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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Office of Technology Transfer

Mix-and-match immune regulators

Go check out the article on the Emory Office of Technology Transfer’s site on Jacques Galipeau and the artificial chimeric immune stimulators he’s invented. He and his colleagues take one immune regulatory molecule, GM-CSF, and stick it onto others, creating a series of potent immune stimulants he calls “fusokines.” According to Galipeau, one of them turns antibody-producing B cells into The Hulk. Another is like a five hour energy drink.

These super-stimulants may be especially ray ban outlet effective in the realm of cancer, where the immune system is not responding to a stealthy threat. But in dealing with autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis or inflammatory bowel disease, it is more necessary to rein in over-enthusiastic immune cells. Galipeau has devised a fusokine that apparently reprograms cells into being more orderly.

 

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

A Sherer of Parkinson’s research

The name of the guest speaker at Emory’s Office of Technology Transfer’s annual celebration on March 7 provoked some double takes around campus last week.

Todd B. Sherer, PhD

Todd B. Sherer, PhD

Todd B. Sherer, PhD, CEO of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), described how the Fox Foundation is trying to build bridges between the worlds of basic and clinical research to speed development of new drugs for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, and offered a ray ban outlet perspective on how independent research funders can help move drug candidates from the lab to the clinic and closer to market.

Sherer, a former postdoctoral fellow at Emory, also has the same first and last name (but not middle initial!) as OTT’s director. Sherer – the one who works for the Fox Foundation – joined that non-profit charity’s staff in 2004. While at Emory, he worked on models for Parkinson’s based on exposure to the pesticide rotenone, alongside Ranjita Betarbet, Gary Miller and J. Timothy Greenamyre, who himself moved on to the University of Pittsburgh in 2005.

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Posted on March 13, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

On the FastTrac to entrepreneurship

A recent feature in Nature Jobs highlights the growing trend of entrepreneurship training for scientists. Emory’s Office of Technology Transfer, together with their counterparts at UGA and Georgia Tech, organized a six week FastTrac entrepreneurship course which just wrapped up last week.

An article in Emory Medicine describes this course, which was also offered in the spring.

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized 1 Comment

The next generation of biomedical engineering innovators

Congratulations to the winners of the InVenture innovation competition at Georgia Tech. The competition aired Wednesday night on Georgia Public Broadcasting. The winners get cash prizes, a free patent filing and commercialization service through Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Transfer.

Several of the teams have Emory connections, through the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, and the Atlanta Clinical & Translational Science Institute.

Emergency medical professionals know that intubation can be rough. The second place ($10,000) MAID team created a “magnetic assisted intubation device” that helps them place a breathing tube into the trachea in a smoother way. The MAID was designed by Alex Cooper, Shawna Hagen, William Thompson and Elizabeth Flanagan, all biomedical engineering majors. Their clinical advisor was Brian Morse, MD, previously a trauma fellow and now an Emory School of Medicine surgical critical care resident at Grady Memorial Hospital.

“When I first saw the device that the students had developed, I was blown away,” Morse told the Technique newspaper. “It’s probably going to change the way we look at intubation in the next five to 10 years.”

The AutoRhexis team, which won the People’s Choice award ($5,000), invented a device to perform the most difficult step during cataract removal surgery. It was designed by a team of biomedical and mechanical engineering majors: Chris Giardina, Rebeca Bowden, Jorge Baro, Kanitha Kim, Khaled Kashlan and Shane Saunders. They were advised by Tim Johnson, MD, who was an Emory medical student and is now a resident at Columbus Regional Medical Center.

The finalist Proximer team, advised by Emory surgeon Albert Losken, MD, developed a way to detect plastics in the body, which can help breast cancer survivors undergoing reconstruction.

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

CPR Manikins Make Training Easier

Studies have consistently found that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) performed immediately by a bystander doubles or even triples a cardiac arrest victim’s chance of survival.

To increase the rate of bystander CPR, the American Heart Association recently modified its CPR guidelines so that it is now permissible to provide continual chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing. If you’re interested in enhancing your CPR skills, feel free to learn more about advanced techniques and updates in life-saving practices.

Arthur Kellermann, MD, MPH

Arthur Kellermann, MD, MPH, formerly an emergency medicine physician and associate dean for public policy at Emory, and David Sanborn, a mechanical engineer at Georgia Tech, have invented a low-cost CPR manikin to help anyone learn and practice compression-only CPR. Kellermann currently is director of the Program in Public Health Systems and Preparedness and Paul O’Neill-Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis at the RAND Corporation in Virginia.

Their work builds on Emory research that showed laypeople could teach themselves CPR at home using a 25-minute video with results that are comparable to taking a four-hour course taught by a professional instructor.

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Posted on May 6, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment