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The center will be a key component of the Trial Innovation Network, which is the newest part of the Clinical and Translational Science Award Program. Researchers at the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) have received a major federal grant to study how multisite clinical trials of new drugs and therapies in children and adults can be conducted more rapidly and efficiently.

In April, Robin Rasor was named director of Duke’s Office of Licensing and Ventures, which is responsible for helping faculty and students patent and license their discoveries and, if they so choose, start on the path to forming a spin-off company. She began work at Duke on July 1, 2016. Rasor comes to Duke from the University of Michigan, where she has been the managing director of licensing within the university’s Office of Technology Transfer.

CDC awards $26M to support research on new ways to prevent superbugs and improve healthcare quality The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded $26 million to Duke University, the University of North Carolina, and four other academic medical centers to create epicenters where researchers will develop and test innovative approaches to prevent healthcare-associated infections and the spread of dangerous bacteria infections, and to improve patient safety in healthcare settings.  

Improving the Health of People in Their Communities for 50 Years In July 1966, the Duke University School of Medicine established a new department: the Department of Community Health Sciences. Its roots were multiple and complex, and began with a decision to discontinue another department — the Department of Preventive Medicine — which had functioned since the first days of the medical school.

By combining super-fine electrodes and tiny amounts of a very specific drug, Duke University researchers have singled out a circuit in mouse brains and taken control of it to dial an animal’s mood up and down. Stress-susceptible animals that behaved as if they were depressed or anxious were restored to relatively normal behavior by tweaking the system, according to a study appearing in the July 20 issue of Neuron.

The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship (ASF) announced the selection of its 2016-2017 class of North Carolina Albert Schweitzer Fellows. Thirty graduate [and medical] students, one of the biggest classes to date, will spend the next year learning to effectively address the social factors that impact health, and developing lifelong leadership skills. In doing so, they will follow the example set by famed physician-humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, for whom their Fellowship is named.

Christopher G. Willett, MD, FASTRO, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Duke University School of Medicine, has been named a recipient of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed upon members of the world’s largest radiation oncology society. He will be recognized at an awards ceremony during ASTRO’s 58th Annual Meeting, to be held September 25-28, 2016, in Boston.

Duke University has begun construction of a third Medical Sciences Research Building (MSRB), continuing Duke Health’s ongoing commitment to invest in science and foster collaboration among basic science researchers.

A Duke team has performed the first hand transplant in North Carolina, attaching the limb to a 54-year-old patient from Laredo, Texas, whose hand was severed in a childhood accident.

People with serious mental illnesses who use guns to commit suicide are often legally eligible to purchase guns, despite having a past record of an involuntary mental health examination and brief hospitalization, according to a new Duke Health analysis. The study, released in the June issue of Health Affairs, looked at gun use, violent crime and suicide among 81,704 people diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression in Florida’s Miami-Dade and Pinellas counties over 10 years starting in 2002.