Over the past year, several of our students have been awarded institutional research training grants funded by the NIH (more commonly known as the T32) to promote their work:
Ryan Englander: Training Program in Precision Genetics of Aging, Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Keaven Caro: Regenerative Engineering of Musculoskeletal Tissues – a Convergence Doctoral Training Program Mian Horvath:The UConn/JAX-GM Training Program in Genomic Science Christopher Pathoulas: The UConn/JAX-GM Training Program in Genomic Science
Annie Yao was awarded the prestigious NIH F30 Award. Annie’s project under Dr. Riqiang Yan is titled “The role of beta-secretase 1 (BACE1) in modulating excitatory synaptic and circuit function and behavior.” Congratulations Annie!
Pearl Sutter, of Dr. Stephen Crocker’s lab, has been awarded the prestigious NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein F30 Award! Pearl is hard working and is a rising leader in the physician-scientist community as she pursues her passion in neuroscience. Well done Pearl!
Congratulations to Anthony (Tony) Pettinato and Feria Ladha, two of our MD/PhD students in their third year of medical school, who were just voted as student inductees to the 2022 UConn School of Medicine Gold Humanism Honor Society. This honor was bestowed on only 13 of our third year medical students from a class of more than one hundred. These students were chosen by their peers and endorsed by the medical school faculty for their overall competence, community service, and kindness. Inductees are usually described as “those you would take a loved one to for care.”
The Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS) recognizes students, residents and faculty who are exemplars of compassionate patient care and who serve as role models, mentors, and leaders in medicine. The Society currently has over 25,000 members in training and practice. Membership in GHHS goes beyond selection and induction into an honor society. Its members have a responsibility to model, support, and advocate for compassionate, patient-centered care throughout their careers.
UConn Health MD/PhD graduate Sonali Bracken and her family are participating in clinical trials to test the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccinations in pediatric populations. Sonali has enrolled her two children in the trial with hopes that study findings may allow children and their families to enjoy experiences they have missed over the last few years.
Sonali completed her studies in UConn Health’s Immunology Graduate Program and the School of Medicine in 2017. Following graduation, Sonali completed her residency training in Internal Medicine (Integrated Research Track) at Duke University Medical Center. She is currently a Clinical Fellow in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at Duke University Medical Center.
Find out more about Sonali’s experience with the trial here:
https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/durham-county-news/mom-of-1-and-3-year-old-in-duke-vaccine-trial-hopes-shots-will-soon-be-available-for-babies-and-toddlers/
MD/PhD graduates from UConn Health Class of 2021. Nick Wasko at Match Day (Left) and Maria Xu (Mid) with Russ Posner (Right) at graduation.
The UConn Health MD/PhD program would like to extend its congratulations and best wishes to our recent graduates Maria Xu, Nick Wasko, and Russ Posner as they transition into their residency programs. Their achievements are reflected in acceptances to top choice residency programs in Surgery at Duke University Medical Center (Xu), Neurology PSTP at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (Wasko), and Diagnostic Radiology at the New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center (Posner). We are sure they will each continue to make a positive impact on their peers and communities as they have done at UConn Health.
Microscopic image of fluorescently labeled cardiomyocytes by the Hinson Laboratory.
We would like to congratulate MD/PhD candidates Anthony “Tony” Pettinato, Feria Ladha, and Rachel Cohn for their publication in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation. As members of the Hinson laboratory at Jax, students Pettinato, Ladha, and Cohn leverage powerful genetic research techniques to study cardiac dysfunction. Their paper “Development of a Cardiac Sarcomere Functional Genomics Platform to Enable Scalable Interrogation of Human TNNT2 Variants” provides a better understanding of how mutations in cardiac muscle proteins can lead to heart disease and failure. Beyond their study of the titular protein Troponin, these experiments illustrate a novel platform of single cell functional assays that can be used to study new drug candidates for heart disease or test patient-specific defects in a host of cardiac proteins.
For further information, see their full publication here
Alexandra “Allie” Goetjen (far right) with two of her siblings.
The UConn Health MD/PhD training program would like to congratulate Alexandra “Allie” Goetjen for winning a Diversity Award from the 35th Annual MD/PhD National Student Conference. The award was given in recognition of Allie’s “commitment to diversity in science” as well as her “passion for scientific achievement”. Allie is a second time winner of this award, which she previously received in 2017. While she admits that “things [did] look a bit different” with the virtual format of this year’s conference, she remains elated to be recognized for her work and dedication at a national level. As a first generation college student and eldest of 3 siblings, she applied for this award to demonstrate to her family and others that “anything is possible despite the challenges we may face in life”.
Allie is in the 6th and final year of her graduate phase of training and conducts research with Dr. Jonathan Covault in the department of Psychiatry. Here, she is studying how mutations in the gene GABRA2 increase the risk of developing alcohol use disorder. As a testament to her scientific efforts, Allie was awarded a prestigious F30 predoctoral fellowship by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for which she is “beyond grateful”. Outside of her laboratory work, she volunteers as a Counselor with the Crisis Text Line where she has served over 1,000 individuals in crisis situations. Allie also values her time as a student advisory board member for UConn Health’s Psychiatry Interest Group. After graduation, she aims to pursue a career as a physician scientist in the field of addiction psychiatry. In this role, she envisions leading a behavioral genetics lab and following her clinical passion of addiction counseling.
From strokes to spinal cord injuries, neuronal damage presents a significant burden of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Though such neuronal damage has conventionally been viewed as irreversible, MD/PhD candidate Bruce Rheaume is working to shift this paradigm. Rheaume, a member of Ephraim Trakhtenberg’s lab in the department of neuroscience, uses a model of optic nerve damage to better understand the regenerative capacity of the nervous system. While investigating why certain neurons can heal after optic nerve injury while others do not, he identified and characterized novel cell populations in the eye using single cell technologies. This work, published in Nature Communications [1], serves as a basis for better understanding cellular diversity in the central nervous system while also pointing to new targets for regenerative therapies. As a testament to the importance of his work, this paper has been cited nearly 100 times since publication.
Bruce hopes to combine his unique perspectives from both laboratory and medical training to pursue a career as physician scientist specializing in cardiology. Additionally, as one UConn Health’s “Biomedical Science Graduate Student Mentorship Award” winners for 2019, he hopes to continue advising and fostering the growth of budding clinicians and scientists.
Citation:
Rheaume, B. A., Jereen, A., Bolisetty, M., Sajid, M. S., Yang, Y., Renna, K., … & Trakhtenberg, E. F. (2018). Single cell transcriptome profiling of retinal ganglion cells identifies cellular subtypes. Nature communications, 9(1), 1-17.
MD/PhD Candidate Nick Wasko Starting his Dissertation Defense with a Far Side comic
The UConn MD/PhD Program would like to congratulate Nicholas Wasko on his successful public dissertation for the Department of Immunology on April 24th. Nick did his PhD work in the lab of Dr. Robert Clark, whose research seeks to identify the role of the microbiome in regulating autoimmunity in multiple sclerosis. Seeking to identify new therapeutic pathways in MS, Nick studied the capacity of systemic exposure to low doses of microbiome-derived molecules to induce a state of “tolerance” in the immune system, and how that tolerance influences the brain’s ability to repair damaged myelin. He used the cuprizone model to induce myelin injuries in mice, then tolerized the mice with innate immune ligands to see if systemic tolerance improved their recovery. After identifying a significant improvement in myelin repair following tolerance induction, he then used immunostaining techniques to investigate which cell types in the brain played a role in improving recovery in the tolerized mice. He recently presented his work at this year’s Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) meeting in Dallas, TX. This research provides a framework for developing systemic tolerance as a two-pronged therapeutic approach in MS, capable of inhibiting autoimmune activity (as demonstrated by a previous graduate of the MD/PhD program) while simultaneously facilitating repair of existing myelin damage.
Dr. Robert Clark proudly introducing Nick Wasko before his public defense.
Nick joined the Clark lab because of his longstanding interest in neurology and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Clark’s immunology background provided a novel perspective on how neurodegeneration transpires, providing Nick with a new appreciation for the role of the immune system in neurologic diseases. His mentor extolled his commitment to his work and boundless curiosity and enthusiasm throughout his transition from neuroscience into immunology, and suggested his experience in both fields will make him uniquely prepared to tackle difficult questions in study of neurodegenerative diseases.
The weeks following Nick’s dissertation featured numerous milestones in his professional and personal life, including re-entry into clinical medicine, the submission of his thesis work for publication, and the introduction of a new rescue dog to his family. Greta, a 2 year old Weimaraner, will join Nick, his partner Kathleen, and their 12 year old Weimaraner Jasmine as they prepare to take on the challenges of the remaining two years of Nick’s medical education.
