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hen
snow started falling that April morning in Suches, Georgia, Jonathan
Glass thought it would clear quickly, but instead it snowed steadily
all day, covering the trail of the first annual Muscle Mountain
Mania bike ride in white. Still, some 303 riders and 45 volunteers
adapted: some cyclists shortened their routes, some hopped a local
farmer’s cow trailer for a ride back to the lodge, and some
actually finished the 62-mile snow-laden trail.
Glass, an Emory neurologist and director of the ALS Center, participated
in the ride, which raised money for ALS research at Emory in honor
of his patient, Bob Thompson, an avid cyclist who died of ALS
in 2004. The event was organized by Thompson’s wife, Janie.
"I see patients like Bob every
week, slowly being robbed of muscle control and movement throughout
their bodies," says Glass. "And every day,
my fellow researchers and I return to the laboratory to investigate
the causes of and potential treatments for this devastating disease.
While celebrating life until the very end, Bob Thompson also imagined
a cure for ALS. It was with a cure in mind that he and his wife
Janie planned this event to support our work at Emory."
Feeling helpless as the illness
took hold, Bob and Janie Thompson turned their pain into hope
as they envisioned a bike ride to raise money for ALS research.
After Bob’s death in April 2004, Janie Thompson continued
to turn grieving into positive action by organizing an annual
ride. She came up with a name, Muscle Mountain Mania, and a motto,
"Celebrate Life, Imagine a Cure," and she developed
a website—www.alsride.org.
The Muscle Mountain Mania inaugural
ride raised $64,000 to support ALS research at Emory. This year’s
ride, held on April 1, added $60,000 to that amount. Rather than
fading, the memory of Bob Thompson is growing stronger in Suches
and in the hearts hundreds of riders who are giving legs to a
cure for ALS.
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In
March, the Winship Cancer Institute dedicated the new Vaughn-Jordan
Healing Garden. With a fountain, plants and trees, seating,
and a commemorative stone plaza, the garden provides a restorative
retreat for cancer patients and their families. With support
from the Vaughn-Jordan Foundation and the Wilbur and Hilda
Glenn Family Foundation, the project was designated the 2005
Legacy Garden by the Southeastern Flower Show. Those interested
in purchasing a commemorative paver for the second installment
of the garden may contact the Development Office at 404-778-5175.
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eland
Chung is using nanotechnology to seek out prostate tumors in mice
and then deliver the drug cyclopamine directly to the tumor. (Cyclopamine
has been shown to block the prostate growth-enhancing gene, sonic
hedgehog.) John Petros has discovered that more than 20 million
men in the United States with a particular set of inherited characteristics
and mutations in
mitochonrial DNA are at significantly increased risk for developing
renal and prostate cancers.
These studies and others like them
in Emory’s urology department are "revolutionizing
the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer," says urology
professor and chair Fray Marshall. The department’s program
in prostate cancer, spearheaded by Chung, is one of only 10 such
funded programs in the nation, according to Marshall.
At the first annual dinner for prostate
cancer, held in September 2005, Emory raised $100,000 to support
its research program with the help of key volunteers such as Dick
and Linda Kruger, Pete and Ada Lee Correll, Clarence and Kenna Daws,
and Jerry Wilson. The theme of the 2006 fund-raising dinner—slated
for September 21 at the new downtown property, Twelve—is progress
through research. Funds raised at this year’s event support
prostate cancer research as well as studies of kidney stones and
erectile dysfunction.
For more information on attending
the 2006 dinner, contact Sandy Mayfield, director of development,
Emory urology, 404-778-5429, sandy.mayfield@emory.edu.
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n
the final decades of the Soviet Union as the health care system
unraveled, infant and maternal mortality rates spiked, with more
than 50% of Russian babies born unhealthy. In response, the international
medical community developed the Balashikha Project, a collaboration
between Emory, the Future of Russia Foundation (FRF), WHO, and CDC.
Now in its fifth year, the project is having a positive effect on
maternal and infant health in Russia.
Balashikha has two ambitious goals—to
bring medical education and training to Russian health care professionals
and to modernize and develop a regional perinatal center in Moscow.
It aims to
reduce neonatal morbidity by 50% in the Moscow region, an effort
underwritten by FRF, Rotary Club of Atlanta, and Rotary International.
Organizers already have converted
an outmoded maternity ward in a Balashikha hospital to a regional
referral center for high-risk mothers and babies in Moscow. And
a medical team from Emory, led by pediatrician and Rotarian Alfred
Brann, has traveled to Moscow three times each year since 2002 to
train and exchange ideas. In turn, Emory has hosted Russian practitioners
and nurses in Atlanta and held a distance-learning course linking
Emory Crawford Long Hospital and Balashikha.
"Infant mortality is not like
polio, where you can simply give a vaccine," says Brann. "You
have to have a system-wide reform providing for assessment, referral,
and transfer to have an effect." The development of such a
system is the focus of the current phase of the project, along with
attention to improving primary health care for women of reproductive
age. The medical team isn’t stopping there. They want to raise
public health standards in Russia, such as adding folic acid to
wheat to prevent birth defects, and to reform health care laws.
"To change the national picture,"
Brann says, "we have to improve health care for every mom
and baby, one at a time." |
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im Robbins knows cable inside and out. In January, Robbins retired
after 20 years as president and 10 years as CEO of Cox Communications,
the third largest cable provider in the country. He also knows too
well the complications of juvenile diabetes. When his middle daughter,
Payson, was only 2, she developed diabetes.
Now a grown woman and newly married, she remains dependent on daily
insulin injections.
Recently, Robbins and his wife, Debby,
decided to do something to help people who, like their daughter,
have type 1 diabetes. They are supporting research at Emory to find
new strategies for insulin independence for diabetics. Their younger
daughter, Hilary, is a third-year medical student at Emory.
"The reason we stepped up at
Emory is because of Chris Larsen and the work he’s doing,"
says Jim Robbins. Larsen is director of the Emory Transplant Center
and the clinical islet transplant program, whose team has completed
15 successful islet cell transplants in eight patients since 2003.
Surgeons take islet cells from a donor pancreas to restore normal
insulin production.
The Robbinses learned about Emory’s
active program in diabetes research through their involvement with
the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). Jim served as
chairman of the international organization, and Debby was a long-time
officer in the Atlanta chapter. Emory’s JDRF Center was created
and funded in 2002 through a $4.1 million grant from JDRF to address
rejection of donor islets by the patient’s immune system.
In 2005, the foundation contributed another $8.5 million to advance
islet transplantation to become a mainstream therapy for type 1
diabetes.
Several projects are focusing on refining
acceptance of the transplants without long-term immunosuppression.
One tack researchers are taking for islet transplant recipients
is a study of the safety and effectiveness of Efalizumab, a drug
from a new class of therapeutic agents not previously used in transplants.
They also are focusing on anti-inflammatory strategies for islet
engraftment, the process in which islets become incorporated into
the patient’s own system.
Scientists at Emory’s Yerkes
National Primate Research Center are exploring methods of inducing
tolerance to allogeneic islet transplants (islets from within the
same species). They also are using nonhuman primates to test the
use of xenotransplantation, islets transplanted from other species.
The goal of all these studies is to
address rejection of donor islets by the immune system—a goal
shared by the Robbins family. |
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oraine
Williams and her late husband, Tom, always believed in the value
of Emory heart care. When they needed heart services themselves,
they turned to Emory for help: Loraine underwent valve replacement
and open heart surgery at Emory, and Tom had bypass surgery. It’s
fitting, then, that when the
Williamses decided to support a worthy cause, they chose Emory once
again.
They made their first gift to medicine
at Emory nearly 10 years ago. Today, the couple’s donations
have grown to more than $500,000.
Because of a recent gift Loraine Williams
made to Emory’s heart services, the anticoagulation management
clinic at 1525 Clifton Road has been named in honor of her husband,
who died of thyroid cancer in 2002. At the Thomas R. Williams Anticoagulation
Clinic, patients who take blood thinners receive the close monitoring
they need to live healthy lives.
"This is a wonderful service
that Emory is providing to patients," says Williams, who is
a patient of the anticoagulation clinic herself. "They follow
up on you and enable you to lead a normal life. It’s lifesaving."
Tom Williams, a well-known Atlanta
business leader who served as chairman of Wachovia Bank and First
Atlanta, was an Emory trustee emeritus. His philanthropy lives on
through his wife.
"It’s because of people
like the Williamses that we can continue to improve our patient
care," says Dean Thomas Lawley. "It’s because
of their faith and investment in Emory that we can continue to recruit
the best and brightest minds here to find more answers." —Terry
McIntosh |
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n
many ways, Ben Rechler is a typical teenage boy. He likes sports,
both watching and playing them. In fact, he’s the goalie for
a highly competitive boy’s soccer team on Long Island and
an outfielder in a local baseball league, sometimes fitting practice
for both into a single day. But unlike many 13-year-olds, Rechler
already has stepped up to the philanthropy plate to help others.
He recently gave a donation from his bar mitzvah money to the Emory
Vaccine Center.
During his bar mitzvah service, he
spoke about his decision. "The Emory Vaccine Center is a research
facility working hard to find a cure for AIDS. I chose this because
a very close friend of me and my family is suffering from this disease.
Everyone that knows this
person loves him because he is the nicest person you will ever meet.
Not only that, but he helps everyone that is sick even when he is
sick, so I think that it is time for me to help him."
The family friend to whom Rechler
refers is Andrew Lipschitz, one of the first physicians in the country
to contract HIV from a needle stick in the mid-1980s. Lipschitz,
who is no longer in private practice, serves as the scientific adviser
for Concerned Parents for AIDS Research. When Ben Rechler was looking
for a worthy cause to support, Lipschitz directed him to Emory.
Rechler’s first gift to
the Vaccine Center was taken from a portion of his Chanukah present
in 2004. His sister, Willi, also donated her Chanukah money to the
center, which was doubled by a contribution from the children’s
parents, Mitchell and Debbie Rechler. The Rechlers are committed
to instilling in their children a culture of giving. Likewise, Ben’s
uncle, Roger Rechler, matched his nephew’s bar mitzvah donation
to Emory with one of his own.
The family examples are taking hold
with young Ben. He worked for a full year with his rabbi on preparing
his bar mitzvah speech and on practicing to make the milestone perfect.
At the Friday night service when he delivered his remarks, he read
from notes. But according to Ben’s father, the most touching
part of the service came during the thank-yous when Ben discovered
a page of his speech was missing. "Well, you know me, and
I’ve misplaced my notes," he improvised. "But I
don’t need any notes to thank my wonderful parents, who I
love." He went on to say how much he appreciated his parents
and their example. Now the seventh-grader is setting his own example. |
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Dean
Thomas Lawley lends a hand in clearing the site for the medical
school’s new education facility, now under construction.
As of April 2006, the medical school had raised $37 million
in commitments for the 162,000-square-foot building, which
is scheduled to open in late 2007.
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