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UR Medicine was selected to be a part of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation Care Center Network to expand care and research into pulmonary fibrosis, also called lung scarring. UR Medicine Pulmonary Division is recognized as an international leader in lung disorders, including pulmonary fibrosis.

"Over the past decade, the clinical faculty and staff have worked hard to develop an outstanding care team for our patients with fibrotic lung disease and being recognized in this way will no doubt raise awareness of these sometimes devastating lung diseases," said Paul Levy, M.D., chair of the Department of Medicine. "Having the Pulmonary Division designated as a Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation Care Center Network site is a great achievement."

Pulmonary fibrosis has several forms, some of which are treatable. However, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is particularly difficult to treat and there is no cure. Pulmonary fibrosis is diagnosed when lung tissue becomes thickened, stiff, and scarred. The development of the scar tissue is called fibrosis, and as it progresses, the lungs thicken and are unable to transfer oxygen into the bloodstream causing shortness of breath. As a result, the brain and other organs don't receive enough oxygen.

In some cases, doctors can determine the cause of the fibrosis, but in many cases, there is no known cause, and the disease is called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or IPF. There is no cure for IPF, though recently the FDA approved two new therapies.

This disease affects about 200,000 Americans each year. There are other treatable forms of lung fibrosis, however idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is particularly difficult to treat.

"We are honored that the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation has recognized the quality of our programs and the expertise our medical staff have in treating patients with fibrotic lung disease," said Patricia Sime, M.D. F.R.C.P., chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. She is an authority in the field of pulmonology best known for her basic and translational research of lung inflammation and scarring.

Sime, R. Matthew Kottmann, M.D., and Michael Kallay, M.D., lead the Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic, Upstate New York's only program selected for the national network dedicated to advancing care and research. It is one of 40 top centers in the nation, allowing scientists and pulmonologists to collaborate on studies and patient care.

UR Medicine's multidisciplinary team provides comprehensive care for pulmonary fibrosis, sarcoidosis, silicosis and other lung diseases, including diagnosis, treatment, symptom and side-effect management, supportive services, and genetic testing.

Funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health and foundations the clinicians and scientists also lead industry-supported research into cures. Sime, Kallay and Kottmann, along with Richard Phipps, Ph.D., lead innovative clinical studies into new therapies and basic science laboratory investigations to advance understanding of these diseases.

University of Rochester Medical Center researcher Richard P. Phipps, Ph.D., won a top scientific award from the pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, to collaborate on a new obesity therapy based on his laboratory's discoveries.

Phipps, the Wright Family Research Professor of Environmental Medicine, is the first UR faculty to receive the competitive Novo Nordisk Diabetes and Obesity Biologics Science Forum Award. The drug company is providing substantial financial support for the two-year project, which is designed to quickly move basic science in diabetes and obesity to an early stage of drug development known as proof-of-principle.

Phipps discovered a new function for a protein known as Thy1 (formally called CD90), linking it to fat cell accumulation.

Much like birds fly in flocks to conserve energy, dolphins swim in pods to mate and find food, and colonies of ants create complex nests to protect their queens, immune cells engage in coordinated behavior to wipe out viruses like the flu. That’s according to a new study published in the journal Science by researchers at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

The findings reveal, for the first time, how immune cells work together to get to their final destination – the site of an injury or infection. The body is expansive and a virus or bacteria can take hold in any number of locations: the lungs, the throat, the skin, the stomach or the ear, just to name a few. How do immune cells, specifically the ones that are responsible for killing foreign invaders, know where to go?

A treatment regimen that combines two FDA-approved drugs significantly reduced hospitalizations in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a type of high blood pressure that affects the arteries in the lungs and causes breathing problems, chest pain, heart failure and death.

The two drugs, ambrisentan and tadalafil, are currently used on their own to treat PAH. This is the first time they have been tested together in a large-scale, randomized clinical trial and the results suggest that the combination is superior to either drug alone: just four percent of patients who received the combination therapy were hospitalized for worsening disease compared to 12 percent of patients who took ambrisentan or tadalafil on their own. The results were reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“These results are very exciting because they show that upfront treatment with these two once-daily tablets led to better outcomes for newly diagnosed PAH patients,” said R. James White, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and an author of the new study. “This regimen is not a cure and it is not going to work for everybody, but it is a substantial step forward compared to previous therapies that required frequent daily dosing or monthly blood work.”

The patent titled "Chimeric Fibronectin Matrix Mimetics and Uses Thereof" (US 9,072,706) has recently been assigned to the University of Rochester with inventors Denise C. Hocking, Ph.D. (Pharmacology and Physiology, BME, RCBU) and Daniel Roy, Ph.D. (BME PhD 2012 alumnus). The patent relates to a series of recombinant fibronectin peptide mimetics developed to promote wound repair. The technology falls under a new and exciting class of therapies known as wound biologics. The primary commercial application for this technology is to promote healing of hard-to-heal or chronic wounds, including diabetic, venous, and pressure ulcers, which impose a significant health care burden worldwide. Encouraging results from recent studies indicate that topical application of these fibronectin peptide mimetics to full-thickness excisional wounds in diabetic mice accelerates wound closure and promotes granulation tissue deposition, remodeling, and re-vascularization. Denise Hocking is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology and of Biomedical Engineering. Daniel Roy is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the US Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, TX.

The 2015 Vincent duVignaeud Award for excellence in basic research will be awarded at this year's commencement to Dr. Steven Baker who completed his Ph.D. in Luis Martinez-Sobrido's lab.

The 2015 Wallace O. Fenn Award for excellence in basic research will be awarded at this year's commencement to Dr. Julie Sahler who completed her Ph.D. in Richard Phipps' lab.

Award Recipients for the Melville A. Hare Award for Excellence in Research have been awarded to Dr. Denise Skrombolas who completed her Ph.D. in the lab of John Frelinger and Dr. Benson Cheng who completed his Ph.D. in Luis Martinez-Sobrido's lab.

The Melville A. Hare Award for Excellence in Teaching has been awarded to Jennifer Colquhoun. Jennifer is in Paul Dunman's laboratory.

A Departmental Peer Mentoring Award was established this year. The recipient of the 2015 award is Lisbeth Boule. Lisbeth is in Paige Lawrence's laboratory.

The latest research by Professor Diane Dalecki (BME, RCBU) and Professor Denise C. Hocking (Pharmacology & Physiology, BME, RCBU) was recognized with the Best Paper Award at the Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications Conference of the SPIE Defense + Security Symposium held recently in Baltimore, Maryland. Their invited paper titled "Guiding Tissue Regeneration with Ultrasound In Vitro and In Vivo" detailed three biomedical ultrasound technologies under development in their laboratories to stimulate tissue formation and regeneration. Co-authors of the paper included Sally Child, Carol Raeman, and BME graduate students Eric Comeau and Laura Hobbs. One technology under development employs forces within an ultrasound standing wave field to provide a noninvasive approach to spatially pattern endothelial cells and thereby guide the development of complex microvessel networks. A second technology uses ultrasound to site-specifically control the microstructure of collagen fibers within engineered hydrogels to direct cell function. The third line of research focuses on developing ultrasound as a therapeutic approach to enhance tissue regeneration in chronic wounds. These ultrasound technologies offer new solutions to key challenges currently facing the fields of tissue engineering, biomaterials fabrication, and regenerative medicine.

The SPIE DSS 2015 Defense + Security Symposium consisted of 32 separate conferences spanning 5 days with over 1200 total presentations. Conferences focused on a wide range of topics of interest to defense and security, including imaging, sensing, photonics, materials, and biomedical applications. The Symposium is the leading meeting for scientists, researchers and engineers from industry, military, government agencies, and academia throughout the world. The Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications Conference is one of the two largest conferences within the entire Defense + Security Symposium, and Professors Hocking's and Dalecki's presentation was one of over 100 invited presentations in the conference.

Former Toxicology graduate student in Alison Elder's lab, Brittany Baisch (PhD '13) won the Nanotoxicology Specialty Section Best Publication 2015 Award at the Society of Toxicology (SOT) annual meeting in San Diego, CA. last week. She won the award for the paper, Equivalent titanium dioxide nanoparticle deposition by intratracheal instillation and whole body inhalation: the effect of dose rate on acute respiratory tract inflammation. Brittany is currently working as a toxicologist at Kraft Foods.

Dr. Alison Elder and Elissa Wong

UR Toxicology graduate students made a strong showing at the Society of Toxicology (SOT) annual meeting in San Diego, CA. last week. 3^rd year graduate student, Elissa Wong (Majewska Lab) and 5^th year graduate student, Sage Begolly (O'Banion/Olschowka Labs) both won travel awards to attend and present their posters.

Elissa Wong and Dr. Alison Elder also attended the event, hosting the UR recruitment table at the Society of Toxicology (SOT) Committee on Diversity Initiatives (CDI) session. Congrats to all!

View all of the photos from the SOT meeting.

Do electronic cigarettes help people quit smoking? As the debate continues on that point, a new University of Rochester study suggests that e-cigarettes are likely a toxic replacement for tobacco products.

Emissions from e-cigarette aerosols and flavorings damage lung cells by creating harmful free radicals and inflammation in lung tissue, according to the UR study published in the journal PLOS ONE. Irfan Rahman, Ph.D., professor of Environmental Medicine at the UR School of Medicine and Dentistry, led the research, which adds to a growing body of scientific data that points to dangers of e-cigarettes and vaping.

Please view the NBC news video about this article.

A new study by University of Rochester suggests that e-cigarettes are likely to be a toxic replacement for tobacco products.

Emissions from e-cigarette aerosols and flavourings damage lung cells by creating harmful free radicals and inflammation in lung tissue. Several leading medical groups, organizations and scientists are concerned about the lack of restrictions and regulations for e-cigarettes, said Irfan Rahman, lead author and professor of environmental medicine at University of Rochester Medical Center.