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Houston Methodist Academic Institute
NEWSLETTER
Week of February 1, 2021
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President’s Advisory Cabinet Announced
Advisory Council 4
Effective February 1, five members of our faculty began advising the Academic Institute’s leadership in charting the strategy and policy of our academic programs. The new advisory cabinet will work collaboratively with the executive leadership to weigh ideas and options for advancing various aspects of our academic research and education programs. We congratulate our new advisory council members:
Jenny C. Chang, MD, Chief Clinical Science Officer, Academic Institute Emily Hermann Chair in Cancer Research, Professor of Medicine in Oncology, Director, Cancer Center
John P. Cooke, MD, PhD, Chief Translational Officer, Academic Institute Joseph C. “Rusty” Walter and Carole Walter Looke Presidential Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Disease Research, Chair and Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences, DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center
Henry J. Pownall, PhD, Chief Laboratory Science Officer, Academic Institute Professor of Bioenergetics, Center for Bioenergetics, DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center
William A. Zoghbi, MD, FASE, FAHA, MACC, Chief Faculty Affairs Officer, Academic Institute Elkins Family Distinguished Chair in Cardiac Health, Chair and Professor, Department of Cardiology, DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center Timothy B. Boone, MD, PhD, Chief Education Officer, Academic Institute Craig C. Brown and Suzanne H. Smith Centennial Chair in Medical Education, Chair and Professor, Department of Urology
Announcements
Stanley Appel MD
Coya Therapeutics Announces Financing to Advance Pipeline of Regulatory T cell Therapeutics
On Feb. 3, Coya Therapeutics announced plans to advance its lead therapeutic program, ALS001, which is an off-the-shelf, autologous, expanded regulatory T cell therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis that was developed by Stanley H. Appel, MD, Peggy & Gary Edwards Distinguished Endowed Chair, Stanley H. Appel Department of Neurology, and co-director of Houston Methodist Neurological Institute. Appel’s research documented the intimate relationship of neurodegeneration and ALS progression with dysfunctional and decreased levels of regulatory T cells driving the disease process, and the ability to isolate, “repair,” and expand these regulatory T cells outside the body for reinfusion to the patient. Read the press release.
Awards Announced for Excellence in Peer-Reviewed Publications
Congratulations to the recipients of the Houston Methodist Academic Institute President's Awards, established to spotlight outstanding research. The following award winners for Awards for Excellence in Peer-Reviewed Publication were announced at the January 27 Town Hall:
Joseph Butner, PhD, postdoctoral research associate, Zhihui Wang, PhD, associate research professor, and Vittorio Cristini, PhD, professor, all in the Mathematics in Medicine Program, for their article entitled, “A Mechanistic Immunotherapy Model Provides Patient-specific Quantification of Immune Response and Associated Long-term Tumor Burden” that was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on Jan 4, 2021.
Ruli Gao, PhD, assistant professor of cardiovascular sciences, for her article entitled, “Delineating Copy Number and Clonal Substructure in Human Tumors from Single-Cell Transcriptomes” that was published in Nature Biotechnology on Jan 18, 2021.
Miguel Valderrábano, MD, Lois and Carl Davis Centennial Chair, DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, Department of Cardiology, for his article entitled, "Effect of Catheter Ablation with Vein of Marshall Ethanol Infusion vs Catheter Ablation Alone on Persistent Atrial Fibrillation: The VENUS Randomized Clinical Trial" that was published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association on Oct 27, 2020.
Jing Yang, PhD, associate professor, Center for Translational Research in Hematological Malignancies, Cancer Center, for her article entitled, “Acetyl-CoA synthethase 2: A Critical Linkage in Obesity-Induced Tumorigenesis in Myeloma” that was published in Cell Metabolism on Jan 5, 2021.
Pub Awards 3
Magnet Recognition
Houston Methodist Awarded 5th Magnet Re-designation
Houston Methodist received its 5th Magnet re-designation in January 2021. The national recognition for excellence in nursing is awarded by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program®. It serves as the gold standard for nursing excellence and provides consumers with the ultimate benchmark for measuring quality of care. The ANCC committee applauded Houston Methodist Hospital for employing greater than 90 percent of nurses with bachelor's degrees, and recognized our team for achieving exemplary nursing practice as evidenced by nursing clinical outcomes.
New Workshop Series Offered for Faculty Career Development
The faculty development team is offering a series of career development workshops for faculty. Each 90-minute workshop includes an online lecture combined with larger discussion opportunities and small working groups, with registration for a limited number of participants. Most of the workshops are led by Dorothy Lewis, PhD, faculty development program director. Find details and registration links for February's workshops here:
Creating Research Posters Workshop - Feb. 9 Supervising Data Management - Feb. 16 Manuscript Preparation Workshop - Feb. 23
Supervising research data workshop
Nominations for I CARE Awards
2020 created many opportunities to recognize employees for going above and beyond. The deadline for nominating your colleague for this year’s I CARE Award is Monday, March 1. The I CARE Award was created to recognize employees who consistently exemplify our I CARE values and regularly do more than is expected of them to do their job. To nominate your co-worker: • Log in to MARS • Click on the BRAVO tile • Submit your password again for security on the vendor platform • Enter the name of the co-worker you want to nominate • Click on the drop-down arrow next to Recognition Type and choose Award Nomination • You will be guided through a series of questions to help describe the employees’ actions that make them appropriate for the I CARE Award.
Vote for 2020's Top Photos
Vote for your top 10 favorite photos in the 2020 Photography Contest, sponsored by the Houston Methodist Center for Performing Arts Medicine. This year’s theme, Natural Reflections, encouraged photographers to capture their reflections of the natural world in 2020. All submissions are from Houston Methodist employees, physicians and volunteers. You can see the Natural Reflections exhibition on display in the Healing Arts Gallery on the second floor crosswalk overlooking Crain Garden in Dunn Tower. To vote, submit your ballot by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 7 at this link: https://forms.gle/mDyFEzn3ZfpZjUP16
COVID-19 Resources
Houston Methodist provides a variety of tools to facilitate collaborative research projects related to coronavirus. The following resources are available at www.tmh.tmc.edu/tmhri/acma.html
    • Elsevier Coronavirus Research Hub
    • Curated COVID-19 Funding Opportunities
    • National Institutes of Health Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources
    • PURE Coronavirus Portal for Research Collaboration
Read about our COVID-19 research on the Methodology COVID-19 News page.
Accolades
Constance Mobley MD
Constance M. Mobley, MD, PhD, FACS, assistant professor of surgery, Sherrie and Alan Conover Center for Liver Disease & Transplantation, J.C. Walter Jr. Transplant Center, was awarded the Health Disparities Research Education 2020 Program Scholar Award by the American Society of Transplant Surgeons for her efforts at the local and national levels on diversity and inclusion.
Lee Ann Harrison, MSN, RN-BC, professional development leader, CNE Nurse Planner, Center for Nursing Research, Education and Practice, has been designated as a test item writer for the American Nurses Credentialing Center Nursing Professional Development Program. Development activities for tests include writing and reviewing test items or making recommendations for the test’s passing score.
Ava Brozovich, a Texas A&M MD/PhD trainee at Houston Methodist, was awarded the 2020-2021 Ethel Ashworth-Tsutsui Memorial Award for Research. She was one of two recipients selected from a large number of nominations made for the 2020-2021 award. The Texas A&M award was presented on Jan. 27, following this year's virtual Ethel Ashworth-Tsutsui Memorial Lecture.
In the Media
Roberta Schwartz, PhD, executive vice president and chief innovation officer, was featured on the front cover of the Houston Chronicle's Feb. 1 special insert, Today’s Texas Inc. In the cover story, she discussed her role as incident commander during the COVID-19 pandemic and explains how Houston Methodist has used innovative technologies to address challenges brought by the crisis. Read more.
John Cooke, MD, PhD, Joseph C. “Rusty” Walter and Carole Walter Looke Presidential Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Disease Research, chair and professor, Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, and director, Center for Cardiovascular Regeneration, was interviewed in a Jan. 27 AARP article entitled "What to Know About Angina." In the article, he suggests tactics, drugs and treatments to ease chest pain and lower heart attack risk and explains the importance of statins for coronary artery disease, reducing the risk of having a heart attack by more than 30 percent.
Mei Rui, DMA, assistant research professor of music medicine, Department of Surgery, brought more media recognition to the research she is conducting in her MUSICARE program, funded by the Houston Methodist Center for Performing Arts Medicine. Launched in April, the program enlisted Yo-Yo Ma and other musicians, both local and international, to provide virtual concerts to patients in the surgical ICU. In a Jan. 28 Boston Globe article, the cellist said, "At one point, project organizers say, a patient at Houston Methodist Hospital told his physical therapist that later in the day he would be receiving a private performance from Yo-Yo Ma. The clinician responded by noting that the patient was apparently suffering from delusions, only to later enter the ICU and find that Yo-Yo Ma was indeed there on an iPad, giving a private performance of the Shaker hymn 'Simple Gifts.'”
The Jan. 31 front page of Sunday's Houston Chronicle featured The Houston Methodist Center for Performing Arts Medicine’s Musicare virtual concert program. Read it here.
Farhaan Vahidy, PhD, Coneway Family Centennial Endowed Directorship in Quality & Outcomes and associate director, Center for Outcomes Research, received media attention for a study in PLoS One entitled “Sex differences in susceptibility, severity, and outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019: Cross-sectional analysis from a diverse US metropolitan area.” Published on Jan. 13, the study's analysis of patients from throughout Houston Methodist’s system of eight hospitals, showed that men are more susceptible to catching the COVID-19 virus and have worse outcomes than women. The Houston Methodist press release is on Newswise, and the journal’s release is on EurekAlert. In addition to the Jan. 19 Houston Chronicle news brief, a more comprehensive article will feature an interview with Vahidy, the study's corresponding author.
Sonia Villapol, PhD, assistant professor of neurosurgery, Department of Neurosurgery, was interviewed for a Jan. 30 MedPage Today article regarding her research suggesting that 80 percent of COVID-19 patients may have lingering symptoms. The study’s data showed that more than 50 symptoms tied to SARS-CoV-2 infection persisted, most commonly fatigue (58 percent), headache (44 percent), attention disorder (27 percent), hair loss (25 percent), dyspnea (24 percent), and anosmia (24 percent) were identified. The findings were reported in a Jan. 30 medRxiv preprint.
Stephen Wong, PhD, John S. Dunn, Sr. Presidential Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Engineering, professor of computer science and bioengineering in oncology, was interviewed for a Jan. 20 Verywell Health article on using artificial intelligence to find new uses for existing medications. In addition to weighing in on new research from The Ohio State University and explaining how he uses AI in his research, he discussed examples of how AI could be used in identifying and implementing COVID-19 treatments.
Wong also was interviewed for a Jan. 21 Lifewire article on the possibility of using artificial intelligence to diagnose mental health disorders.
New Employees
We welcome our new employees who joined the Academic Institute between Jan. 18 - 25, 2021.
  • Salim Allana, Manager Strategic Research Initiatives, Research & Education Strategy
  • Jessica Cambric, Research Assistant I Bench, Infectious Diseases
  • Janet Campbell, Regulatory Compliance Specialist, Transplant
  • Paulamy Ganguly, Data Specialist, Structural Heart Disease Intervention
  • Joan Nichols, Scientist, Surgery - Tissue Engineering
  • Latisha Ryans, Medical Assistant, Academic Office of Clinical Trials Operations - HMH
  • Rebekah Sieker, Executive Assistant, CV Regeneration
  • Madison Shyer, Research Assistant I Bench, Infectious Diseases
  • Brandon Tran, Research Technician II, Cancer Center
View postings for new job opportunities at the Academic Institute here.
Publications
The publications with the highest impact factors posted in Scholars, Jan. 13 - 26, 2021 include:
Acetyl-CoA Synthetase 2: A Critical Linkage in Obesity-Induced Tumorigenesis in Myeloma
Li Z, Liu H, He J, Wang Z, Yin Z, You G, Wang Z, Davis RE, Lin P, Bergsagel PL, Manasanch EE, Wong, STC, Esnaola NF, Chang JC, Orlowski RZ, Yi Q, & Yang J, Cell Metabolism, 33(1), 78-93.e7. DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.12.011
A Mathematical Model for the Quantification of a Patient’s Sensitivity to Checkpoint Inhibitors and Long-term Tumour Burden
Butner, JD, Wang, Z, Elganainy, D, Al Feghali, KA, Plodinec, M, Calin, GA, Dogra, P, Nizzero, S, Ruiz-Ramírez, J, Martin, GV, Tawbi, HA, Chung, C, Koay, EJ, Welsh, JW, Hong, DS, & Cristini, V, Nature Biomedical Engineering.
DOI: 10.1038/s41551-020-00662-0
The Influence of Timing of Surgical Decompression for Acute Spinal Cord Injury: A Pooled Analysis of Individual Patient Data
Rajeeva Pandian NK, Walther BK, Suresh R, Cooke JP & Jain A, Small, 16(49), [2003401].
DOI: 10.1016/S1474-4422(20)30406-3
Prdm16 is a Critical Regulator of Adult Long-term Hematopoietic Stem Cell Quiescence
Gudmundsson, KO, Nguyen, N, Oakley, K, Han, Y, Gudmundsdottir, B, Liu, P, Tessarollo, L, Jenkins, NA, Copeland, NG, & Du, Y, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(50), 31945-31953.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2017626117
Targeting Progesterone Signaling Prevents Metastatic Ovarian Cancer
Kim, O, Park, EY, Kwon, SY, Shin, S, Emerson, RE, Shin, YH, DeMayo, FJ, Lydon, JP, Coffey, DM, Hawkins, SM, Quilliam, LA, Cheon, DJ, Fernández, FM, Nephew, KP, Karpf, AR, Widschwendter, M, Sood, AK, Bast, RC, Godwin, AK, Miller, KD, Cho, CH, & Kim, J, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(50), 31993-32004.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2013595117
If you have a featured publication, for example on a journal cover, please let us know so we can include it in our next issue.
Funding Opportunities
American Lung Association Covid-19 and Emerging Respiratory Viruses Research Award
In 2020, the American Lung Association launched a $25 million, three-year initiative to end COVID-19 and defend against future respiratory virus pandemics. This multi-pronged initiative highlights the American Lung Association’s long-term commitment to lung health across their three areas of focus: education, advocacy and research. As part of that continued investment, the American Lung Association is launching a second funding cycle and call for proposals to address this critical issue.
Eligibility: • Evidence of faculty status and independence beyond the fellowship/training stage • Institutional commitment that applicant is eligible to be continuously employed throughout the duration of the grant term stated in the Department Chair’s Letter of Support • Doctoral degree at time of application and faculty appointment or equivalent with demonstrated institutional commitment (salary support, research space as evidenced a Department Chair or equivalent letter)
Key Dates:
• Letters of Intent (LOIs) due: February 18, 2021 • LOI Results. proposalCENTRAL opens to invited applicants: March 1, 2021 • Application deadline: April 30, 2021, 11:59 PM ET • Outcome notifications are sent to all applicants: June 30, 2021
Click here for additional details regarding eligibility and LOI requirements. For technical questions concerning proposalCENTRAL, email pcsupport@altum.com or call 1-800-875-2562. For questions regarding awards and grants program, email research@lung.org.
DoD Broad Agency Announcement for Extramural Medical Research
The Department of Defense funding for extramural medical research aims to provide solutions to medical problems of importance to the American service members at home and abroad, as well as to the general public at large. The scope of this effort and the priorities attached to specific projects are influenced by changes in military and civilian medical science and technology, operational requirements, military threat assessments, and national defense strategies. This funding opportunity is continuously open for a five-year period, from Oct.1, 2017 through Sept. 30, 2022, 11:59 p.m. ET. Access the announcement, including all details, in this PDF. Find the DoD proposal form template in this document.
CITO-PSOC Funding Opportunities
The Center for Immunotherapeutic Transport Oncophysics (CITO) is funded by the NIH to examine the physics of cancer and strategies to improve immunotherapies. Details for the following RFAs are available on the CITO website:
  • Trans-Network Projects are small research projects aimed at addressing a challenge in cancer biology from a physical sciences perspective and leveraging the expertise and investigators from multiple PS-OP U01s and/or PS-OC U54s. Focus area(s) and collaborative teams for Trans-Network projects may be proposed by the teams of investigators, with appropriate rationale and justification. The budget is up to $100,000 direct costs per year, with applications submitted on a rolling basis.
  • Scientist Exchange Research Program allows scientists (faculty or researchers beyond the trainee level) to conduct laboratory or clinical research with a host investigator within the CITO, PS-ON, or beyond. A main goal of the Scientist Exchange Program is to encourage cross-disciplinary collaborations between research groups. Applications may address any particular challenge and are highly encouraged to complement or synergize with the current CITO projects. The budget is approximately $10,000 in direct costs for up to six months, with applications submitted on a rolling basis.
  • Trainee Research allows trainees (postdoctoral, graduate, or undergraduate trainees) to participate in short-term, interactive laboratory or clinical research with a host investigator within the CITO/PS-ON. The proposed research should be under the overarching theme of transport oncophysics, in the context of cancer immunology and immunotherapy. Applications may address any particular challenge and are highly encouraged to complement or synergize with the current CITO projects. The budget is approximately $5,000 in direct costs for up to 10 weeks, with applications submitted on a rolling basis.
All applications should be in PDF and emailed to cito-psoc@houstonmethodist.org. The PS-ON Catalogue of Techniques is available on the Synapse Knowledge Portal, offering additional methods for potential collaboration or training opportunities.