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The 13th Annual Department of Pathology Trainee Research Day took place on Wednesday, May 2, in the Hill University Center on the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

 
The event is run by a committee of trainees who assist in its planning and execution, which this year included:
Manoja Brahma, Gobinath Shanmugam, Ann Hanna, Dominque Hinshaw, Tshering Lama-Sherpa, Ashish Kurundkar, Jianhua Zhang, Lijia Yu, Shyam Bandari, and Joo Lee and Helen Collins, who also served as event emcees. The event is organized by Rajeev Samant, Ph.D., Professor, Pathology, with support from the Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology administrative staff Cindy Brown and Kathy Coleman.

This exciting event featured:

• Morning and afternoon poster sessions
• Oral presentations by Department trainees
• A Data Blitz of six five-minute presentations
• Keynote Speaker Laurie Harrington, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology, on "My Life with T Cells"

Funding Opportunity Request for Applications

Grant proposals to the General Endowment Fund (GEF) of the UAHSF are now welcome. 

The HSF-GEF grants are intended to enhance the infrastructure of Academic Health Center’s Patient-Oriented and Laboratory Research efforts, Clinical Care Program Development, and Medical Education Initiatives and for university-wide projects by providing funding from the Health Services Foundation’s General Endowment Fund.

Funding Opportunity Request for Applications

The UAB School of Medicine invites applications for seed funding to move a one-R01 investigator to a two-R01 investigator. The PI of the application must have a primary appointment in a department within the School of Medicine and a record of substantial accomplishment in the subject area. One of the criteria for eligibility is having a currently funded R01 that has two years remaining in its current funding cycle. Intents to submit must be submitted online via the SOM research funding website.

The Department of Pathology was proud to welcome visiting faculty from the University of Zagreb and the University Clinical Hospital in Zagreb, Croatia in April. The visit was part of a reciprocal exchange initiated by Department Chair Dr. George Netto, who visited the university in Eastern Europe in winter 2017.From left to right: Sooryanarayana Varambally, Ph.D.; Monika Ulamec, M.D., Ph.D.; George Netto, M.D.; Nino Sincic, M.D., Ph.D., Selvarangan Ponnahazan, Ph.D.

The visitors included Monika Ulamec, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Pathology, Clinical Department of Pathology & Cytology at the University Clinical Hospital; Ana Katusic Bojanac, Ph.D., and Nino Sincic ,MD., Ph.D., both assistant professors in the Department of Biology, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb.

The Multiple Myeloma Clinic at UAB, supported by a robust research team made up largely of Department faculty, celebrated its fifth anniversary in March. 

Five faculty in the Division of Molecular & Cellular Pathology, professors Elizabeth Brown, Ph.D., MPH, Joanne Murphy-Ullrich, Ph.D., and Selvarangan Ponnazhagan, Ph.D., associate professor Yang Yang, M.D., Ph.D., and division director Ralph Sanderson, Ph.D., serve as investigators on the clinic's research team.

Since its opening in 2013, the clinic has seen a three-fold increase in the number of patients receiving treatment at UAB, and is currently running eight clinical trials.

A review on Histone methyltransferase EZH2 in ovarian cancer by Soory Varambally, Ph.D., Director, Integrative Translational Oncologic Pathology Research and Associate Professor, Department of Pathology, is the editors' pick in the March issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, an American Association for Cancer Research journal.

The United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP) held its annual meeting March 17-23, 2018, in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, and the Department of Pathology had a robust representation at this important event.

Several members of our faculty and staff attended the conference, representing the Department at platform presentations, posters, and a Fellowship Fair to promote our programs.

Additionally, Drs. George Netto and Anna Yemelyanova taught a special course, "Molecular Diagnostic and Genomic Applications in Cancer: A Primer for the Pathologist." You can access the full conference program here. View a conference recap video on the USCAP website.

Match Day 2018 was held around the country on Friday, March 16, with UAB's Match Day Ceremony taking place at the Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center. Read more about UAB Match Day via UAB News.

The Department is thrilled to announce matches for each of our eight open slots. The students who will be joining us as the class of 2022 are:

Former UAB Pathology hematopathology resident Forest Huls, M.D., was highlighted in a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, "Her Various Symptoms Seemed Unrelated. Then One Doctor Put It All Together." The piece highlighted the diagnosis by Huls and then-Internal Medicine resident Jori May, M.D. of a patient’s disease that had confounded physicians for years.

From the article: "It was part of May’s weekly routine to check the patient’s chart for any new consultant notes or test results. One afternoon she was surprised to see an 11-page note from a pathology resident who, as far as she knew, was not involved in the case. It was a meticulous summary of all the patient’s symptoms as well as the many tests performed so far. He went on to suggest that she had a disease May had never heard of — Schnitzler syndrome. It was, as the resident described it, a rare and poorly understood immune disorder."

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Ralph Sanderson in his new role as a Director of The Division of Molecular Cellular Pathology (MCP) in our department effective February 15^th, 2018.

UAB's Department of Pathology is thrilled to announce three new faculty members will be joining the team. Dr. Wenjing (Wency) Cao will join the pathology faculty beginning August 1, 2017, and Drs. Virginia Duncan and Jessica Tracht will be joining July 1, 2018.