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Jonathan Macoskey (BME Class 2015) was the recipient of the 2014 Robert W. Young Award for Undergraduate Student Research in Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America. The Robert W. Young Award will provide resources for Jonathan to complete his proposed research project focused on developing a high-frequency ultrasound technique to visualize and quantify material properties of engineered tissue constructs. Jonathan is an undergraduate research assistant working in Professor Diane Dalecki's biomedical ultrasound laboratory, and his project contributes to a joint collaboration between Professor Dalecki and Professor Denise Hocking lab (Pharmacology and Physiology) dedicated to developing new ultrasound technologies for tissue engineering.

Diane Dalecki, Ph.D. (BME) and Denise C. Hocking, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology) have received a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) for their project titled Ultrasound standing wave fields for vascular engineering. The goal of this 4-year project is to advance a novel ultrasound technology to fabricate complex, functional microvascular networks within three-dimensional engineered constructs.

Collaborators on this project are Maria Helguera, Ph.D. (Imaging Sciences, RIT), Ingrid Sarelius, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology) and Angela Glading, Ph.D. (Pharmacology & Physiology).

New, versatile vascularization strategies are needed to produce small-scale 3D tissue models and are critical for the fabrication of large-scale engineered tissues. The noninvasive capacity of ultrasound also enables innovative capabilities for fabricating microvessel networks within hydrogels injected within tissues. The successful completion of this project will provide new tools for tissue engineering and for a variety of clinical reconstructive and vascular surgery applications.

Yelena Lerman is the recipient of the Medical Faculty Council Travel Award in Basic Science Research for Spring 2014. Yelena is in her sixth year of the Pharmacology PhD program under the mentorship of Dr. Minsoo Kim in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. Yelena gave an oral and poster presentation of her work on “Exacerbated tissue homing of neutrophils during sepsis and TLR2-induced cytokine production are regulated by integrin a3b1” at the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) meeting in May 2014. Her work evaluated the surface expression kinetics of b1 and b3 integrin heterodimers on neutrophils during sepsis in both mice and humans. She showed that only integrin a3b1 is significantly upregulated during sepsis. Previous studies suggested a role for IL-10 as a regulator of the transition from mild sepsis to irreversible septic shock. Thus, sepsis progression could be modulated by altering IL-10 release and α3β1 upregulation.

Graduate student, Yelena Lerman received the Trainee Abstract Award at the 2014 AAI Immunology Conference for her work, Exacerbated tissue homing of neutrophils during sepsis and TLR2-induced cytokine production are regulated by integrin a3b1.

Yelena currently works in Dr. Minsoo Kim's lab.

Tissue engineering has resulted in some remarkable achievements: skin substitutes, cartilage replacements, artificial bladders, urethral segments, blood vessels, bronchial tubes and corneal tissue substitutes.

But these advances have been confined primarily to fairly simple organs comprised of thin structures, Denise Hocking, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology, noted at last week's presentation in the Crossing Elmwood seminar series.

A journal article by Kamil J. Alzayady, Larry E. Wagner II, Rahul Chandrasekhar, Alina Monteagudo, Ronald Godiska, Gregory G. Tall, Suresh K. Joseph, and David I. Yule was selected as a Paper of the Week by The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Alzayady KJ, Wagner LE 2nd, Chandrasekhar R, Monteagudo AM, Godiska R, Tall GG, Joseph SK, and Yule DI. (2013) Functional inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptors assembled from concatenated homo- and heteromeric subunits.J Biol Chem.288:29772-29784. (Paper of the Week)

Click here to view Kamil Alzayady's Author Profile.

Dr. Robert T. Dirksen was selected as the 2013 recipient of the Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring Award. This award is presented to a postdoctoral mentor who shows dedication to postdoctoral trainees, as well as evidence of contributing significantly to their career development and professional advancement and was presented at the School of Medicine and Dentistry Convocation, September 12, 2013.

An image by Dr. Denise C. Hocking and Dr. Daniel C. Roy was selected as cover art for Tissue Engineering, Part B: Reviews, Volume 19, Number 1, February 2013. The image consists of human mesenchymal stem cells adherent to a recombinant fibronectin mimetic substrate polymerize an endogenous fibronectin matrix (green) using α5β1 integrins (red).

Paul J. Kammermeier, Ph.D., was elected a Councilor of the Upstate New York Pharmacology Society at its Inaugural Annual Meeting, May 14, 2012, at the University at Buffalo.

We’ve all seen the story in the news before. Whether it’s the death of a physically fit high school athlete at football training camp in August, or of an elderly woman gardening in the middle of the day in July, heat stroke is a serious, life-threatening condition for which there is no treatment beyond submersion in ice water or the application of ice packs to cool the body to a normal temperature.

But, in a new study published today in the journal Nature Medicine, scientists discovered what they believe is one of the first drugs to combat heat stroke. AICAR – an experimental therapy once dubbed the “couch potato pill” for its ability to mimic the effects of exercise in sedentary mice – protected animals genetically predisposed to the disorder and may hold promise for the treatment of people with enhanced susceptibility to heat-induced sudden death.

“There is a great need for the training staff of athletic teams, physicians in emergency rooms in places like Phoenix, and soldiers serving in the deserts of the Middle East to have a drug available to give to individuals during a heat stroke event,” said Robert T. Dirksen, Ph.D., study author and professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “Our study takes an important first step towards developing a new drug therapy that may be part of the standard treatment regimen for heat stroke in the future.”

The finding comes as heat stroke cases are on the rise. According to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the number of heat-related injuries in the U.S. more than doubled from 1997 to 2006. In that 10-year period, an estimated 55,000 people were treated for the condition in emergency rooms across the country.