News Archive

August-September 2010

News

• Jim Evans gave testimony regarding Direct-to-Consumer Testing on July 22 before the House Subcommittee (of the Committee on Energy and Commerce) on Oversight and Investigations.  He provided ". . . the clinician’s perspective on the medical value of the companies’ genetic analyses and the questions they raise."  Follow this link to the Committee's web page to access the text of Jim's statement. See DOTmedNEWS for a summary of the hearing.

Congratulations!

• Terry Magnuson has been appointed Vice Dean for Research in the School of Medicine.  He will also continue to serve as Chair of the Department of Genetics.

• Ned Sharpless has been named associate director for translational research for the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

  He will oversee the use of facilities by faculty for translation of basic laboratory findings into clinical applications.  His appointment was announced simultaneously with the naming of Lisa Carey, MD, Dept of Medicine, as associate director of the LCCC for clinical science. 

  Ned's group has also just published a paper in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on the first example of successful radiomitigation in mammals.  The first author on this paper is Søren Johnson, an MD/PhD student who recently earned his PhD from the Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology.  Coauthors Matthew Ramsey and Kimberly Monahan are also recent graduates of the Curriculum.

• Derek Chiang has been selected as a 2010 William Guy Forbeck Research Foundation Scholar.
  These Scholars (four individuals per year) are recognized as promising young scientists working in the field of cancer research.

• Pat Sullivan has received the 2010 NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award for his studies on "Unbiased identification of rare genetic variants for psychosis using unique samples." NARSAD is also known as The Brain and Behavior Research Fund.

• Helena Furberg and Pat Sullivan are first and senior authors, respectively, on a paper that has recently been published in Nature Genetics on genetic variants linked to smoking behaviors. They led this study in their roles as key members of the Tobacco and Genetics Consortium. Other authors in this group from the UNC Department of Genetics and the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences are YunJung Kim, Jennifer Dackor. and Karen Mohlke.

• Kim Rathmell to Receive Inaugural Award from American Association for Cancer Research