Michael Sernyak, M.D., professor of psychiatry, was named director of the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), effective July 1. Sernyak graduated from Amherst College before attending Jefferson Medical College. He did his residency in psychiatry at Yale in 1987, with an internship at Greenwich Hospital. He served for five years as unit chief of the Psychosis Studies Unit at CMHC and, in 1996, joined the staff at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven. In 2001 he was appointed the chief of the Psychiatry Service. Sernyak is a nationally recognized health services researcher who specializes in the treatment issues of the severely mentally ill.
CMHC is a partnership of Yale and the state of Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
Neurologist Stephen G. Waxman, M.D., Ph.D., will receive the William S. Middleton Award from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on April 29 at ceremonies that will include a reception at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. The Middleton Award is the VA’s highest scientific honor and includes a cash prize and an award of $150,000 in research support. Waxman, the Bridget Marie Flaherty Professor of Neurology, Neurobiology, and Pharmacology, is the director of the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research, a collaboration of Yale, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the United Spinal Association.
Waxman is being honored for his research on spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, and painful nerve injuries. His research builds upon the “molecular revolution,” to develop new therapeutic strategies that will restore functions such as sensation and the ability to walk after spinal cord, nerve, and brain injury. Waxman, who since 1986 has served as chair of Neurology, is transitioning to a full-time role as director of Yale’s research center at the West Haven campus of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System.
When Marna Borgstrom, Yale-New Haven Hospital’s president and chief executive officer, received the Medal of Honor from the New England Organ Bank on behalf of the hospital, she immediately gave it to Dr. Sukru Emre, director of the hospital’s Transplantation Center. The gesture was in recognition of Emre’s efforts to “make this one of the best transplant programs in the country.” Kevin O’Connor, senior vice president of New England Organ Bank, said the medal was presented to the hospital because of the high percentage of people who come through its doors who agree to become organ donors, a reflection of the effectiveness of the hospital’s public education efforts. Only 400 out of the nation’s 8,000 hospitals have received the award. Emre said Borgstrom’s gesture of giving him the award is “priceless,” adding that he accepted it on behalf of the entire transplantation staff.
Susan M. Kaech, assistant professor of immunobiology, was one of 50 early career scientists to receive support from a new initiative from the Howard Hughes Medical institute. Each HHMI Early Career Scientist will receive a six-year appointment to the institute. HHMI has invested roughly $200 million to allow the researchers to focus on making discoveries in the laboratory rather than raising money to fund their experiments. When the immune system generates T cells to fight infection, it retains a memory of the pathogen in the form of a reservoir of memory T cells that offer protection should the pathogen reappear. Kaech is interested in the genetic programs that control the formation and characteristics of memory T cells. She is studying whether it is possible to boost immune memory—work that could help improve the design of vaccines.
Thomas J. Lynch Jr., M.D., has been named director of Yale Cancer Center and physician in chief of the new Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven, which will open in October 2009. Prior to coming to Yale, Lynch, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was chief of the division of hematology/oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center. A lung cancer expert, he was director of the Center for Thoracic Cancers at MGH. Lynch received his undergraduate degree from Yale College in 1982 and his medical degree from YSM in 1986. He completed his internship and residency at MGH, and after serving a fellowship in medical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, he joined the medical staff at MGH in 1993. Lynch also will oversee a institute for cancer biology at Yale’s West Campus. His appointment started April 1.
Tarek Fahmy, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Joseph Craft, professor of medicine and immunobiology and chief of rheumatology, received a three-year, $300,000 Novel Research Award from the Lupus Research Institute to support their work on the disease. In lupus, a small population of immune cells malfunctions and attacks different parts of the body, causing inflammation in places such as the skin, joints and kidneys. The disease advances because these renegade immune system cells group, interact and trigger each other to cause harm. Fahmy and Craft will design and test a nanoparticle system, about the size of a virus, that can target those cells and interfere with their interaction in model systems of lupus.
Yale researchers investigating the genetic causes of blood pressure variation have identified a previously undescribed syndrome associated with seizures, a lack of coordination, developmental delay and hearing loss. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, illustrate the power of genetic studies not only to find causes of chronic ailments, but also to identify a common cause in a seemingly unrelated set of symptoms in different parts of the body. “Our ability to unequivocally and rapidly define new syndromes and their underlying disease genes has progressed dramatically in recent years,” said Richard Lifton, chair of the Department of Genetics and senior author of the study. “A study like this would have taken years in the past, but was accomplished in a few weeks by a single fellow [Ute Scholl] in the lab.”
Scientists used to think most of the exchange of information between cells was conducted at the surface, where cell receptors receive signals from other cells. Now Yale researchers report in the March 20 issue of the journal Cell how a switching station beneath the cell surface is crucial to processing signals from outside the cell. They also describe a key molecular switch that terminates signaling from this station. The findings portray a much more “complex and fluid system of cellular information processing than previously envisioned,” said Derek K. Toomre, assistant professor of cell biology and co-author of the study. The Yale team was led by Pietro De Camilli, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Cell Biology and professor of neurobiology. De Camilli is also an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a member of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience and a director of the Yale Program in Cellular Neuroscience, Neurodegeneration and Repair.
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Yale School of Medicine
Last updated
8/21/09
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