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 IDS prevention and treatment received a significant boost this fall when the NIH named the Emory/Atlanta Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) as an official NIH CFAR site. The designation comes with a three-year, $2.3 million grant to Emory, the AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta (ARCA), and their primary collaborators. The Emory/Atlanta CFAR joins five other newly designated NIH CFARS nationwide as well as 11 existing centers.
Given the high incidence of AIDS in Georgia and Emory's growing ranks of nationally known AIDS researchers, the CFAR designation is especially significant. Since the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, Georgia ranks eighth among states for cumulative AIDS cases (17,004) reported. And in 1996, Atlanta reported more AIDS cases than San Francisco, Newark, Baltimore, or Boston. The good news is that Emory already has grants totaling more than $15 million annually for HIV/AIDS research and training. In addition, ARCA has an annual budget of $2.5 million from the NIH, industry, and the CDC. The Emory/Atlanta CFAR will take Emory's work even a step further with an unprecedented collaboration of academic, public health, government, and private AIDS researchers and clinicians, says James Curran, dean of the Rollins School of Public Health and director and principle investigator of the new CFAR. Four components of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center will participate - the schools of medicine, public health, and nursing, and Yerkes Primate Center - as well as one of its major affiliates, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Another collaborator will be Morehouse School of Medicine. |
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 ur growing expertise in AIDS research and education will soon help scientists in other countries, thanks to support from the NIH's Fogarty International Center. Newly tapped by the NIH as an AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP), Emory will seek to enhance HIV/AIDS research capabilities in Mexico, Vietnam, and the Republic of Georgia.
Fogarty Fellows from those countries will take courses leading to graduate degrees and postdoctoral research training and will also offer Emory medical, public health, and graduate students opportunities to collaborate in their homelands. Carlos del Rio, associate professor of medicine, is principal investigator for the five-year AITRP grant and director of the program. The Emory AITRP program will be officially launched at the Emory-Mexico symposium on HIV/AIDS Research in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in January. |
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n electronic device implanted in the brain of severely impaired patients may someday help them speak again through a computer and even move their limbs and other body parts.
Emory neurosurgeon Roy Bakay and neuroscience colleague Phillip Kennedy developed neurotrophic electrodes that were successfully implanted into the brains of two severely impaired patients at Emory University Hospital. Both patients could think clearly but couldn't communicate. The electrode is implanted into the motor cortex of the brain using a tiny glass encasing. When the neurons in the brain "fire," they send an electronic signal from ingrown brain tissue to a receiver and amplifier outside the scalp. Those neural signals drive a computer cursor the way a mouse does. "The trick is teaching the patient to control the strength and pattern of the electric impulses in the brain," Bakay says. "After training, they can 'will' a cursor to move to certain icons, send e-mail, turn a light on or off, and interact with the environment." One patient at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center is paralyzed except for his face due to brainstem stroke after a heart attack. He is dependent on a ventilator and cannot speak. Implanted six months ago with the electrode, the patient now can move the cursor to icons, which represent phrases that the computer speaks. The patient's favorite is "See you later. Nice talking with you." Cognitive engineering has huge implications for more than 700,000 Americans who have strokes each year and thousands more who suffer from spinal cord injuries and debilitating diseases. The neurotrophic electrode technology was developed and tested in animals over the past 12 years through a collaboration between Emory and Georgia Tech. |
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 n a bold move to capture a larger market share, Emory Healthcare and Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation are teaming up to create the most comprehensive health care delivery system in metropolitan Atlanta. The agreement, signed in early November and expected to go into effect in early 1999, will include eight Atlanta area acute care hospitals and five surgery centers owned by Columbia/ HCA and its affiliates in the Emory Healthcare system.
The new agreement provides for creation of a Limited Liability Company (LLC) overseen by a board jointly governed by Emory Healthcare and Columbia/HCA. Through the LLC, Emory will be responsible for clinical management and quality assurance in the 13 facilities and Columbia/HCA will be responsible for the management of the day-to-day operations of the facilities. "The goals of both organizations are to forge a strong alliance between the private practice physicians on the medical staffs of these hospitals and Emory's physicians," says Michael Johns, executive vice president for health affairs and CEO of Emory Healthcare. The new partnership will create unique efficiencies in delivering care to patients and enhance opportunities for managed care contracting, marketing, and strategic planning. The Columbia/HCA hospitals - Cartersville Medical Center, Dunwoody Medical Center, Eastside Medical Center, Metropolitan Hospital, Northlake Regional Medical Center, Parkway Medical Center, Peachtree Regional Hospital, and West Paces Medical Center - are all JCAHO accredited, one with commendation, and 92% of their physicians are board eligible or board certified. The hospitals will retain their same employees and medical staffs. Eventually, the Emory Healthcare name will be included in their signage and materials. The five ambulatory surgery centers - Atlanta Outpatient Surgery Center, Atlanta Outpatient Specialty Services, Atlanta Outpatient Peachtree Dunwoody, Marietta Surgical Center, and Northlake Surgical Center - will retain their local names, employees, and medical staffs. Existing Emory Healthcare facilities and other hospitals or facilities owned by Columbia/HCA elsewhere in Georgia are not included in the arrangement. |
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 o environmental factors trigger cancer genes? Is cancer prevalent in certain populations? What can be done to treat patients with genetic links to cancer?
Emory's Winship Cancer Center will seek answers to such questions as part of the Cancer Genetics Network, a national alliance of eight consortiums. Funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the network will address the psychosocial, ethical, legal, and public health issues associated with inherited susceptibility to cancer. Diseases to be studied are breast, colon, and prostate cancer. The NCI will provide up to $6 million to fund the first year of this initiative. Emory is a member of the Carolina Georgia Consortium, which includes Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We are really only at the beginning of our knowledge of the relationship between genetics and diseases, particularly cancer," says William Wood, interim director of the Winship Cancer Center and Emory's principal investigator for the network. "For the first time, we have the tools to understand this relationship. There is a good possibility we will see some remarkable discoveries through this collaborative endeavor much more quickly than we would have through individual efforts." Participation in the new network augments work already under way in well-established programs at the health sciences center. They address the relationship between cancer and genetics through basic laboratory research, experimental protocols using gene therapy to treat neurologic and liver tumors, genetic screening for breast cancer, and an Oncology Cytogenetics Laboratory that delineates key diagnostic and prognostic markers for blood cancers. In addition Cancer Genetics Network researchers will have access to geneticists at Emory's Center for Molecular Medicine, who are participating in the Human Genome Project and are conducting groundbreaking research on mitochondrial DNA and its relationship to disease. |
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on't chuck the sunscreen, hat, and long sleeves yet, but there's promising work going on here in the fight against one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of skin cancer - malignant melanoma. Emory is one of about 200 sites in the United States involved in clinical trials for GMK, a vaccine that stimulates the production of antibodies that have been shown in vitro to recognize and destroy cancer cells.
"Most patients are cured by surgery, but patients whose tumors are large or who have lymph node involvement are at high risk for recurrence because of residual disease," says Emory medical oncologist David Lawson, one of the national co-chairs for the trial. "There has been long-standing interest in developing vaccines that would prevent the disease from resurfacing." The incidence of malignant melanoma has increased by more than 600% in the past 15 years. Up to 80% of patients treated for later-stage melanoma will experience recurrence of their cancer and die within five years of surgery. For more information about participating in this study, contact Carol Hill, Winship Cancer Center research nurse, at 8-4907. |
  More than 300 Emory graduates have served as Peace Corps volunteers since 1961, as did public health international health associate Jim Setzer, who served his Peace Corps stint in Central Zaire. Setzer will coordinate the new master's international program at Emory. |
 or those with an itch to see the world, help others less fortunate, and get a master's degree at the same time, the Peace Corps and Emory have a new deal that's hard to beat. The Rollins School of Public Health and the Peace Corps are partnering in a Master's International Program in Public Health, and it's a win-win for the university, our students, and the Peace Corps.
The program will enable students seeking a master's of public health to serve as Peace Corps volunteers after one year of course work. With two years of practical field experience as a health volunteer, students will return to Emory for one semester to complete their master's. Emory joins 22 other universities to establish such programs and is the first in Georgia and one of only four schools in the Southeast. "The program is a unique opportunity for students to gain insight into their area of study while improving lives in communities in which they serve," says James Curran, dean of the school of public health. Each year the Peace Corps places more than 3,500 volunteers overseas in more than 80 countries. Currently, more than 400 volunteers serve as health educators in 34 countries in Africa, Asia, Central Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Most work is in maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and water sanitation. |
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 esponding to a national shortage of skilled investigators in clinical research as well as internal demand, Emory's schools of medicine and public health have launched a new graduate school program leading to a Master of Science in Clinical Research degree. The collaborative program was created to assist Emory clinicians - from post-doc fellows and junior faculty to senior faculty and other doctoral scientists - who wish to pursue careers in clinical investigation and clinical evaluation.
Led by professors David Stephens, medicine, and John Boring, epidemiology, the new program will consist of approximately three semesters of courses in biostatistics, bioethics, analytic methods, and essentials of clinical research. A mentored thesis project will follow, in such fields as mechanisms of human disease, epidemiologic and behavior studies, outcomes research, or health services research. Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Michael Johns provided funding to launch the new effort, and Stephens and Boring will seek NIH support to expand the program to more students. Three students began the two-year program this fall, with the goal of ultimately 15 to 20 students admitted each year. |
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 he Woodruff Health Sciences Center led the way in attracting research dollars to Emory during the 1998 fiscal year, with $154.4 million - 94% of the record-breaking $164.9 million that came to the university. Grants to the medical school totaled $112.6 million in FY98, up 5% over the previous year. The Rollins School of Public Health recorded $19.9 million, up 17% from FY97, and Yerkes attracted $20.4 million, up 20%. With the conclusion of several major grants, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, whose research program is still in its infancy, recorded grants of some $635,500.
In FY 98, Emory researchers requested $307.7 million in 1,915 proposals. While just 33 more proposals were submitted than the year before, the total dollar amount requested increased 17%. In the past 11 years, Emory's sponsored research base has increased more than 300%. |
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 ardiac surgery can be even safer and costs reduced significantly by filtering leucocytes from blood, a new randomized study of 400 open-heart surgery patients shows. Filtering white blood cells also significantly decreases length of hospital stay. |
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One of the greatest problems with open-heart surgery is inflammatory injury, says John Parker Gott, chief of cardiac surgery at Emory Hospital and the study's lead investigator. Inflammatory injury occurs when the patient's blood is circulated through a heart-lung machine and returned to the patient. "The procedure we found most associated with a good outcome in the majority of people was filtration of the white blood cells from all blood products that are transfused, including the patient's own blood." The study also found a 20% decrease in length of stay (5.4 days versus 6.8 days) and a significant decrease in mean patient charges ($33,000 versus $39,000) for a majority of patients when leukocyte reduction filters were used. "Multiply a $3,000 to $6,000 savings in hospital costs per patient by about 300,000 patients who undergo cardiopulmonary bypass each year in the US, and you can imagine the great savings," Gott says.
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Copyright © Emory University, 1998. All Rights Reserved.
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Web version by Jaime Henriquez.