Six at Yale named to Institute of Medicine

Top honor goes to experts in drug development, diabetes, obesity, neuroscience and genetics.

Six Yale researchers, five from the School of Medicine and one from the School of Nursing, were elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies in October. Their election brings the number of Yale scholars in the IOM to 37, including two at the School of Management and one at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

“It is unprecedented in recent memory that so many from our institution have been elected in a single year,” said Dean Robert J. Alpern, M.D., Ensign Professor of Medicine. Previously, according to IOM records, no more than three Yale scientists had been elected in one year. These elections, Alpern said, give Yale one of the highest concentrations of members of any institution in the nation.

The six were honored at a reception in the Medical Historical Library in December.

Elected this year are Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., chair and professor of psychology, professor of epidemiology and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity; Pietro De Camilli, M.D., FW ’79, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Cell Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; Margaret Grey, R.N., Dr.Ph., the Annie Goodrich Professor of Nursing and dean of the School of Nursing; Joseph Schlessinger, Ph.D., the William H. Prusoff Professor of Pharmacology and chair of pharmacology; Gerald I. Shulman, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and of cellular and molecular physiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; and Joan A. Steitz, Ph.D., Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry.

Brownell is perhaps best known for his efforts to curb obesity, which form part of his studies of the intersections of behavior, environment and health. De Camilli is a cell biologist interested in understanding molecular mechanisms in presynaptic function and the role of phosphoinositide metabolism in the regulation of membrane traffic. Schlessinger’s lab studies the mode of action of growth factor receptors and the intracellular signaling pathways that are activated by growth factor stimulation. Shulman is an expert on the mechanisms of insulin resistance, the role of the liver and muscle in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes and the benefits of exercise in diabetes management. Steitz discovered snRNPs, small particles in cells that are necessary to convert genetic information into active proteins. Grey is renowned for her studies of adaptation to chronic illness in childhood, particularly in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus.

The Yale researchers are among 64 new members elected to the IOM in 2005. The IOM was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to honor professional achievement in the health sciences and to serve as a national resource for independent analysis and recommendations on issues related to medicine, biomedical sciences and health.

—John Curtis

A son of Yale and the medical school receives AYA’s highest honor

At the end of World War II, Nicholas P.R. Spinelli, M.D. ’44, took leave from his Army unit in Germany and hitched a ride on a cargo plane to Rome. From there he traveled to Faeto, a village in southern Italy overlooking the Adriatic Sea that his parents had left 30 years earlier, where the villagers celebrated the arrival of their native son. “I was there for three nights,” Spinelli said. “I had to make rounds and visit every sick person in the village.”

His triumphant return to his family’s ancestral community was the result of his parents’ belief in education and Spinelli’s own belief in the value of his education at Yale, where he earned his undergraduate and medical degrees. Had they stayed in Italy, Spinelli said, his parents would never have been able to educate their yet-unborn children, Nicholas and his sister, Viola, M.P.H. ’65. “Education was a passion with both my parents. That was why they were working so hard,” he said.

Throughout his career Spinelli has shown his loyalty to Yale by raising money for the school, establishing with his classmates a scholarship fund, serving as the medical school’s director of alumni affairs and sponsoring the first White Coat ceremony in 1992.

In November the Association of Yale Alumni awarded Spinelli the Yale Medal, which, since 1952, has honored outstanding service to the university. In this recognition, Spinelli joins such other medical school graduates and faculty as pediatrician Grover F. Powers, M.D.; Russell B. Scobie, M.D. ’29; William L. Kissick, M.D. ’57, M.P.H. ’59, Dr.Ph. ’61; Muriel D. Wolf, M.D. ’59, HS ’60; and the legendary Dean Milton C. Winternitz, M.D.

Spinelli’s path to Yale began in Stratford, Conn., where his parents had settled. His father ran a succession of businesses, including a gas station and restaurant on the Boston Post Road, the main thoroughfare between New York and Boston.

In 1937 Spinelli entered Yale College, planning to become a writer. At the end of his freshman year, however, he took a job in a biology laboratory, where a professor encouraged him to study medicine, and in the fall of 1941 he entered the School of Medicine.

A few months later, while preparing for an anatomy exam, he heard President Roosevelt announce on the radio that the nation was at war. Spinelli and his 42 classmates were inducted into the Army, and their medical education was accelerated to meet wartime needs. Upon his discharge Spinelli returned to Stratford to practice internal medicine. A heart attack forced his retirement in 1958, but he began a second career as director of medical education at Bridgeport Hospital. In the 1980s his second career gave way to a third career as director of alumni affairs at the medical school. His main concern there was what he called “incubating alumni,” strengthening relations with students and bringing them into the fold by including them in alumni events. At that time he helped create the Committee on the Well-Being of Students, which makes a report each year on issues of concern to students.

Perhaps his greatest gift to the medical school was his proposal to his classmates at their 40th reunion in 1984. He asked them to contribute to a scholarship fund over the next decade. By then, he said, the fund would be large enough to offer its first scholarship. In 1994, with 100 percent participation from the class, the fund paid half the expenses of a first-year student. Eleven years later the fund was supporting up to three students through their first year.

“I have gotten letters from students who have been given the scholarship, saying how important it was and how they couldn’t have gone to medical school without it,” Spinelli said.

For his service to Yale, Spinelli received the Distinguished Alumni Service Award from the Association of Yale Alumni in Medicine in 1987 and the Peter Parker Medal in 1994. In recognition of his contributions to the medical school, two rooms were named in Spinelli’s honor in 2000, the medical school’s Office of Alumni Affairs and one at the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven.

But no honor, he said, surpasses the first he received from the university when he was 16 years old. “The greatest gift I got was the letter saying I was accepted to Yale.”

—J.C.

From Student Research Day to a scholarly publication and The Wall Street Journal

Last May at Student Research Day, Hardean Achneck, M.D. ’05, described a link between atherosclerosis and aortic aneurysms. The aneurysms, he found, seemed to protect against atherosclerosis, a deadly form of arteriosclerosis.

By summer’s end Achneck’s research was published in the journal Chest and reported in The Wall Street Journal. Achneck was first author of the journal paper; the senior author was his advisor, John A. Elefteriades, M.D. ’76, HS ’81, FW ’83, professor and chief of cardiothoracic surgery. “I am very happy to see the results become so well-received,” said Achneck, now a surgical resident at Duke University School of Medicine.

The research began years ago and arose from repeated observations in the operating room. “Operating every day we noticed that in patients with aneurysms at the top of the chest, their arteries were pristine,” said Elefteriades. “They were like babies’ arteries, teen-agers’ arteries.” Typically, he said, even men in their early 20s have fatty streaks and plaque in their arteries.

Elefteriades has long welcomed medical students working on their theses, and he first assigned this project to Biren P. Modi, M.D. ’02. With the research still ongoing when Modi graduated, Achneck picked up the project and spent a fifth year at Yale working on it.

Literature searches, he said, yielded no articles exploring the links between two types of aneurysms located in the ascending aorta—annuloaortic ectasia and type A dissection—and atherosclerosis. The next step was to find 64 patients with both types of aneurysm, and a control group of 84 patients with no history of aneurysms. The control patients came from the emergency department, where they had received treatment for trauma and had had CT scans of their chests.

The patients who had aneurysms, the study found, were less likely to have atherosclerosis. This was independent of all common risk factors for atherosclerosis. “It was a statistically powerful finding,” Elefteriades said, adding that it fits with the results of laboratory research. “There are some strains of rodents that have been developed that are prone to aneurysms, and they are protected from arteriosclerosis.”

Why and how aneurysms offer protection from atherosclerosis remains unclear. Elefteriades and his colleagues are looking at enzymes called matrix metalloproteases (MMPS), which degrade material that accumulates on arterial walls. “It may be, and this is not proven,” said Achneck, “that some of these MMPS are causing aneurysms on the one hand and chewing up atherosclerosis on the other.

The gene for MMP3 is on a section of chromosome 11 that is known to cause mutations that increase the risk of aortic aneurysms. Elefteriades and colleagues are working with Celera Diagnostics to explore the underlying genetics.

Since his graduation Achneck has been focusing on his residency. “I’m trying to survive,” he said.

—John Curtis

Kessler portrait unveiled

David A. Kessler, M.D., former dean of the medical school, returned to the Sterling Hall of Medicine in December for the unveiling of his official portrait by artist Richard Whitney. At a ceremony in the Historical Library, colleagues and Yale President Richard C. Levin lauded the achievements of Kessler’s tenure from 1997 to 2003, specifically the construction of the Anlyan Center for Medical Research and Education and the recruitment of 11 department chairs. Kessler said that although the portrait is of one person, many people contributed to his accomplishments as dean. “These things do not happen alone,” he said.

New five-year public health program gives undergrads a head start

Yale junior Sarah Milby has always been interested in pursuing a career in public health and community development, and a new joint-degree program may be able to give her a head start. Milby, a premed and history of science/ medicine major, plans on being one of the first applicants to a new five-year joint-degree program that will allow her to earn a B.A. or B.S. at Yale College and an M.P.H. from the Yale School of Public Health (EPH). “I’m so excited to start preparing for my career in public health as a senior,” she said.

The program is designed to give students a broad understanding of the factors that shape public health and to equip them with the tools necessary to address public health issues, such as the fight against chronic disease and the impact of environmental stressors on human health. It is open to all undergraduates, regardless of their major. Students would normally apply to EPH during the spring of their sophomore year, but juniors may also apply this spring, when the first wave of applications will be considered.

Developed over the past two years, the program is a response to increasing student interest in the field of public health and serves as an alternative to the two-year master’s program already in place. “There has been evident a very large demand on the part of undergraduates, who are agitating for more course experiences and educational opportunities that allow them to take their classroom knowledge and put it into more concrete and applied settings,” said Mark J. Schlesinger, Ph.D., director of undergraduate studies at EPH and professor in the Division of Health Policy and Administration. He also views the program as an opportunity for EPH to connect itself more extensively with Yale College.

In addition to completing the requirements for their undergraduate major, students in the new program will complete six public health courses, such as health policy, biostastics and principles of epidemiology, during their junior and senior years. Between the fourth and fifth year they will complete a public health internship, and during the fifth year they will be enrolled full-time at EPH in one of the school’s eight divisions, where they will complete 10 courses and a master’s thesis.

The five-year program and a new one-year mid-career program for health care professionals will bring both older and younger students to EPH. “Each group will bring its own distinctive resources into the classroom,” said Schlesinger. “I think it will make the classroom experience much richer for all the students.”

For undergrads who are anxious to begin earning a graduate degree in public health while working toward their bachelor’s degree, the combined program is a welcome addition. “I want to start my life and make a difference,” said Milby. “That’s why this is just too good to be true.”

—Jill Max

et cetera

German pharma funds research

The School of Medicine and Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BIPI), the Ridgefield, Conn.-based division of the German pharmaceutical firm, have formed an alliance to explore treatments for cardiovascular, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Under the agreement, formalized last July, BIPI will fund research projects at Yale, several of which are already under way. The projects are investigating the role of inflammation in organ rejection and atherosclerosis; channels that admit calcium into immune system cells; enzymes that act in the kidneys to regulate salt and fluid balance; and the formation of new blood vessels in the heart.

“Yale, with its excellence in immunology and cardiovascular research, offers a real opportunity for mutual benefit,” said Mikael Dolsten, M.D., Ph.D., head of corporate division pharma research at BIPI’s world headquarters in Ingelheim, Germany.

BIPI will work with scientists in the Section of Immunobiology and in the Interdepartmental Program in Vascular Biology and Transplantation.

—Peter Farley

Brain data on the Internet

In an effort to help neuroscientists quickly find the latest information about the brain, the National Institutes of Health has established a consortium to design a Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF). The consortium includes scientists at Yale, the California Institute of Technology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, George Mason University and the University of California at San Diego.

The NIF will help guide scientists to resources on the Internet by identifying software tools and data, developing language to describe the resources and placing them in a Web-accessible database. “To use this information effectively, neuroscientists need to be able to locate the latest research results that are relevant to the particular behavior they are studying or neurological disease they are treating,” said Gordon M. Shepherd, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and neurobiology and a member of the Yale team.

—J.C.


			Originally published in Yale Medicine, Spring 2006. Copyright © 2006 Yale University School of Medicine. All rights reserved.