Demystifying Medicine
Speaker Profiles for 2013
JANUARY 8 - Telomerase and Telomeropathies
- Neal Young, MD (NHLBI) - Dr. Neal Young is Chief of the Hematology Branch of NHLBI and Director of the Trans-NIH Center for Human Immunology, Autoimmunity and Inflammation. His professional career of over 30 years has been at the Bethesda campus of NIH. His research in hematopoiesis emphasizes human and bone marrow failure, particularly aplastic anemia. In his laboratory, efforts from basic biology, as for example studies of human parvovirus B19 and stem cell mitochondrial DNA, to clinical research, including interventional trials in patients who are acutely ill with severe pancytopenia. Dr. Young’s work also includes epidemiology and has been highly collaborative, involving other NIH institutes as well as academic investigators in the United States and other countries. He has published over 325 original research articles, more than 135 book chapters and review articles, and is the editor or co-editor of ten monographs, including a textbook of hematology. Many of his papers have been cited hundreds of times. Dr. Young supervises half a dozen Section Chiefs which include the current editor of Blood and the President of the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. His laboratory has trained several dozens of post-doctoral fellows, many of whom are now occupy positions as professors and department chairman in Europe and Asia. Their clinic is the largest center nationwide for the study of marrow failure, and therapeutic advances have changed the standard of care for patients with aplastic anemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, and they have introduced many new approaches to these serious blood diseases.
JANUARY 15 - Genomic Paradign for Cancer Diagnosis and Therapy: Melanoma
JANUARY 22 - Hepatitis C and HIV: The Borgia Effect
JANUARY 29
- Hepatitis B and T Cell by Dr. Hoofnagle
- Using Human Genetics to Decipher the Host Response Against Viral Pathogens by Dr. Lenardo
FEBRUARY 5 - Sexually Transmitted Diseases
- Thomas Quinn, MD (NIAID) - Dr. Thomas Quinn is Senior Investigator and Head of the Section on International HIV/AIDS Research in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He also serves as Associate Director for International Research for the Division of Intramural Research at NIAID. For the past three decades he has held joint appointments as Professor of Medicine and Pathology in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and in the Departments of International Health, Epidemiology, and Immunology and Molecular Microbiology in The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and Professor of Nursing in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. In 2006 he was appointed founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. Dr. Quinn has been involved in HIV clinical and epidemiologic investigations in 29 countries, with current projects in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, India, China, and Thailand. His investigations have involved the study of the epidemiologic, virologic, immunologic features of HIV infection in Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia. His research interests have involved laboratory investigations that have helped define the biological factors involved in sexual and perinatal transmission, the natural history of HIV infections in developing countries, and the identification and characterization of unique strains of HIV-1 infection. He serves as advisor/consultant on HIV and STDs to the World Health Organization, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (PEPFAR), UNAIDS, and the FDA. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a fellow of the IDSA and a member of the American Association of Physicians. He is an author of over 900 publications on HIV, STDs, and infectious diseases.
- Jeffrey I. Cohen, MD (NIAID) - Dr. Jeffrey Cohen is Chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases (LID) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He also is head of the Medical Virology Section in the LID. Dr. Cohen’s laboratory studies the molecular genetics, pathogenesis, and clinical aspects of human herpesviruses, including Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), herpes simplex virus, varicella-zoster virus, and cytomegalovirus. His laboratory focuses on vaccine development, cellular genes important for virus entry, and novel compounds for treatment of herpesvirus infections. His clinical research includes studies of patients with severe virus infections to define genetic mutations or polymorphisms associated with the disease and studies of patients with EBV diseases. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. In addition to serving on the editorial board of Journal Virology and Virology, he is an associate editor of the upcoming edition of Fields Virology.
FEBRUARY 12 - Pain: How It Happens and What Can Be Done
- Brian Walitt, MD/PhD (Georgetown University)
- Catherine Bushnell, PhD (NCCAM) - M. Catherine Bushnell, Ph.D. is Scientific Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the NIH, where she is responsible for establishing and overseeing a new program on the brain’s role in perceiving, modifying, and managing pain. Prior to her appointment at NCCAM, Dr. Bushnell was the Harold Griffith Professor of Anesthesia at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada. She has been president of the Canadian Pain Society, and treasurer and press editor-in-chief of the International Association for the Study of Pain. Among her other honors are the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Pain Society and the Frederick Kerr Basic Science Research Award from the American Pain Society. Dr. Bushnell holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the American University, Washington, D.C. and received postdoctoral training in neurophysiology at NIH. Her research interests include forebrain mechanisms of pain processing, psychological modulation of pain, and neural alternations in chronic pain patients. Recent projects have utilized brain imaging and psychophysical testing to study the neural basis of pain processing, addressing both normal pain processing and aberrant processing after nervous system damage.
FEBRUARY 19 - Preventing Aging
FEBRUARY 26 - Ethics and Translational Medicine
MARCH 5 - Biomedical Imaging: New Frontiers
MARCH 12 - Autoimmunity: Diseases and Mechanisms
MARCH 19 - Ticks: Lyme and Other Diseases
MARCH 26 - NO SESSION
APRIL 2 - Turner's Syndrome: The X Chromosome
APRIL 9 - New Hepatitis Viruses and an Old Persistent One
APRIL 16 - Vision and Blindness in the Genomic Era
APRIL 23 - To Be Announced
APRIL 30 - The Mitochondrion and Its Diseases
May 7 - Finale
This web page was last modified on February 12, 2013. For questions about the course, please contact ariasi@mail.nih.gov.