Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more

kidney transplant

Health Care Heroes honored by Atlanta Business Chronicle

Emory faculty-physicians were honored May 20 at the annual Health Care Heroes Awards celebration sponsored by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. All three are featured in this week’s edition of the newspaper.

Sheryl Gabram-Mendola, MD

Sheryl Gabram-Mendola, MD, professor of surgery at Emory School of Medicine and the Winship Cancer Institute, was the Community Outreach winner. Gabram-Mendola is director of the Avon Foundation Comprehensive Breast Center at the Georgia Cancer Center for Excellence at Grady Memorial Hospital.

She was nominated by the Georgia Cancer Coalition and honored for her work in reducing breast cancer mortality by increasing breast cancer awareness and leading the effort to diagnose the disease earlier in a high-risk population of minority women.

Last September the Avon Foundation awarded $750,000 to the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory and the Avon Comprehensive Breast Center. The grant is being used to continue community outreach, education, clinical access, and four research studies that directly affect care for the underserved populations in Atlanta. Since 2000, the Avon Foundation has awarded nearly $11 million to Winship and Grady to support leading-edge breast cancer research projects and improve outcomes for underserved women diagnosed with breast cancer in Atlanta.

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Non-invasive tests for organ transplant rejection

Even with better immune suppressing drugs being developed for organ transplants, patients still require regular monitoring to prevent graft rejection. Kidney transplant recipients sometimes can be at risk even when standard blood tests for rejection appear stable.

To improve accuracy and avoid the need for frequent biopsies, several teams of transplant specialists are developing new urine tests for diagnosing acute organ rejection. These tests are non-invasive, could be administered often, and could identify immune events in real time.

At the American Transplant Congress this week in San Diego, Jennifer Jackson, MD, a nephrology fellow on the Emory kidney transplant team, presented research on a new urine-based test for the protein osteoprotegerin (OPG) and the chemokines CSCL9 and CXCL10.

Researchers found levels for all three markers elevated in patients experiencing acute rejection, but also in some patients whose grafts were supposedly “stable.” This smoldering inflammation could be responsible for chronic graft deterioration that goes undetected.

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