Abramson Cancer Center: “Exceptional” Rating, NCI

The University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) has received an “exceptional” rating from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) during an extensive peer-review process for its five-year competitive research support grant. The rating is the highest possible for an NCI cancer center. It also signifies the renewal of the ACC’s status as a “comprehensive” center. The ACC is one of only 45 NCI-designated comprehensive centers in the U.S. and three in Pennsylvania.

Since the last competitive renewal process in 2010, faculty physicians and researchers have authored more than 5,000 cancer-related publications. In addition, the ACC’s research initiatives have been buoyed by an increase in NCI peer-reviewed funding. Today, ACC scientists are making unprecedented advances in cancer research with more than 1,000 active research projects and the largest portfolio of cancer clinical trials (over 550) in the Philadelphia region.

Lisa Levine: Kynett-FOCUS Junior Faculty Investigator Award

Lisa D. Levine, assistant professor in the department of obstetrics & gynecology, division of maternal fetal medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, received the 2015-2016 Kynett-FOCUS Junior Faculty Investigator Award for Research in Women’s Cardiovascular Health. This award, funded through a grant from the Edna G. Kynett Memorial Foundation, will provide $15,000 to support a project related to women’s cardiovascular health for one year.

Dr. Levine’s funded project is titled “Angiogenic factors to predict cardiac dysfunction during and after preeclampsia.” Her preliminary data suggest that cardiac dysfunction in preeclampsia is caused by an angiogenic imbalance in the heart, triggered by the late gestational secretion from the placenta of sFlt1, an endogenous soluble inhibitor of VEGF. She plans to rigorously test the hypothesis that sFlt1 is associated with cardiac dysfunction in a particularly high-risk group of women: African American women with severe preterm preeclampsia.

Patricia D’Antonia, Julie Fairman: Nursing Outlook Media Award

Nursing Outlook, the official journal of the American Academy of Nursing (AAN), has awarded Julie Fairman, Nightingale Professor of Nursing and chair of the department of biobehavioral health sciences at Penn, and Patricia D’Antonio, Killebrew-Censits Term Professor in Undergraduate Education and chair of the  department of family & community health at Penn, the 2015 Excellence in Media Award for their article, “History counts: How history can shape our understanding of health policy.”

This award recognizes exemplary journalism that reports on health or health care with accurate and appropriate inclusion of nurses’ contributions or perspectives. The honor was presented earlier this month at the 2015 American Academy of Nursing Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

National Academy of Medicine: Three New Members from Penn

Three University of Pennsylvania professors have been elected members of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), one of the nation’s highest honors in biomedicine. NAM was originally the Institute of Medicine, which was established in 1970 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences to advise the nation on medical and health issues. Members are elected by their peers for distinguished contributions to medicine and health. 

The new NAM members bring Penn Medicine’s total membership in the prestigious group to 66. The newly elected members raise NAM’s total active membership to 1,826 and the number of international members to 137. NAM has become recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues. With their election, members make a commitment to volunteer their service on NAM committees, boards and other activities.

The three new Penn NAM members are:

Dennis E. Discher is the Robert D. Bent Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS). He joined Penn in 1996 following postdoctoral work in computational biophysics as a U.S. National Science Foundation International Fellow at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. He received his PhD jointly from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco for studies of cell membrane physics and spliceform biochemistry. He holds secondary appointments in bioengineering and in mechanical engineering & applied mechanics and is a member of Graduate Groups in Cell & Molecular Biology, Pharmacology and Physics. His research has focused on stem cell differentiation in relation to mechanics of microenvironments that differ between tissues and in disease. His group uses engineered polymer systems in studies that have extended to questions on drug carriers, particularly the roles of nanoscale physical properties and immune system interactions. Dr. Discher was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) by the National Science Foundation in 1999, and was elected in 2012 to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He is the principal investigator at Penn of a National Cancer Institute-funded Physical Sciences Oncology Center, which fosters research into new physical principles in cancer development and straddles the SEAS, the Perelman School of Medicine and SAS. He has authored more than 200 widely cited publications in journals ranging from Science and Cell to Physical Review Letters, Nature Materials and Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Sean Hennessy is a professor of epidemiology in the department of biostatistics & epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine. He received his PharmD in clinical pharmacy from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science and his PhD in epidemiology from Penn. Dr. Hennessy’s primary field of interest is pharmacoepidemiology, the study of the health effects of drugs and other medical products in populations. He is a past scientific chair and past president of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and has served on the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee. In 2015 he began a three-year term on the board of directors of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He is also a co-editor of the books Pharmacoepidemiology (5th edition) and Textbook of Pharmacoepidemiology (2nd edition) and is editor for the Americas of the journal Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. He has received the 2005 Young Alumnus Award from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, the 2007 Leon I. Goldberg Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and the 2013 Samuel Martin Health Evaluation Sciences Research Award from the Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Hennessy also directs Penn’s Center for Pharmacoepidemiology Research and Training and pharmacoepidemiology training programs associated with the center. He teaches clinical epidemiology to medical and graduate students and is active in promoting evidence-based practice at Penn Medicine, co-chairing its Drug Use and Effects Committee and serving on its Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee. Dr. Hennessy’s clinical program has received two Quality and Safety Awards from UPHS.

Frances E. Jensen is a professor of neurology, chair of the department of neurology and co-director of the Penn Medicine Translational Neuroscience Center at the Perelman School of Medicine. Prior to coming Penn, she was a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and a senior neurologist at both Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital, Boston. Dr. Jensen received her medical degree from Cornell University Medical College and completed her residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She was chief resident in neurology at the Harvard Longwood Neurology Training Program, followed by a fellowship at Harvard Medical School. Her research has focused on investigating mechanisms of epilepsy as well as their age-dependent differences, with special attention to the interactions between brain development, brain injury, epilepsy and cognition. In addition to receiving the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and the American Epilepsy Research Recognition Award, she has been continuously funded by NIH since 1987 and has trained over 30 research fellows. Dr. Jensen has been a council member of the Society for Neuroscience and was president of the American Epilepsy Society in 2012. She serves on a number of patient and research advocacy boards and is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the editorial board of Annals of Neurology and a reviewing editor for the Journal of Neuroscience. Dr. Jensen is the author of more than 150 manuscripts and the author of the widely acclaimed book, The Teenage Brain.