Academic Honors & Events

What’s Age Got to Do with It?—Derek Huffman, Ph.D., was recently awarded the Marcia and Frank Carlucci III Charitable Grant by the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Funding from the grant will support Dr. Huffman’s research, titled “Prevention Strategies at the Cancer-aging Interface.” He plans to examine intestinal function with aging, as well as the interplay between cancer and aging. Despite the fact that various forms of cancer occur more typically among older individuals, little is known about the biology of cancers within the context of aging. Dr. Huffman hypothesizes that interventions for combatting cancer may be less effective as we age. His ongoing study employs animal models to determine the role of aging in tumor development, and whether aging is a significant modulator with regard to how cancer models respond to treatment. His findings could influence how future cancer prevention and treatment studies are designed and interpreted. Dr. Huffman is assistant professor of molecular pharmacology and of medicine.

Treating Opioid Addiction—Dr. Chinazo Cunningham recently served on the committee that oversaw development of the “National Practice Guidelines for the Use of Medications in the Treatment of Addiction Involving Opioid Use.” This set of guidelines was released by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) to help clinicians when prescribing therapies to patients who have an opioid addiction. Dr. Cunningham was also lead consultant on the ASAM National Practice Guideline Pocket Guide, which lists the key points for diagnosing and treating opioid use disorders. Dr. Cunningham is professor of medicine and of family and social medicine, and associate chief of the division of general internal medicine. She is also director of diversity affairs and of the general internal medicine fellowship program within the department of medicine.

Health Literacy and HPV—An initiative of the Health Literacy Special Interest Group (Health Lit SIG) of the American Pediatrics Association (APA), led by co-principal investigators Drs. Rosy Chabbra and Shonna Yin, has received the APA SIG Small Grant HPV Vaccination Award. The initiative focuses on creating educational materials targeting minority families from low socioeconomic backgrounds to communicate the benefits and risks of the HPV vaccine. Additional goals include assessing the effectiveness of the newly developed educational materials, evaluating existing HPV counseling tools, and identifying parent/provider barriers to HPV vaccination.  The initiative will be carried out by four collaborating hospitals—Montefiore, Bellevue, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital. Dr. Chabbra is assistant professor of pediatrics at Einstein; Dr. Yin is chair of the Health Lit SIG and on the faculty at NYU School of Medicine.

Screening Tool for Cancer—The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Cancer Control Program has awarded Dr. Haejin In a junior faculty grant of approximately $200,000 to support development of a screening questionnaire that can be used as a pre-diagnostic tool to identify patients at high risk for gastric cancer. High-risk patients can then be referred to receive an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, which probes the stomach for early signs of gastric cancer. The information gained from this pilot study will guide design of a full-scale clinical trial to assess the usefulness of the screening questionnaire. It also will be used to develop an effective gastric cancer screening protocol. Screening contributes to early detection and treatment, which could improve the chance of recovery and reduce the risk of death due to gastric cancer. Dr. In is assistant professor of surgery and of epidemiology & population health.

Leadership Lauded—Dr. W. Scott Melvin was nominated president-elect of the Central Surgical Association. The honor was announced at the association’s 72^nd annual meeting. “This tremendous honor is reflective of the talent Dr. Melvin possesses as both a surgeon and scientist,” noted Dr. Robert Michler, professor and chair of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery andco-director of the Montefiore Einstein Center for Heart and Vascular Care. "He is developing one of the finest general surgery teams in the country." Dr. Melvin is professor and chief of surgery, as well as director of advanced gastrointestinal surgery.

Laudatory Lab Work—Acorda Therapeutics presented its Acorda Scientific Excellence Award to Blind Brook High School senior Jack Broitman, for his work in the laboratory of Ekaterina Dadachova, Ph.D. The award aims to encourage high school students to pursue careers in STEM industries, which represent science, technology, engineering and mathematics). A local radio station interviewed awardees about their work as part of the honor. Mr. Broitman helped examine monoclonal antibodies that can deliver alpha radiation to specifically targeted cells, such as cancer cells. Dr. Dadachova is a professor of radiology and of microbiology & immunology. She also holds the Sylvia and Robert S. Olnick Faculty Scholar in Cancer Research.

Honor of Distinction—The National Association of Professional Women (NAPW) has inducted Dr. Linda Cannizzaro into its VIP Woman of the Year Circle. The distinction recognizes her leadership in medicine, including her involvement in helping to establish a cytogenetic laboratory in pathology at Einstein and Montefiore. She also serves as an executive editor of Cytogenetics and Genome Research. NAPW is the nation’s leading networking organization exclusively for professional women, with more than 700,000 members. Dr. Cannizzaro is professor of pathology.

Pediatric Perspective—Dr. Lisa Shulman was among the invited speakers at "From Birth to Two: Prepping for Life," a special event convened by American Association for the Advancement of Science in partnership with Dana Foundation – a private organization that supports brain research. Speakers’ presentations focused on basic and clinical research on child development from birth to two years old. Dr. Shulman spoke about identifying milestones for assessing a child’s progress during this critical period of development. She is associate professor of pediatrics.

Honor Supports Training—The American Society of Hematology (ASH) has awarded Dr. Weijuan Li an ASH HONORS Award, given annually to North American medical students and residents. ASH established the award to give trainees the opportunity to enter a hematology-related training program, to introduce them to the hematology research community and to encourage research careers in hematology. Awardees receive a $5,000 stipend to conduct a mentor-guided research project of three months to a year, and a travel stipend to attend the ASH annual meeting. Dr. Li, an M.D., is a resident in internal medicine at Einstein; he will conduct his research under the mentorship of Dr. Amit Verma, professor of medicine and of developmental and molecular biology.

Award Supports Research—The Pew Charitable Trusts have named Dr. Erika Garay to the Pew Latin American Fellow Program in the Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Garay is a native of Mexico and one of only 10 scientists to receive the fellowship, which will support her research on aging in the lab of Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo and help her set up her own laboratory in Mexico. Dr. Garay studies how aging affects the cell’s ability to remove damaged molecules. She wants to identify the components in cells that regulate debris clearance. This clearance becomes less efficient as people age, and its failure has been linked to age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Finding what regulates debris clearing may lead to therapies for age-related diseases. Dr. Garay is a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Cuervo’s lab. Dr. Cuervo is professor of developmental and molecular biology, of anatomy and structural biology and of medicine, as well as co-director of Einstein’s Institute for Aging Research and the Robert and Renée Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases.