UCSD Department of Medicine News

Catriona Jamieson, M.D., Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology and Director of Stem Cell Research at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center.

Dr. Jamieson investigates stem-cell treatments for myeloproliferative diseases (MPD), with the goal of preventing MPD from developing into leukemia. Read the public abstract for Dr. Jamieson’s research project

Benjamin D. Yu, M.D., Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Dermatology.

The CIRM grant will support Dr. Yu’s work to uncover the mechanisms that regulate the proliferation of pre-existing adult stem cells in the body. Read the public abstract for Dr. Yu’s research project

More Information

• Christopher K. Glass, M.D., Ph.D. - academic profile
• Joseph Witztum, M.D. - academic profile
• Division of Endocrinology & Metabolism

• California Thoracic Society
• Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine
• Dr. Morris’s academic profile
• Dr. Morris’s clinical profile
• Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine services at UCSD Medical Center
• Pulmonary Vascular Center at UCSD Medical Center

In the genetics
of asthma,
Dr. Broide looks for
new treatment
possibilities.

Targeting
a master gene
in asthma:
early results
are promising

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006. Read the article (free full text)

Dr. Broide directs an NIH training grant that supports physician-scientists in translational research in allergy and immunology

Physician-scientists supported by this NIH training grant include Allergy/Immunology fellows Dr. Taylor Doherty and Dr. Chavi Gandhi, who are recent UC San Diego Internal Medicine chief residents.

“Physician-scientists are able to bring an important clinical perspective into their basic research studies,” Dr. Broide says.

The aim is to design laboratory studies in a way that leads to better diagnosis and treatment as quickly and safely as possible.

“In particular, we’re trying to help the 10% of severe asthmatics that don’t do that well on current asthma therapies,” Dr. Broide says. “That’s the challenge.”

• About Dr. Broide
  • Read Dr. Broide’s academic profile
  • Read Dr. Broide’s clinical profile
• Read the scientific reports mentioned in this article
  • Dr. Broide’s 2006 PNAS article
  • Dr. Broide’s 2006 New England Journal of Medicine article
• UC San Diego Departments
  • Department of Medicine
  • Department of Pharmacology
  • Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology
• Association of American Physicians
• Immune Tolerance Network

She is a respected leader in Gulf War illness research and policy.

She also directs the UC San Diego Statin Effects Study.

• CoQ10 Study Website
• Dr. Golomb’s academic profile
• Division of General Internal Medicine

Dr. Chang completed his residency training in Internal Medicine/Pediatrics at Duke University in Durham, NC. Formerly Director of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Manchester, NH, he joined the UC San Diego Hospital Medicine staff in October, 2007.

Dr. Trambley is Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine. He joined UC San Diego from the Physician Foundation at California Pacific Medical Center, where he was a hospitalist with the Liver Disease Management and Transplantation Program.

• UC San Diego Division of Hospital Medicine
• Dr. Weijen Chang’s academic profile from Rady Children’s Hospital

Her report is published in PLoS ONE:

• Dr. Buck’s research profile
• Division of Gastroenterology
• Moores UCSD Cancer Center

• Respiratory Diseases (6th).
• Rheumatology (16th).
• Kidney Disease (35th).
• Cancer (43rd).

The report was released July 10.
 

Read the full story
from UC San Diego
Health Sciences
Communications

More Information

The findings may lead to new methods for predicting who will develop Type 2 diabetes and treating the disease.

• About the Researchers
  • Dr. Joachim H. Ix - Academic Profile
  • Division of Nephrology

 

Dr. Carson, Director of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center, is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology.

His project will investigate new models for developing treatments that destroy leukemia stem cells. Read the abstract of Dr. Carson’s project.

Dr. Cavenee, Director of the San Diego branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology.

Webster Cavenee, Ph.D.

• Read the full story from UC San Diego Health Sciences Communications

 

• Links
  • California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
  • Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research - San Diego Branch
  • Moores UCSD Cancer Center
  • UCSD Stem Cell Initiative

 

It’s a normal part of her fourth-year clinical training – except that another medical student is observing and filming the entire encounter.

The project is testing a new method for teaching and learning the skills that make a doctor a good communicator.

UC San Diego POVE project leader Kristin Bell, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine.

Year 1 of POVE has just ended, with medical students Christine Lee and Ninad Athale completing the elective last December.

“The feedback they gave one another was amazing,” says Dr. Kristin Bell, Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine. “They taught each other.”

“I think it’s very powerful to learn from your peers.”

The goal is to teach the skills that make a doctor a good communicator.

All of the filming is done with the patients’ consent.

The students meet with Dr. Bell and Ellen Lavin, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, in weekly video review sessions to talk about the interactions they find challenging.

The film footage records their progress.

“You can learn a lot from your medical student peers.”

The students’ videos will become resources for medical centers across the nation after the study is concluded.

Seeing the videos and having the immediate peer feedback, which Dr. Bell says was delivered with great sensitivity, helped the medical students pinpoint the interactions they found challenging.

The goal is to train the students to be their own observers. Once they are able to recognize precisely the communication skills they want to refine, they are better equipped to improve their interactions with patients.

A University of Washington therapist and educator is the POVE project leader.

The POVE project is headed by the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington. Larry Mauksch, M.Ed., a University of Washington family therapist and the overseeing investigator, calls it “a nationwide learning community.”

Funding for the POVE study comes from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, whose healthcare grants are devoted to advancing caring attitudes in medical professionals.

The participating centers include community-based clinics as well as academic Family Medicine and Internal Medicine departments.

Dr. Bell credits many individuals who have worked to make the POVE project possible here. Many School of Medicine colleagues have been greatly supportive, she says, including Jess Mandel, MD, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME), and the UGME Electives Committee.

“It’s powerful to see a video. As a teaching tool, it’s just limitless.”

“As it is, the course is very time consuming,” she says. “When we design a course for the new curriculum, we need to set aside enough time to make it effective for student learning, and at the same time keep it sustainable with the faculty resources available.”

“It’s powerful to see a video. As a teaching tool, it’s just limitless.”

Challenged to help veterans manage chronic pain conditions, she has trained as an acupuncturist and founded an acupuncture clinic at the VA.

“For me, the POVE project
is a great learning experience.”

She chose to develop a new behavioral medicine curriculum in her project for her National Center of Leadership in Academic Medicine (NCLAM) course.

It grew into an addition to the third-year Medicine Core Clerkship.

That course also uses video, among other teaching methods, to teach medical students behavioral change counseling and motivational interviewing. The goal is to help patients make healthy lifestyle changes.

It has been a required part of the curriculum here for the past three years.

Dr. Bell acknowledges and thanks her mentors Shawn Harrity, M.D., and Peggy Wallace, Ph.D., for encouraging her and helping her attain success in this area of education.

Dr. Harrity is Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Wallace is Associate Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Director of the Professional Development Center in the Office of Undergraduate Medical Education.

“For me,” Dr. Bell says, “the POVE project is a great learning experience. I learn from the other POVE faculty, and especially from our students.”

• About Dr. Bell
  • Read the AMA press release about her Young Physician Award

 

• About the POVE Project
  • Visit the POVE Project Home Page
  • Learn more about the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations

 

• About the UC San Diego School of Medicine
  • Professional Development Center
  • Undergraduate Medical Education
  • VA San Diego Healthcare System
  • Vista Clinic

 

Ye X, Khosla N, Batarse R, Perkins D, Steiner R: Sirolimus (SRL) Blunts Mitogen Response at Trough (C0) Levels More Than Cyclosporin (CSA) or Tacrolimus (TAC) — A Safeguard for Our Many Long Term Noncompliant Kidney Transplant Patients (KTP’s)?

• About the Researchers
  • UC San Diego Division of Nephrology
  • Robert Steiner, M.D.

   

 

• American Transplant Congress 2008
  • Meeting website
  • View abstracts (registration required)

 

• Organizations
  • American Society of Transplantation (AST)
  • American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS)

 

Dr. Laiken is the recipient of the Kaiser Excellence in Teaching Award from the first-year students in the School of Medicine and the Excellence in Teaching Award from the second-year students in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego.

More Information

Dr. John M. Carethers,
recently elected to the American Society
for Clinical Investigation, in discussion
with a medical student

Since he became chief in 2004, Dr. Carethers has expanded the faculty and secured several major grants, including the division’s first NIH Center grant for a Digestive Diseases Research Development Center.

In a recent interview, he looked back to his earliest steps on the path to this fruitful career, and to the upbringing that set him in this direction.

“My parents believed in education, and they sacrificed a lot to get us educated,” he says. “They took care of us down to their last penny.”

His father, the only African-American student in his college, graduated in 1948 with a degree in mechanical engineering. At the time, companies in Detroit did not hire African-American engineers. He took a job with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department and worked his way up through the ranks.

On a modest income, John’s parents devoted themselves to providing the structure and the opportunities that best suited each of the children, one of whom was disabled.

“We were all different,” he says. “Different personalities, different strengths.”

All of John’s siblings attended parochial school and adhered to a schedule during their hours at home. Television was reserved for weekends. There were dedicated time periods for homework and for play.

As a child, he knew he wanted to be a doctor.

This was when his parents purchased the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The new books came with a requirement for summer projects: each child must make a weekly presentation on a topic of his or her choice at the Sunday afternoon meal.

Finding himself with the “A” volume, John discovered the section that depicted the human body. He remembers the wonder he experienced as he studied the colored overlays that superimposed muscles over organs over bones.

“Anatomy,” he says, smiling broadly. “Physiology. That was it. I knew I wanted to be a doctor.”

On summer Sundays, at the family table, the children gave their presentations. One of his brothers discussed flags; a sister talked about other cultures. John Carethers, age 7, presented the organ systems of the body.

He went to parochial school until high school, when he transferred to a magnet public high school in Detroit. There, he took college preparatory courses in physics, biology, and organic and inorganic chemistry.

In his college job as a unit clerk
at Detroit Children’s Hospital, he had
his first chance to see medicine from the inside.

Although he was certain he wanted to become a doctor, he couldn’t imagine himself as a physician in practice. He had never seen what that life, and the path to it, was like.

First glimpse of medical practice

Then he took a job as a unit clerk at Children’s Hospital in Detroit during college.

“For three and a half years,” he says, “I published the OR schedule, made sure the operating doctors had privileges, and recorded the post-anesthesia charts in the computer. I met pediatric surgeons and I got to watch surgeries.”

It was his first inside look at medical practice, and it equipped him to envision his own future.

Although he considered becoming a pediatric surgeon,
“the real diagnosticians are the internists.
That was what interested me.”

“I thought about it,” he said, “and I felt the real diagnosticians are the internists. That was what interested me.”

During his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, he determined that he would specialize in gastroenterology. He completed his fellowship training in gastroenterology at the University of Michigan Hospitals and joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1995.

Contributions in cancer research and policy

In the last 10 years, Dr. Carethers and his collaborators have made major discoveries in colon cancer. One of their most significant findings is that patients whose tumors have lost the capacity for DNA mismatch repair are resistant to chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil, a common anticancer drug. Three other independent research groups have confirmed these findings.

Dr. Carethers and his coworkers demonstrated that this defect is present in 20% of people who have sporadic colon cancer, and in all families who have the hereditary colon cancer that is known as Lynch syndrome.

As a member of an NIDDK commission, he helps to set
national funding priorities for gastroenterology research.

The Commission advises the NIH Director and Congress, and thus exerts a direct influence on the allocation of federal research funding for GI research projects.

“No one has examined this for 20-30 years,” Dr. Carethers says. The Commission’s next report is due out this summer.

He also holds a two-year position as Vice Chair of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Section of the AGA. In this capacity, he reviews abstracts submitted for the annual AGA meeting. UC San Diego will serve as a host institution as this year’s AGA meeting, known as Digestive Disease Week 2008, convenes in San Diego.

Inspiring and supporting students and trainees

Today, creating ways to inspire young, motivated students is a priority for Dr. Carethers. This has inspired him to work in support of the Preuss School, UC San Diego’s charter middle and high school.

“There are students in the Preuss School who might never have gone to college if they had gone to local schools. But they come to Preuss and see that things could be different. They’re exposed to things they never knew existed.

“We have Preuss students go on to UCSD, Harvard, and other universities,” he says. “I think that’s fantastic.”

“Some people, if they’re given an opportunity,
will take the ball and run with it.”

“That’s how I came along,” he said. “I wouldn’t be where I am if I hadn’t had that time to develop.”

He has also established a permanent GI Division Research and Junior Faculty Development Committee to school senior fellows and junior faculty in the UC San Diego promotion process.

“It’s designed to help them navigate the academic process more smoothly,” he says. “No one tells you this stuff.”

In 2006, he received the UC San Diego School of Medicine Vice Chancellor’s Award for Mentoring Excellence.

He speaks warmly of his own mentor, C. Richard Boland, who was Chief of Gastroenterology from 1995 to 2003. Dr. Boland is now at Baylor in Dallas.

“He’s my mentor and friend for life,” he says.

“Through education, we had opportunities”

Dr. Carethers recalls the efforts of his parents, whose values carry on in him and in his siblings.

“Through education, we had opportunities,” he says. “If someone never has the opportunity, they have no idea what they’re missing. Some people never achieve because they never got the opportunity.

“But some people, if they’re given an opportunity, will take the ball and run with it.”

Today, 11 of the 12 Carethers children are college graduates. Among them, they have 21 college degrees.

• UC San Diego Links
  • Division of Gastroenterology
  • Dr. Carethers’s academic profile
  • Dr. Carethers’s clinical profile

   

 

• Other Links
  • American Gastroenterological Association
  • American Society for Clinical Investigation
  • NIDDK National Commission on Digestive Diseases

 

• Press Releases from UC San Diego Health Sciences Communications
  • The Preuss School at UC San DIego Named Sixth Among Nation’s Top 10 High Schools by Newsweek
  • UC San Diego Faculty Named to American Academy of Physicians; American Society for Clinical Investigation
  • UC San Diego Receives $2.5 Million NIH Grant to Establish Digestive Diseases Research Center

 

Upon his graduation in June, he will enter a fellowship in cardiology here at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.