An international research team has compiled the first catalogue of tissue-specific pathologies underlying hundreds of inherited diseases. These results provide information that may help treat conditions such as breast cancer, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease and autism. The report from scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and has been published online.

“Disease processes in humans are far from being exhaustively understood and characterized, in part because they are the result of complex interactions between many molecules that may take place only in specific tissues or organs. Experiments to directly study these interactions in human patients would not be possible, which limits our understanding of how diseases arise and which molecules and genes are involved,” says co-lead author Kasper Lage, PhD, of the MGH Pediatric Surgical Research Laboratories.

Co-lead author Niclas Tue Hansen, MSc, from the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark, adds, “We let supercomputers model biological processes in tissues across the human organism, based on the knowledge from millions of already published articles. In this way we were able to create an extensive map of the interactions of molecules in many diseases – a sort of molecular manual – without carrying out experiments in patients.” The catalogue, which is freely available on the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis web page (cbs.dtu.dk/), should help physicians and researchers investigating many serious disorders, he notes.

“It has been extremely exciting to integrate the disease expertise of researchers at MGH and Harvard Medical School with the work of leading systems biologists at the Technical University of Denmark,” says Patricia Donahoe, MD, director of Pediatric Surgery Research at MGH and co-corresponding author of the PNAS study. “This current study brought together the strengths of both teams and resulted in a unique way of analyzing inherited diseases. Our findings have the potential to advance the knowledge of pathways, genes and proteins involved in hundreds of human disorders and perhaps contribute to better treatment strategies for some of these serious diseases,” Donahoe is the Marshall K. Bartlett Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

###

S??ren Brunak, PhD, director of the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis at the Technical University of Denmark is co-corresponding author of the PNAS report. Additional authors are Olof Karlberg, PhD, Aron Eklund, PhD, Francisco Roque, MSc, Zoltan Szallasi, MD, and Thomas Sk??t Jensen, PhD, all affiliated with the Technical University of Denmark. The study was supported by grants from the Villum Kann Rasmussen Foundation, the Simon Spies Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, and the National Institutes of Health.

Massachusetts General Hospital (massgeneral), established in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $500 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.

Source: Sue McGreevey

Massachusetts General Hospital Continue reading →

People with cancer and other serious illnesses can face difficulties affording health care coverage and treatment even when they have private health insurance, according to a report jointly released on Thursday by the American Cancer Society and the Kaiser Family Foundation, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The report profiles 20 cancer patients whose experiences are representative of the types of problems reported to ACS’ Health Insurance and Financial Assistance for the Cancer Patient office. The 20 patients include nine with employer-sponsored coverage, one with coverage through COBRA, seven with individual health plans, two with coverage through a state-sponsored high-risk pool and one who became uninsured (Colliver, San Francisco Chronicle, 2/6).

The report highlights five key gaps in the health care system that can leave people with serious illnesses in financial jeopardy because of their diagnoses:
High copayments and exhaustion of benefits as a result of annual and lifetime coverage caps imposed by insurers;

Unaffordable coverage through COBRA, which allows a patient to remain enrolled in an employer-sponsored health plan after leaving the company by paying 102% of the cost of coverage;

High costs of individual health plans, which also can exclude applicants based on pre-existing conditions;

Long waits and delays in becoming eligible or applying for Medicaid and Medicare coverage; and

State high-risk pools that are offered only in 35 states, and can be costly (Anstett, Detroit Free Press, 2/6).
Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman said, “You would at least think the health care system would work for the people who are sick,” adding, “What this study shows is there are lots of gaps and holes and problems for the people who are the sickest in our society. That’s the opposite of how health care should work” (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/6).

CBS’ Evening News on Thursday included a segment on the report that includes comments from Altman, ACS President John Seffrin and two cancer patients (LaPook, “Evening News,” CBS, 2/5).

The report is available online.

The Kaiser Family Foundation and ACS in conjunction with the report released a video documentary examining the financial consequences faced by three privately insured people who were diagnosed with cancer. The video is available online.

A webcast of a media briefing to release the report and video also is available online at kaisernetwork. The webcast features comments from Altman; Seffrin; John Rowe of the Department of Health Policy Management at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; Karen Pollitz, project director of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute; Karen Schwartz, a senior policy analyst with the Kaiser Family Foundation; and Kristi Martin, associate policy analyst with ACS.

Reprinted with kind permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

© 2009 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved. Continue reading →

As any parent knows, children love sweet-tasting foods. Now, new research from the University of Washington and the Monell Center indicates that this heightened liking for sweetness has a biological basis and is related to children’s high growth rate.

“The relationship between sweet preference and growth makes intuitive sense because when growth is rapid, caloric demands increase. Children are programmed to like sweet taste because it fills a biological need by pushing them towards energy sources,” said Monell geneticist Danielle Reed, PhD, one of the study authors.

Across cultures, children prefer higher levels of sweetness in their foods as compared to adults, a pattern that declines during adolescence. To explore the biological underpinnings of this shift, Reed and University of Washington researcher Susan Coldwell, PhD, looked at sweet preference and biological measures of growth and physical maturation in 143 children between the ages of 11 and 15.

The findings, reported in the journal Physiology & Behavior, suggest that children’s heightened liking for sweet taste is related to their high growth rate and that sweet preferences decline as children’s physical growth slows and eventually stops.

Based on the results of sensory taste tests, children were classified according to their sweet taste preference into a ‘high preference’ or ‘low preference’ group. Children in the ‘low preference’ group also had lower levels of a biomarker (type I collagen cross-linked N-teleopeptides; NTx) associated with bone growth in children and adolescents.

“This gives us the first link between sweet preference and biological need,” said Reed. “When markers of bone growth decline as children age, so does their preference for highly sweet solutions.”

Other biological factors associated with adolescence, such as puberty or sex hormone levels, were not associated with sweet preference.

“We now know that sweet preference is related to physical growth. The next step is to identify the growth-related factor that is signaling the brain to influence sweet preference,” said study lead author Coldwell, Washington Dental Service Endowed Professor and Associate Professor of Dental Public Health Sciences at the University of Washington School of Dentistry.

Notes:

The research was funded by a grant to the University of Washington from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (National Institutes of Health).

The Monell Chemical Senses Center is an independent nonprofit basic research institute based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Monell advances scientific understanding of the mechanisms and functions of taste and smell to benefit human health and well-being. Using an interdisciplinary approach, scientists collaborate in the programmatic areas of sensation and perception; neuroscience and molecular biology; environmental and occupational health; nutrition and appetite; health and well-being; development, aging and regeneration; and chemical ecology and communication.

Source: Leslie Stein

Monell Chemical Senses Center Continue reading →

In 1994 twenty-five per 100,000 people aged 19 and under were diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in the USA. In 2004 the figure jumped to 1,003 per 100,000. The number of adults diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder during the same period almost doubled. You can read a report about this in Archives of General Psychiatry (JAMA/Archives), September issue.

Bipolar disorder is a mental illness which generally involves periods of abnormally elevated mood (mania) followed by the opposite (depression). The authors write “Although bipolar disorder may have its onset during childhood, little is known about national trends in the diagnosis and management of bipolar disorder in young people.”

Carmen Moreno, M.D., Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Maranon, Servicio de Psiquiatria, Madrid, Spain, and team looked at data from a US-wide survey of office-based doctors designed to represent all such clinicians in the country. The doctors supplied information about demographic, clinical and treatment aspects of each patient visit over a one-week time period. They then compared the rate of bipolar disorder diagnoses growth among people aged up to 19 in one case, and people aged at least 20 in another. Comparisons were made regarding demographic information and prescribed treatments between the two groups (young people and older people) during 1999 to 2003.

This is what they found:

– annually, the number of office-based visits with a bipolar disorder diagnosis for those aged 19 and less rose from 25 per 100,000 in 1994 to 1,003 per 100,000 in 2003.

– Annually, the number of office-based visits with bipolar disorder diagnosis for those aged 20 and over rose from 905 per 100,000 to 1,679 per 100,000.

– 0.44% office based visits had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder among the people aged 19 and less, compared to 0.01% in 1994.

– 0.5% office based visits had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder among the people aged 20 and over, compared to 0.31% in 1994

– During 1999-2003 66.5% of the younger patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder were male

– During 1999-2003 67.6% of the older patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder were female

– 32.2% of the younger people who were diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder were also diagnosed with ADHD

– 3% of the older people who were diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder were also diagnosed with ADHD

The authors wrote “The impressive increase in the diagnosis of childhood and adolescent bipolar disorder in U.S. office-based practice indicates a shift in clinical diagnostic practices. In broad terms, either bipolar disorder was historically under-diagnosed in children and adolescents and that problem has now been rectified, or bipolar disorder is currently being over-diagnosed in this age group. Without independent systematic diagnostic assessments, we cannot confidently select between these two competing hypotheses.”

90.6% of the youths and 86.4% of the adults who were diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder were prescribed medications for bipolar disorder, including mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics and antidepressants. The similarities were present even though bipolar disorder may affect children differently to adults.

The authors concluded “There is an urgent need to study the reliability and validity using multiple informant strategies of the diagnosis of child and adolescent bipolar disorder in community practice and to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of pharmacological treatment regimens commonly used to treat youth diagnosed with bipolar disorder.”

Archives of General Psychiatry

Continue reading →

The New Jersey Center for Biomaterials will host the 9th New Jersey Symposium on Biomaterials Science and Regenerative Medicine, Oct. 29 to Oct. 31 at the Hyatt Regency, New Brunswick.

Academic, clinical and industrial investigators will present their strategies for addressing the challenges of severe blast injuries, such as those encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The researchers will share expertise on underlying biological, chemical and engineering technologies that enable new approaches to reconstruction and regeneration of injured tissues.

Dr. C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general of the United States, will be the guest speaker at the Oct. 30 dinner. Key decision makers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense, and program directors from the National Institutes of Health will present talks and participate in panel discussions.

Many of the 80 symposium speakers are academic and industry members of the Department of Defense’s newly established Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM). The gathering of top federal officials, researchers, members of AFIRM and industry will make this symposium a landmark event, promising remarkable changes in the lives of wounded service members.

Some of the speakers are investigators who are close to implementing clinical trials of novel therapies that will impact wound healing, salvaging injured limbs, facial reconstruction and prevention of scars:
George Muschler from the Cleveland Clinic will describe his work as an orthopedic surgeon, combining cells and synthetic scaffolds to rebuild large bone defects.

Richard Clark, a dermatologist from Stony Brook University is studying the application of proteins and nutritional supplements to the skin to reduce and repair burn injuries.

Adam Katz, a plastic surgeon from the University of Virginia, has pioneered a method of transplanting a patient’s own fat tissue to reduce scarring.

Michael Yaszemski, an orthopedic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, is leading research teams from three universities to solve the problem of reconnecting severed peripheral nerves.

Joseph Rosen of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is a plastic surgeon and expert in network collaboration, who is helping other researchers work across clinical and scientific disciplines for the benefit of severely injured U.S. military service members.

This biennial event is organized by the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials, a Rutgers-based academic-industrial research center that has built a large international network around the enabling technologies of polymeric biomaterials.

###

Source: Joseph Blumberg

Rutgers University Continue reading →

Small sections of human liver have been created from umbilical cord stem cells, say scientists from Newcastle University, UK. The researchers say this technology could eventually be used to grow small livers that could be used for drug tests – doing away with the need for human volunteers to take risks. Earlier this year six volunteers became dangerously ill during a drug trial in the UK.

The scientists warned that it will be tens of years before we are anywhere near producing whole new livers for transplants. However, within the next 15 years, tiny livers could be produced and used for treating patients.

Team leaders, Dr. Nico Forraz and Prof. Colin McGuckin, have set up ConoStem, a company aimed at marketing their stem cell research results.

The researchers said they used a microgravity bioreactor, which creates a weightless environment, to grow liver tissue from stem cells.

Professor McGuckin said “We take the stem cells from the umbilical cord blood and make small mini-livers. We then give them to pharmaceutical companies and they can use them to test new drugs on. It could prevent the situation that happened earlier this year when those six patients had a massive reaction to the drugs they were testing.”

This technology, if it really can replace human and animal testing, will be welcomed by people who are against using animals for testing drugs. Umbilical cord stem cell research is also a much more attractive prospect for those who are against using embryonic stem cells for research.

The study papers have not yet been peer-reviewed and/or published yet. Dr. Mike Nicholds, CEO, ConoStems, said they are planning to have their studies peer-reviewed.

What is Peer Review?

It is commonly used by publishers to screen submitted manuscripts (written reports). The report is scrutinized (reviewed) by other people who are experts in the field (peers).

“ConoStem: Adult Stem Cells to advance Drug Discovery and Clinical Research”

Continue reading →

More and more, hospitals are stopping or postponing “shovel-ready projects” that would not only improve community health care, but also increase jobs and support the local economy, according to a new survey from the American Hospital Association. The survey showed that hospitals’ ability to obtain the necessary funds to upgrade their facilities or invest in new clinical and information technologies is severely restricted due to the “capital crunch” and the recession.

Hospitals primarily rely on borrowed money, philanthropy and reserves to fund capital projects to improve their ability to meet communities’ health care needs, but many now find it difficult to obtain funds from these sources. The vast majority of hospitals report that borrowing funds through tax-exempt bonds – the main source of borrowing for most hospitals – is difficult or impossible. In addition, loans from banks or other financial institutions are similarly difficult to obtain. Hospitals’ reserves, or savings, also have taken a hit due to falling stock prices, net income is down and philanthropic donations have slowed, leaving hospitals with less of their own funds to rely on to make needed improvements.

Nearly half of hospitals surveyed have postponed projects that were to begin within the next six months and many have stopped projects that were already in progress. For example, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Woman’s Hospital has delayed and may have to stop construction of a new facility that would help the hospital fulfill its state-appointed responsibilities to evacuate and care for infants during catastrophes, which they have done in the past during Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Gustav.

“From cancer centers to expanded emergency departments to electronic health records systems, hospitals are postponing or delaying projects that could greatly benefit health care in communities across the country,” said AHA President and CEO Rich Umbdenstock. “Stopping these projects also means new jobs are not created within the health care field or for construction workers, contractors, IT specialists and others. The ripple effects of the capital crunch on employment are cause for great concern.”

Stopping or postponing facility upgrades and technology investments has significant ramifications for communities served by these hospitals and for the health care system as a whole. According to the survey, the planned hospital projects now put on hold would have responded to a variety of health care needs:

- 43 percent of hospitals planned to expand and improve their emergency or urgent care departments.
- 65 percent intended that their projects increase their ability to provide inpatient medical and surgical care.
- 13 percent of hospitals reported they postponed projects related to inpatient behavioral health, at a time when behavioral health care needs are more important than ever.

The vast majority of hospitals that have postponed projects have delayed updating their facilities, while more than 6 out of 10 hospitals have put clinical and information technology projects on hold. These projects could have benefited patients, families and communities by improving quality of care, efficiency and coordination of care.

Hospitals with postponed projects reported facility upgrades and investment in clinical and IT projects would bring benefits to their communities:

- More than 8 out of 10 hospitals said they have delayed projects to update or replace aging clinical equipment or use IT to automate clinical processes.

- More than six out of 10 hospitals reported that facility upgrades, and clinical and information technology projects would have increased patient care efficiency and improved quality of care.

- Nearly 60 percent of hospitals said the IT projects that are put on hold would have improved care coordination.

- About half of hospitals are trying to meeting growing demand for existing services through either facilities projects or purchases of clinical equipment.

The survey, Report on the Capital Crisis: Impact on Hospitals, provides data from 639 hospitals collected from late December 2008 to January 6, 2009. Click here for a copy of the report.

About AHA

The AHA is a not-for-profit association of health care provider organizations and individuals that are committed to the improvement of health in their communities. The AHA is the national advocate for its members, which includes more than 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, and 38,000 individual members. Founded in 1898, the AHA provides education for health care leaders and is a source of information on health care issues and trends.

AHA Continue reading →

Acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach on Monday said the agency is taking steps to accelerate the drug approval process, assure safe and effective standards for clinical trials and encourage “personalized medicine,” the Baltimore Sun reports. In a speech to the Personalized Medicine Coalition, von Eschenbach said he will make faster drug approvals “one of [his] highest priorities” as long as he is at FDA. He noted that FDA in January released guidelines for producing and testing experimental treatments that are designed to help facilitate the approval process. Von Eschenbach also said FDA is reexamining the agency’s safety and effectiveness requirements for experimental treatments and clinical trials. “Today’s clinical trial regimens are expensive, too lengthy and do not deliver all the answers that patients and physicians need,” he said. In addition, Von Eschenbach said FDA is taking steps to encourage the development of safe and effective tools that are genetically tailored to prevent illnesses or treat a patient’s particular condition. He said, “We can improve the processes by which that developmental process occurs, is regulated and is approved.” However, some scientists expressed concern that fast approvals of personalized medicines could result in side effects being overlooked. Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, said the field of personalized medicine is moving too quickly, and it could be harmful to patients because “[t]he science isn’t really there yet” (Rockoff, Baltimore Sun, 3/7).

“Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . ?© 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved. Continue reading →

Structural abnormalities in the hippocampus and amygdala may be
associated with long-term, heavy cannabis use, according to an article
released June 2, 2008 in the Archives of General Psychiatry,
one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Cannabis is a classification of plants that has many human applications
but is famously used in the production of marijuana, which is consumed
for its psychoactive effects. The long-term effects of cannabis use
have long been debated, according to the article: “Although growing
literature suggests that long-term cannabis use is
associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences, many
people in the community, as well as cannabis users themselves, believe
that cannabis is relatively harmless and should be legally available.”
The authors continue, quoting statistics regarding cannabis use in the
United States: “With nearly 15 million Americans using cannabis in a
given month, 3.4
million using cannabis daily for 12 months or more and 2.1 million
commencing use every year, there is a clear need to conduct robust
investigations that elucidate the long-term sequelae of long-term
cannabis use.”

To investigate the long term effects of cannabis on the brain
specifically, Murat Y??cel, Ph.D., M.A.P.S., of ORYGEN Research Centre
and the
Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne,
Australia, and colleagues from the University of Wollongong examined 15
men, with an average age of 39.8 years, who had smoked more than five
joints daily for more than ten years. These were compared to 16
individuals, with an average age of 36.4 years, who were not cannabis
users. The team performed a series of tests on the subjects, including
high resolution structural magnetic resonance images, verbal memory
tests, and assessment for subthreshold symptoms of psychotic disorders
such as schizophrenia and mania.

In cannabis users, two major parts of the brain were generally smaller
than in their straight counterparts: the hippocampus and the amygdala.
The former is presumed to regulate emotions and memory, and was on
average 12% smaller. The latter is related to fear and aggression, and
was an average of 7.1% smaller in the users. Cannabis users also showed
more sub-threshold symptoms of psychotic disorders. The authors
commented on the verbal learning skills shown by the subjects, but this
did not seem to correlate with the brain volume differences in either
group.

The authors conclude with a call for more research in this area: “There
is ongoing controversy concerning the long-term effects of cannabis on
the brain,” they write. “These findings challenge the widespread
perception of cannabis as having limited or no neuroanatomical
sequelae. Although modest use may not lead to significant neurotoxic
effects, these results suggest that heavy daily use might indeed be
toxic to human brain tissue. Further prospective, longitudinal research
is required to determine the degree and mechanisms of long-term
cannabis-related harm and the time course of neuronal recovery after
abstinence.”

Regional Brain Abnormalities Associated With Long-term Heavy
Cannabis Use
Murat Y??cel; Nadia Solowij; Colleen Respondek; Sarah Whittle; Alex
Fornito; Christos Pantelis; Dan I. Lubman
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(6):694-701.
Click Here For
Journal

Anna Sophia McKenney

Continue reading →

Michael Jaffe, a professor of biomedical engineering at NJIT, has received a patent for a chemical derived from sugar. This new material is a derivative of isosorbide and may be able to replace bisphenol A (BPA) in a number of consumer products, including the lining of tin cans.

Jaffe has been developing the material in conjunction with the Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB) in an effort to promote and create new, commercially attractive, sustainable chemistries from wider uses of corn. This new sugar derivative can be obtained from corn. This is the first patent in a series filed by ICPB and NJIT to develop applications and markets for sugar-based chemistry.

“Exposure to bisphenol A has been linked to health problems and we feel confident that this is a safe alternative,” said Rodney Williamson, director of research and development for the board.

Much attention has recently focused on BPA, which has been known to have estrogenic properties since the 1930s. BPA is widely used in processes that result in the lining for tin cans and key ingredients in plastics ranging from baby bottles to nail polish.

Unfortunately, the chemical bonds that link BPA in polymer structures are not completely stable and the polymer may slowly decay with time, releasing small amounts of it into materials with which it comes into contact, such as food or water. Recent studies have shown the widespread presence of tiny amounts of BPA in the environment. Even at minute levels BPA may still exert estrogen-like effects on living organisms.

The new invention is an epoxy resin. These are polymers widely used as adhesives, paints and as coatings to protect food in cans. This invention describes a renewable resource epoxy, derived, for example, from isosorbide, a sustainable chemical that can be synthesized from corn starch. Both components of the epoxy – the resin and the hardener – are from water-soluble, plant-derived chemistries. The epoxy is cured by baking at an elevated temperature.

“We are viewing sugars as a chemical feedstock to produce new monomers, polymers and additives for a broad range of biomedical industrial applications,” said Jaffe. “Sugar-based chemicals are attractive because they are generally regarded as safe, are a renewable resource and can be made readily available at competitive pricing.

Isosorbide offers molecular geometry and chemical functionality compatible with many existing commercial chemistries.”

Jaffe is an expert in material science and high-performance polymers. Prior to joining NJIT in 1998, he was a research fellow with Hoechst Celanese, which he joined upon completion of his doctorate in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1967.

Jaffe is a member of the National Research Council (National Materials Advisory Board) and has been named a National Associate of the National Research Council. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering), a Fellow of the North American Thermal Analysis Society and a Fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. He has authored more than 75 technical publications, 18 book chapters and 17 patents.

Sharing the patent are research team members: Anthony J. East, PhD, research professor of biomedical engineering at NJIT; Yi Zhang, PhD, an NJIT alum who received his doctorate in biomedical engineering at NJIT; Luiz Catalani, PhD, former visiting professor at NJIT, now professor of chemistry, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Source:
Sheryl Weinstein
New Jersey Institute of Technology Continue reading →