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Duke and UNC researchers receive CTSA Consortium Collaborative Pilot Award to develop a new way to study cancer  For doctors and patients, the fight against cancer can be a lot like an exceedingly tricky version of the classic arcade game of whack-a-mole. You might beat back a tumor or part of a tumor, only to have another one pop up. To make matters worse, the “mallet” or treatment that successfully whacks the first tumor cells doesn’t always work on those arising later. You might need a new strategy or even an entirely different drug. It’s a tough game to win.

Researchers from Duke and UNC team up to find an answer, with funding from the two institutions’ NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA).  For hundreds of millions of people around the world with chronic hepatitis B infection, anti-viral treatments do a good job of keeping the virus under wraps. Anti-viral treatments are essential in slowing damage to the liver, reducing the chance of liver cancer, and helping people live longer. But in the vast majority of cases, there is no end to the infection.

Shutting down this source at the root cause could improve cancer survival Advanced prostate cancer and high blood cholesterol have long been known to be connected, but it has been a chicken-or-egg problem.

Root cause is shared by Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases    The loss of motor function and mental acuity associated with Huntington’s disease might be treatable by restoring a cellular quality control process, which Duke Health researchers have identified as a key factor in the degenerative illness. Huntington’s disease is an inherited condition that results in the gradual erosion of nerve cells, leading to impairments and death. It affects about one in 10,000 people in the United States and has no cure.

Blake S. Wilson, a Duke University alumnus and faculty member who invented many of the sound-processing strategies used in modern cochlear implants, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Five School of Medicine faculty members have been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) Class of 2017. Membership in this organization is a distinction recognizing excellence and outstanding achievement for physician-scientists representing a diverse range of disciplines and specialties.  American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI)

Mary Klotman, M.D. -- a nationally renowned physician-scientist and academic leader who has served as chair of Duke’s Department of Medicine for almost seven years -- has been named Dean of the Duke University School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University. Klotman will assume these roles July 1, 2017.

Moira Rynn, MD, has been named the new chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, effective July 1, 2017. Dr. Rynn is professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She serves as director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Division in the Department of Psychiatry and as medical director of the Columbia University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders and director of the Children’s Research Day Unit in the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Matthew D. Barber, MD, MHS, has been named the new chair of the Department of OB-GYN, effective May 1, 2017.  Dr. Barber is professor of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and vice chair for Research in the Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women's Health Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. He is also the fellowship program director for Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.

Electron micrograph of Exiguobacterium