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New endowed scholarship supports medicine-engineering initiatives, honors faculty mentors By Jeni Baker The inaugural Barr-Spach Medicine and Engineering Scholarship recipient Joshua D’Arcy. Duke second-year medical student Joshua D’Arcy, M’19, has been chosen as the inaugural recipient of the new Barr-Spach Medicine and Engineering Scholarship.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has awarded fellowships to two Duke medical students and a renewal to a third. Starting this summer, each fellow will spend a year pursuing basic, translational, or applied biomedical research at one of 32 academic or nonprofit research institutions across the United States. Each medical fellow receives $43,000 in grant support, and fellows are eligible to apply for a second year in the program.

Duke Health and Duke University will co-host the first-ever North Carolina meeting of the Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) on May 24-25. Hundreds are expected to attend from across the spectrum of healthcare, representing a variety of companies, technologies, researchers and medical centers with leadership roles in precision medicine.

As recently as ten years ago, patients with brain metastasis were rarely even offered surgical treatment. “It was essentially viewed as a death sentence,” Fecci says. But as treatments have improved, these patients have options. “Some of my patients from when I first arrived at Duke two and a half years ago are still doing well,” Fecci says. “A decade ago, that type of survival was just a dream.”

By Alison Jones, DukeToday The United States has long been a magnet for people from scientists from all over the world. With both science and immigration under attack, Raphael Valdivia wonders if that legacy is at risk. This is one of the questions being asked in this weekend’s March for Science.

Duke University School of Medicine hosted a Project Medical Education event from April 17-19 where seven congressional staff members from the North Carolina delegation learned about the three missions of medical schools and teaching hospitals.

Photo: group of Duke’s women surgeons replicating cover of the New York Times. The Washington Post: Sometimes an artist, like a surgeon, triggers a surprise reflex by touching the heart of the matter.

Commitment from Alan and Carol Kaganov will enable new research, education initiatives to improve lung disease outcomes By Jeni Baker A generous gift from Duke Engineering alumnus Alan L. Kaganov, E’60, MBA, MS, ScD and his wife, Carol, aims to advance the diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of pulmonary diseases by fostering new collaborations across engineering and medicine at Duke University. (Photo Carol and Alan Kaganov)

Small, phase one trial of a dendritic cell vaccine supports further study in larger trials A phase one study of 11 patients with glioblastoma who received injections of an investigational vaccine therapy and an approved chemotherapy showed the combination to be well tolerated while also resulting in unexpectedly significant survival increases, researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute report.