruitment of Rubin Tuder, who will be the Hart Family Professor of Medicine in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division of the Department of Medicine and Director of the Lung Translational Biology Program. Rubin has spent the past 6 years at Johns Hopkins where he was a Professor of Pathology (with a joint appointment in the Department of Medicine) and Director of the Division of Cardiovascular Pathology. Rubin has been an exceptionally productive, collaborative and well-funded investigator for many years. Rubin’s wife Annie, an expert in pediatric sleep disorders, will be joining the faculty in the Department of Pediatrics. Rubin and Annie’s recruitments were initiated and coordinated by Mark Geraci, Head, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and significantly facilitated by Dean Krugman, Steve Daniels (Chair, Department of Pediatrics) and National Jewish leadership physicians Greg Downey and Richard Martin.
Kudos-some Departmental members who have received special recognition in the past few months include:
Charles Dinarello (Infectious Diseases) was one of 50 individuals elected as a European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) associate member. This is a particularly singular honor inasmuch as only eight individuals outside Europe were elected.
Arthur Gutierrez-Hartmann (Endocrinology) was recently named the 2008 recipient of the Minorities in Cancer Research Jane Cooke Wright Lectureship from the American Association for Cancer Research. This annual award is given to recognize an outstanding scientist who has made meritorious contributions to the field of cancer research and who has, through leadership or by example, furthered the advancement of minority investigators in cancer research.
Gail Eckhardt (Medical Oncology), the Stapp-Harlow Endowed Professor and Head, Division of Medical Oncology, was recently awarded an American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Statesman Award for 2008. This award was established to recognize ASCO founders, presidents and board members for their outstanding volunteer efforts. The award is presented at ASCO’s annual meeting which attracts about 30,000 attendees from around the world.
Two members of the Department of Medicine, who have DHHA as their primary home, have received significant, competitive extra-mural research funding. These individuals are Connie Price, Infectious Diseases, who received a $706,246 award from AHRQ for a project designed to reduce hospital-acquired infections and Pat Bosque, Neurology, who received a $322,821 award from the NIH for identifying pathogenic protein aggregates in ALS through autocatalytic misfolding.
Sterling West (Rheumatology) was recently voted by the University Hospital Medical Board “Outstanding Full-time Physician of the Year Award.”
Han Myint (Medical Oncology/Bone Marrow Transplant) has been chosen by the University Hospital Medical Board to receive a “Pioneer Award” for his efforts in re-establishing the Bone Marrow Transplant Program.
John Messenger (Cardiology) was elected by the members of the medical staff to a three year term as a member of University Hospital Medical Board.
Two Departmental junior faculty members have recently received very competitive early career development awards. These are Josh Thurman (Renal) who received a two year award from the Schweppes Foundation and Judy Blaine (Renal) who received a three year Scientist Development Award from American Heart Association.
Housestaff Research-The Department is exceptionally pleased that many of its housestaff elect to actively participate in research endeavors while in the housestaff training program. Here are some examples of this participation:
Ten members of our housestaff presented their work at national meetings over the past three months. These houseofficers (the outstanding faculty co-authors/mentors not listed) include Jana Huskey (Effect of Simvastatin on Kidney Function Loss in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease, American Society of Nephrology), Richard Fuquay (The Effect of Transfusion on Acute Kidney Injury in Critically Ill Adult Trauma Patients, American Society of Nephrology), Angela Desbiens ( Association Between Kidney Function and Risk of Subclinical Carotid Atherosclerosis, American Society of Nephrology), Ann Debourcey (Is Colonoscopy Enough?, Society of General Internal Medicine), Kelsey Gray (Hematologic Profile of Alcohol Dependent Patients with Invasive Pneumococcal Disease, American College of Chest Physicians), Anwar Dudekula (Five Year Experience with Tenofovir for Lamivudine Resistant Hepatitis B Virus, WFCR), Alap Shah (Contemporary Clinical Outcomes with Percutaneous Iliac Artery Revascularization, American College of Cardiology), Erin Kahler (Women with Type 2 Diabetes Perceive Low Intensity Exercise as a Greater Effort than Non-Diabetic Women, Johns Hopkins Neil R. Powe Symposium/Awardee), Jason Hatch ( Regional gene Expression Fingerprints of the Non-failing and failing Human Heart, American College of Cardiology) and Janice Huang (Different RV and LV response to Alpha-adrenergic Stimulation in Vivo, FASEB).
Thirty-four members of our housestaff submitted posters to the Department’s Fifth Annual Research Day. Three of these posters were voted as the most outstanding and received cash awards. These were: Jason Hatch (Regional Gene Expression Fingerprints of the Failing and Non-failing Heart with Drs Buttrick, Bristow and Lowes and Karin Nunley); Robert Koval (The Association and Financial Implications of Oral Bisphosphonate Intolerance and H. Pylori Status with Sterling West); and Mohammad Sarraf (Gene Expression Profiles in Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathies with Drs. Lowes, Brieke, Lindenfeld, Gary, Shakar, Wolfel, Cleveland and Bristow).
Virginia Borges, M.D. (Medical Oncology), an Associate Professor of Medicine, is one of our five Associate Directors of our Housestaff Training Program and orchestrates our Housestaff Research Program. Virginia reports that 16 residents have participated in our resident research curriculum since it began about nine months ago. The participants have completed human subjects protection and institutional review board training modules and will be completing biostatistics and conflicts of interest training modules.
Developments at Presbyterian St. Luke’s/The Colorado Health Foundation-the Department of Medicine has had a long and mutually beneficial relationship with P/SL and the Colorado Health Foundation. This relationship is based upon a shared primary care internal medicine training program with a total of 10 primary care housestaff each year for three years. P/SL has six outstanding full-time teaching physicians and our internal medicine housestaff provides internal medicine inpatient ward coverage at P/SL. Also, P/SL operates an excellent primary care clinic through which many of our housestaff rotate. Recently, P/SL and the Colorado Health Foundation announced a new hospitalist teaching program with addition of 5 hospitalist teaching faculty that will become part of the established teaching faculty. New faculty members that will be added to the full-time teaching faculty at P/SL for next year include: Rachel Groff, Sandy Durrani, Melanie Stickrath, Jon Manheim and Jenni Tamblyn.
Clinical and Research Update-the move to the new University Hospital facility at the Anschutz Medical Campus that was accomplished in June, 2007 has gone extremely well. The new University Hospital is running at nearly 100% capacity of its 400 beds. To date, 13 new beds have been opened and plans are underway to open an additional 10 beds in the immediate future. Additional University Hospital bed expansion plans are also being developed. The Department’s clinical growth continues on a sharp upward pace with current year to date clinical collections running 20% ahead of last year.
