Dear Medical College of Georgia Friends,

Impacts of Hurricane Helene will be felt for years to come

Today, I struggle with the right words to put into perspective the heartbreaking devastation caused by Hurricane Helene. The loss of precious lives, property and basic infrastructure caused by this historic storm, here and across the Southeast, are things that I know many of us are still struggling to come to terms with. I’ll echo President Keen’s sentiments by saying that there was no way we could have anticipated how Helene would impact our community. But, like him, I am consistently amazed, but not surprised, by your continual willingness to serve and support people in the best ways you know how. 

Faculty, staff, students step in to serve where they are needed most

This is by no means a comprehensive list of the people who deserve thanks but are just a few examples of the ways people stepped up. When the storm cleared and daylight revealed the destruction, the University’s Emergency Response Team jumped almost immediately into action and continually communicated with us all on the status of our campuses. Our facilities team kept our basic infrastructure afloat and quickly cleaned up debris around campus. As soon as it was possible, Ron Booth, Daryl Bullock and Jamey Holloway, among others, worked to get the chillers on to start cooling our research buildings and the power back on in the Harrison Commons, providing a cool place for our students to gather when they safely could. Lab Animal Services, led by Doug Taylor and Levi Trusty, and many others kept our animals fed and watered, coming in daily. Many of our basic science chairs and their staff walked the halls of our research buildings and propped open doors to relieve the heat in the building.

Dr. Jennifer Tucker, our associate dean of student affairs, was in constant contact with our students from day one, and our curriculum team, led by Dr. Shilpa Brown, worked to quickly reorganize curriculum and minimize the impact of campus being closed. Some of our medical students created a system to check on their classmates and organized volunteer efforts and donations – some even made trips back and forth to their hometowns outside of Augusta so they could bring in supplies. Faculty, many facing heavy damage to their own homes, came in to care for our patients and students. All of our regional campus deans offered to take our students at their campuses – Dr. Paul Brock, associate dean at our Northwest Campus in Rome, offered and opened up his home.

I know there are many more examples that I am missing here. I could go on and on, but please know that I appreciate each and every one of your efforts to get us through this extremely difficult time with resiliency and strength. We will all rebuild together.

Dr. Meghan McGee-Lawrence named chair of Department of Cellular Biology and Anatomy

Needless to say, we could all use some good news this week.

You know I am always fascinated by the things I learn about our faculty and their diverse backgrounds. Like when I found out recently how Dr. Meghan McGee-Lawrence, a biomedical engineer in our Department of Cellular Biology and Anatomy, got interested in studying bone and muscle mass – by studying hibernating bears, of all things. While these mammals remain dormant for months at a time, their bodies are somehow able to prevent the loss of bone and muscle mass that is associated with disuse. That’s something humans cannot do. Dr. McGee-Lawrence has dedicated her career to better understanding how our bodies regulate the maintenance and regeneration of bone, and corresponding biomechanical strength, in both aging and disease. She is national leader in her field, a well-published and well-funded researcher in her own right, and someone who places tremendous value on mentorship and the success of others. She champions collaboration across MCG’s departments, centers and institutes and truly believes what a group of investigators can achieve together is so much better than what one scientist can do in a silo.

Since this past March she has also expertly led her department as interim chair. In seven short months she has already recruited new educators and researchers, overseen renovations for the gross anatomy lab and initiated a graduate certificate training program for anatomical science educators. I can think of no one better to lead the department on a permanent basis, so I am happy to tell you that on Oct. 1, she was officially named chair, aka the “Hurricane” chair. I look forward to her continued leadership and working with her to further MCG’s educational and research goals.

$5.7 million in new NIH funding will help delineate causes of HIV-associated cardiovascular complications

While we’re on the subject of the well-respected researchers we’re privileged to have here at MCG and the truly impactful work they’re doing on a daily basis, I wanted to share the news of two new National Institutes of Health grants, totaling nearly $5.7 million, that will help our scientists better understand the mechanisms of two cardiovascular complications associated with HIV. As you all likely know, thanks to the advent of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), which uses a combination of three or more drugs to stop the virus from replicating in the body, life expectancy of people living with HIV has dramatically increased. In fact, most people living with HIV no longer die from opportunistic disease, but instead cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Eric Belin de Chantemele, from our Vascular Biology Center, is principal investigator on a new $2.7 million grant to help better understand why people living with HIV experience an earlier than normal onset and higher prevalence of hypertension, the leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease. He theorizes that HIV-derived proteins that remain in circulation despite cART treatment and a well-controlled viral load are a contributing factor. In a transgenic mouse model of HIV, he has been able to show these proteins increase circulating Interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1 alpha), which plays a key role in the body’s immune response and inflammation. That in turn, impairs endothelium-dependent relaxation, essentially how our blood vessels to relax, and increases sympathetic activity (the way our bodies respond to stress), which leads to hypertension. Inhibiting T cell activation in a mouse model resulted in restored blood pressure and improved endothelial function. With this new funding he wants to see if those findings continue to hold true. He also theorizes that IL-1 alpha itself accelerates vascular aging and promotes hypertension by promoting excessive reactive oxygen species, which is damaging to vascular endothelial cells.

Second grant aimed at understanding the mechanisms of HIV-associated pulmonary vascular disease

Dr. Belin de Chantemele and Dr. Laszlo Kovacs, from our Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, are also principal investigators on another new $3 million grant to study one of the most devastating cardiovascular complications of HIV – pulmonary vascular disease (PVD). Specifically, they’re hoping to better understand the how and why behind the structural changes in the walls of pulmonary arteries that are a hallmark of this disease. They theorize that those still-circulating HIV-derived proteins are also a root cause of that remodeling. They have early evidence that is the case and have identified at least one of those proteins as a new marker for the development of PVD.

The overarching goal of both of these grants is to identify new therapeutic targets to prevent this number one killer of people living with HIV. More to come soon on their findings on the MCG homepage. 

Dr. Danielle Mor receives $2.3 million from National Institutes of Health High-Risk, High-Reward Research program

In keeping with the theme of recent research wins, I wanted to also tell you all that Dr. Danielle Mor, a neuroscientist in our Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine, will receive $2.3 million in funding as part of the National Institutes of Health High-Risk, High-Reward Research program. She was one of only 40 scientists across the country to receive a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, which, as the name implies, supports unusually innovative research from early career investigators who are within 10 years of receiving their terminal degree or completing their residency program and who have not yet received an NIH R01 or equivalent grant. I think “yet” is the operative word here. Here’s why:

Dr. Mor’s focus is a sticky, toxic form of the protein alpha-synuclein, which gums up the work of our neurons and kills them — a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. She wants to find out how and why that happens and uses the small nematode, C. elegans, as her tool. These roundworms are transparent throughout their lives, and despite their size of about .039 inches, have a gene number and gene pool similar to humans. By using a combination of RNA-sequencing, imaging, and high-throughput genetic and drug screening approaches, and because of their small size and lifelong transparency, Dr. Mor and her lab team can watch this “gumming up” happen over and over in real time, identify the genetic regulators involved and determine the efficacy of novel treatments – all at the same time. That bold scope is exactly what makes her research inherently risky, but certainly high-reward, especially for the estimated 1 million people living with Parkinson’s in the United States alone. Congratulations Dr. Mor. 

Inaugural MCG Clinical Conversation & Educator Engagement Series event planned for Oct. 18th in Rome

It is a top priority of mine to find more ways we can show our appreciation to our community clinical faculty, who are essential to helping us carry out our educational mission across the state. We truly could not do what we exist to do without their help. We know one way is by working to strengthen the connection between community faculty “out there” and the clinical departments “back here” at our main campus in Augusta. This was a hot topic at our annual Statewide Faculty Development Conference in Jekyll Island last June. I am happy to tell you that an idea first introduced there, the MCG Clinical Conversation & Educator Engagement Series, will come to fruition Oct. 18 in Rome. This first event in the series will feature presentations and discussions of clinical cases by MCG Department of Surgery faculty, Northwest Georgia community physicians, and students, highlighting the synergy between academic and community practice. There will also be faculty development opportunities.

Initially planned as a small gathering of 20-30 community faculty, the event has grown to over 80 participants (and counting) from various specialties, as well as faculty from graduate medical education programs across the northwest region of our state. This is just the start and I’m sure will serve as the model for future engagement series at other regional campuses. It certainly sets a high standard for quality and collaborative clinical education. My thanks to Dr. Paul Brock, Department of Surgery Chair, Dr. Will Jordan and Dr. Michelle Krupp, our associate dean for faculty development, for making this idea a reality.

Please continue to take care of each other,

David C. Hess, MD

Dean, Medical College of Georgia

Upcoming Events

October 25 – MCG Faculty Senate Meeting, noon, J. Harold Harrison, MD Education Commons, GB1110

October 26 – MCG White Coat Ceremony, 2pm, William B. Bell Auditorium

November 15 – Annual Body Donor Memorial Service, 1pm, Natalie and Lansing B. Lee Jr. Auditorium

November 15 – MCG Research Day, 4-6pm, , J. Harold Harrison, MD Education Commons, GB1120-D