Elena Fuentes-Afflick, MD, MPH Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
This lecture has been postponed as a result of the lapse in federal funding and will be rescheduled for later this year.
Dr. Fuentes-Afflick, Chief Scientific Officer for the AAMC, Association of Medical Schools, will present information about historical trends in the U.S. biomedical research workforce. She will highlight the unique characteristics of specific subgroups of biomedical researchers and will lead a discussion of strategies to support the biomedical research workforce.
Andrew Hyland, PhD Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
Andrew Hyland from the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York will describe cigarette use patterns over time, present research identifying cigarette smoking as a major contributor to chronic disease and describe factors increase our understanding why people smoke and what reduces cigarette smoking in the population. He will also highlight the PATH Study, a key component of the national data collection infrastructure, that has made significant scientific advances to understand the nature of tobacco use and its impacts.
Tissue engineering began with the premise that biomaterial environments could be designed to instruct cell behavior and rebuild tissues. Early work in my laboratory focused on designing biomaterial scaffolds that controlled stem cell survival, differentiation, and tissue formation. It established how physical, chemical, and mechanical cues regulate cell fate. The desire to translate to the clinic, shifted our tissue engineering strategy from building replacement tissues toward engineering endogenous repair.
How did we move from a world in which discrimination against women was not recognized as an issue, in which women were routinely and legally fired when they were married or when they became pregnant, and in which they could not always get a credit card in their name or pick their own name legally, to the world we now live in, however imperfect?
Erol Fikrig, MD Yale University School of Medicine
Tick immunity is the process be which an animal acquires resistance to tick bites. We will examine how acquired tick resistance develops and how it can be used to prevent tick-borne illnesses, such as Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis and Powassan virus infection.
Learning Objectives:
1. To understand how acquired tick resistance can be used to prevent tick-borne diseases.
2. To understand how exoproteome screening can be used to elucidate arthropod-pathogen-host interactions.
Sue Bodine, Ph.D. Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation
Regular physical activity is a cornerstone of health and wellness, yet the impact of exercise on molecular signaling within and across tissues remains poorly understood. The Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC) is funded by the NIH Common Fund and has a primary goal of developing a molecular map of the response to both acute and chronic exercise. The ultimate goal of MoTrPAC is to advance the understanding of how physical activity protects against chronic diseases and promotes overall health.
Dean Sheppard, MD University of California, San Francisco
Dr. Sheppard will describe the diversity of fibroblasts in normal lungs and how molecularly defined subsets are located at distinct anatomical locations. In response to alveolar injury, resting alveolar fibroblasts give rise to several novel molecular subsets, including inflammatory, stress activated, fibrotic and proliferating fibroblasts. Deletion of resting alveolar fibroblasts increases the susceptibility of mice to acute lung injury, which is mediated by exaggerated expansion of gamma delta T cells that produce IL-17.
Host cellular enzymes such as kinases, phosphatases, and ubiquitin E3 ligases have been shown to play critical roles in orchestrating antiviral defense programs, such as cytokine (e.g. interferon) responses and autophagy. Moreover, some of these enzymes directly target viral components inducing their degradation or modulating protein activity. A major group of E3 ligases that restrict RNA virus and DNA virus infections is the TRIM (tripartite motif) family of proteins, with >70 members encoded in the human genome.
There is strong interest in discovering and implementing interventions that can improve research practices. Improving research can yield large benefits if it can lead to enhanced efficiency and successful translational potential for scientific investigations. Nevertheless, despite widespread concerns about reproducibility issues and decreasing disruptive innovativeness in diverse scientific fields, most proposed interventions to improve research are procured from expert-based processes rather than evidence-based ones.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, September 2, 2025
