News

Stephen Dewhurst, Ph.D.

The stem cell clean room that opened Wednesday at the University of Rochester Medical Center is a critical step toward therapies that, among other things, may one day help to restore the crushed limbs of soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, university officials said.

All sorts of now-incurable illnesses and injuries — from cancer to severed spinal cords — may be the eventual beneficiaries of work done at the new Upstate Stem Cell cGMP Facility, located at UR's DelMonte Neuromedicine Research Institute.

The clean room, the first of its kind in western New York, officials said, was paid for with $3.5 million from the Empire Stem Cell Board, created several years ago to support research using cells that have shown promise in regenerating lost bone and tissue and treating illnesses.

One of the critical barriers to moving cell-based therapies into clinical trials is the requirement that these cells be manufactured in a facility that meets strict federal requirements,Stephen Dewhurst, Ph.D., chair of the medical center's Department of Microbiology and Immunology and author of the state grant application, said. Without this resource, much of this science gets stuck in the lab.

The annual Neurosciences Retreat will be held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16, at the Memorial Art Gallery. The retreat will feature talks from University faculty and graduate students. Lorna Role, chair of the department of neurobiology and behavior at SUNY Stony Brook, will present the keynote address. The retreat is sponsored by the Neuroscience Graduate Program, the University Committee for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, and the John Bartlett Memorial Fund. Registration is free and open to the University community.

MSTP and Neuroscience graduate student, Daniel Marker, has received an individual fellowship ($42,232) from NIMH on his project entitled MLK3 inhibition protects the murine CNS from the effects of HIV-1 Tat.

Congratulations to Danielle, who is in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), for receiving NIMH Fellowship support for her project, An Extended Amygdala Path with Implications for Early Life Stress. Using a variety of techniques, Danielle is examining a pathway through the amygdala that appears plays a role in development of stress responses and is affected by early life stress. Her project is an outgrowth of collaborations with Dr. Judy Cameron (University of Pittsburgh) and Dr. Karoly Mirnics (Vanderbilt University), and previous support of the URMCCTSI Pilot Program.

Danielle has won a highly competitive travel award to the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). This meeting brings together basic and clinical scientists in the field of psychiatric research, and is a wonderful opportunity to see the latest work in the field. Congrats!