CNND celebrates fifth anniversary with symposium, dinner

UNMC’s Center for Neurovirology and Neurodegenerative Disorders (CNND) will celebrate its fifth anniversary, on July 18-19, with a symposium, a critical review of its research and a dinner.

The symposium and review will feature a blue ribbon panel of external advisors and National Institutes of Health officials who will share research perspectives and judge the progress of the center. CNND investigators will follow the panelists with reviews of their own laboratories’ research and development over the past five years.

On July 18, UNMC Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D., will give the welcoming address at the symposium in the Wittson Hall Amphitheater and keynote remarks at a celebration dinner that evening at the Omaha Press Club signaling the importance of the neurosciences center to the university.

“The CNND remains a strong vision for neurosciences at the medical center,” Dr. Maurer said. “The investigators should be congratulated for all they have attained in such a short period of time. I salute them for advancing knowledge for the benefit of humankind and for the national recognition their research has brought to our medical center.”

“We are proud that our center has developed so well in its first five years,” said Howard E. Gendelman, M.D., David T. Purtilo Distinguished Chair of Pathology and Microbiology and CNND director. “We are grateful for all the support we have received at UNMC. The outstanding guest lecturers coming to the symposium are a tribute, not just to CNND, but to UNMC, for its ongoing growth and development as a premier resource for medical research and education.”

Dr. Gendelman began his work at UNMC as chief of a small research lab in early 1993 with two technicians and a single support staff. The laboratory, which was built from the bottom up, became a center in 1997 with 19 researchers and one support staff. Today, the CNND supports 77 positions, including nine faculty, two visiting scholars, seven post doctoral fellows, four graduate students, 39 researchers/technologists, three laboratory coordinators, four administrative support and nine interns. Other fifth anniversary milestones include:

• Received the first UNMC training grant in neuroscience;
  
• Total yearly research dollars went from $900,000 in 1997 to $4.8 million in 2002;
  
• Development of postdoctoral fellows to tenure-track faculty with independent federal funding and laboratories. These accomplished investigators have developed national and in some instances international reputations in their own rights and include Yuri Persidsky, M.D., Ph.D. (neuropathology and cognitive neuroscience); Jialin Zheng, M.D. (neurotoxicology); Anuja Ghorpade, Ph.D, (neuroimmunology and neurovirology); Huangui Xiong, Ph.D. (electrophysiology); Tsuneya Ikezu, M.D., Ph.D. (molecular genetics of Alzheimer’s disease); Larisa Poluektova, M.D., Ph.D. (vaccines); and Jenae Limoges, M.D., (developmental therapeutics);
  
• Together with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Creighton University, the CNND acquired the first Center for Research Excellence Award (COBRE), the largest federal grant ever awarded in Nebraska for biomedical research;
  
• Under the leadership of Anuja Ghorpade, Ph.D., established a core facility for rapid autopsy allowing for isolation and culture of adult neural cells;
  
• Under the leadership of Kim Carlson, Ph.D., established a core facility in proteomics permitting genetic testing of clinical samples for diagnosis and monitoring of therapeutic interventions;
  
• Established a comprehensive brain bank at UNMC for neurodegenerative diseases;
  
• Under the leadership of Michael Boska, Ph.D., establishd a comprehensive small animal model imaging facility. The facility is one of the first world-wide that permits co-registration of magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy for studies of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease;
  
• The CNND investigator’s citation index is ranked among the top five percent of published articles in their field;
  
• CNND honors include Fulbright, Javits, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Society of Neurovirology Scholar and Fellowship Awards;
  
• Since 1997, the CNND summer student intern program has had 41 students (half are already in medical school and the remaining are pre-medicine undergraduates);
  
• CNND has developed a sustained track record in training minority scientists. Through multiple internships and pipeline affiliation agreements the center attracts minorities and students of color to neurosciences research and careers and supports their careers, including sharing a $5 million grant with the University of Puerto Rico in collaboration on HIV research. CNND’s focus of neurological consequences of HIV infection led to UNMC being chosen as one of four medical centers to participate in the Center for Research and Development for Minority Institutions, along with Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington-Seattle.

The following special guest presenters will be attending this week’s symposium:

Toby Behar, Ph.D., is a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health. She received her Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University. She has 25 years of neuroscience research experience in the division of intramural research at NINDS, where she worked in the neuroimmunology branch on research related to multiple sclerosis, the laboratory of molecular genetics studying developmental glial cell biology and the laboratory of neurophysiology studying neuronal development. In 1991, Dr. Behar was awarded the NIH Award of Merit “in recognition of contributions to a better understanding of the development and distribution of GABA phenotype antigens.”

Etty Nadia Benveniste, Ph.D., is chair of the department of cell biology at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, Ala. Since 1995, she has been professor of cell biology, neurobiology, physiology and biophysics and neurology at the University of Alabama. Dr. Benveniste received her Ph.D. in immunology in 1983 at the University of California. Currently, she is a member of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Research Advisory Committee and the NIH Study Section on Brain Disorders and Clinical Neurosciences. Dr. Benveniste also is on the editorial boards of the Journal of STROKE, GLIA, Developmental Sciences and the Journal of Neuroimmunology, Journal of Neuroscience and Journal of Biological Chemistry.

William F. Hickey, M.D., is senior associate dean for academic affairs at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. He received his medical degree in 1977 at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Since his four-year residency in pathology, he has more than 20 years of fellowships and faculty appointments in neuropathology, pathology and laboratory medicine. From 1992-2000, Dr. Hickey was professor and chairman of the department of pathology at Dartmouth Medical School and pathologist-in-chief of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He received the NIH-NINDS Teacher-Investigator Development Award for his work at NIH from 1983-1988.

Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., professor and director of the Neuroscience and Aging Center at the Burnham Institute and professor at the Salk Institute/Scripps Research Institute at the University of California at San Diego. Dr. Lipton received his M.D./Ph.D. degree in 1977 from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1981 to 1999, he was with the neuroscience faculty at Harvard Medical School. He was on a three-year research fellowship at Harvard with Torsten N. Wiesel, M.D., when Dr. Wiesel became a Nobel laureate in 1981. In 1994, he delivered a Nobel Foundation Lecture at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. This year, he received the San Diego Health Hero Award from the National Parkinson’s Disease Association.

Richard J. Miller, Ph.D., is professor in the department of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry, Northwestern University. From 1995 to 2001, he was William Mable Professor of Neuroscience at Northwestern. He received his doctorate in 1976 from the University of Cambridge (St. John’s College) in England. Currently, he is chairman of the IGP Committee. Dr. Miller is a member of several societies and editorial boards, including the International Society for Toxicology, the Society for Neuroscience, the National Institute of Health Brain and Neurodegenerative Disease Study Section, and the European Journal of Pharmacology, Molecular Section and the Journal of Medical Chemistry.

Photo cutline: Members of UNMC’s Center for Neurovirology and Neurodegenerative Disorders.