Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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collaboration

$30M grant to Children’s Healthcare supports Emory partnership

Pediatric researchThe Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation has given $30 million to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to support pediatric research. The grant includes $25 million to help fund a new research building located on the Emory campus, and $5 million to support the Marcus Autism Center.

The grant will allow Children’s and Emory to expand their research partnership, attract top scientists, and advance research discoveries that will improve the health of children.

Some of the pediatric research conducted in a new building to be built on the Emory campus will focus on cardiology, cancer, vaccines, and new drug discovery. The grant has implications for the city of Atlanta as a growing research community, building on collaborations among Children’s Healthcare, Emory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Morehouse School of Medicine, and others.

Fred Sanfilippo, MD, PhD, executive vice president for health affairs at Emory, and Donna W. Hyland, president and CEO of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, explained that the new grant, which is the largest single gift ever to Children’s, will have an enormous impact on the two institutions, building on the strong partnership between Emory and Children’s and leading them to become a major pediatric research hub in the Southeast and the nation. Most importantly, it will help in finding cures for some of the most common and devastating childhood diseases.

Posted on November 13, 2009 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

An invitation to be healthy and stay healthy

Predictive Health blog photoThere’s a place in Midtown Atlanta called the Center for Health Discovery and Well Being, where people can go to be healthy and stay healthy.

This fresh approach to wellness marks a new model of healthcare called predictive health, which focuses on defining and maintaining health rather than treating disease.

The Center for Health Discovery and Well Being collects and analyzes physical, medical and lifestyle histories, and up to 50 different blood and plasma tests to create a personalized health action plan for each participant. Participants also act as research partners, as data from their assessments is used to discover and develop predictive markers of health and well being. Those markers are ultimately used to create health-related interventions. What’s more, the center is part of a research partnership between Emory and Georgia Tech called the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute.

Located on the 18th floor of the Medical Office Tower (MOT) at Emory University Hospital Midtown, the center occupies an architecturally innovative atmosphere that includes flowing spaces, soothing colors, and a big city view.

Healthy individuals, including those with well-controlled chronic conditions, may enroll in the Center.

The Center for Health Discovery and Well Being web site offers detailed information, testimonials, and an application for participation.

Posted on October 13, 2009 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Reality check for HIV vaccine design

HIV doesn’t have a brain and it doesn’t strategize.

But the way that the virus mutates and evades the immune system in the early part of an infection, you might think it did.

Emory Vaccine Center researcher Cynthia Derdeyn and her colleagues have a new paper in PLOS Pathogens that is a reality check for researchers designing possible HIV vaccines. The results come from a collaboration with the Rwanda Zambia HIV Research Group. (Although the patients in this paper are from Zambia only.)

Red and green depict the parts of the HIV envelope protein that mutated in two patients (185F and 205F) in response to pressure from their immune systems. The rest of the envelope protein is blue.

Red and green depict the parts of the HIV envelope protein that mutated in two patients (185F and 205F) in response to pressure from their immune systems.

Recently there has been some excitement over the discovery of robust neutralizing antibodies in patients.

The bottom line, according to Derdeyn’s team: even if a vaccine succeeds in stimulating antibodies that can neutralize HIV, the virus is still going to mutate furiously and may escape those antibodies. To resist HIV, someone’s immune system may need to have several types of antibodies ready to go, their results suggest.

A companion paper in the same issue of PLOS Pathogens from South African scientists has similarly bracing results.

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Emory and Georgia Tech

Over the past twenty years, the research partnership between Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed into one of the leading bioengineering and biomedical research and educational programs in the nation. In recent years this partnership has resulted in the development of several pieces of diagnostic and medical-assistant technology, with medical experts on the Emory side working with engineers on the Georgia Tech side.

An example of this collaboration is the El-E robot, designed to perform simple tasks such as opening drawers and retrieving objects. Clinicians at Emory’s School of Medicine and engineers at Georgia Tech created the 5½-foot-tall machine, which glides across the floor on wheels and takes direction from a laser pointer that users can control in a variety of ways, depending on their preferences and capabilities. El-E is no mere toy, however: The machine could help patients with significant motor impairments, such as sufferers of ALS, maintain their independence and help relieve physical and financial burdens faced by caregivers.

 

Another result of the Emory-Georgia Tech collaboration is DETECT, a portable device capable of detecting the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, in any environment. DETECT has a helmet device that includes an LCD display in a visor, along with a computer and noise-reduction headphones. DETECT gives the patient a battery of words and pictures to assess cognitive abilities—reaction time and memory capabilities. The low-cost test takes approximately 10 minutes. The device was co-developed by emergency medicine physician David Wright, and Michelle LaPlaca, a scientist in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory.

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Wendy Darling in Uncategorized Leave a comment