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UMDNJ
M A G A Z I N E
THE UNIVERSITY OF MEDICINE & DENTISTRY OF NEW JERSEY
C O V E R S T O R Y :
S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 2
Building a
BIOLOGY-TECHNOLOGY BRIDGE
A UMDNJ-NJIT partnership
prepares doctoral students for a promising
future.
NEW HEALTH CARE TEAMS IN SOUTH JERSEY
NOVEL COLLABORATION IMPROVES IRONBOUND’S HEALTH
LIVER TRANSPLANT TAKES TEAMWORK
plus
AMAZING SCIENCE

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UMDNJ
S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 2 I S S U E M A G A Z I N E
F E A T U R E S
Making the Rounds in
South Jersey
Patients benefit when teams of
professionals work together. On the
University’s Stratford campus, these
“new” health care teams are not so
brand new anymore.
Spanning the Biology-
Technology Bridge
A young graduate student in the
UMDNJ-NJIT Biomedical
Engineering Doctoral Program is
already making his mark researching bisphosphonates,
commonly prescribed for osteoporosis and cancer, and
also advocating for Newark’s high school students.
Studying City Life
Students in the Urban Health Systems Doctoral
Program have the advantage of tapping into the expertise at
three major Newark schools: UMDNJ-School of Nursing,
Rutgers-Newark, and NJIT.
Engineering New Cells for the Injured Brain
Doctoral student Nolan Skop — collaborating with
his faculty mentors from NJIT and UMDNJ’s New Jersey
Medical School and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
— jumps head-first into what may be the toughest research
challenge of our time.
A Neighborhood’s New Health Outlook
The Jordan & Harris Community Health Center in the
Ironbound section of Newark follows sick patients “every
step of the way” and trains community health workers how
to reach fellow residents with tips on living healthier lives.
When I Grow Up
The Health Science Careers Program, launched almost 20
years ago by the School of Health Related Professions, introduces
high school students to a broad spectrum of career possibilities in
health care and gives them a leg-up in getting there.
O N T H E C O V E R
Joseph Geissler, a graduate student
in the joint UMDNJ-NJIT Biomedical
Engineering Doctoral Program
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36
40
44
48
51
3
20
30
52
56
A Pipeline to Dentistry
If you think you may want to be a dentist, but you’re just not
sure, UMDNJ-New Jersey Dental School welcomes high
school and college students to come on site and “practice.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
Amazing Science
UMDNJ researchers continue to make notable contributions
to the world of science with discoveries that are moving more
quickly from the laboratory into daily life.
A Day in the Life of a Liver Transplant Team
With more than 1,000 transplants to its name, the University
Hospital liver transplant program, launched in 1989, has been
a major success story.
Five Questions with Carolyn Burr
This nurse educator and activist is determined to bring
perinatal transmission of HIV in New Jersey down to zero.
Focus on Jobs
The reputation of UMDNJ’s new program to train
occupational therapy assistants has even preceded its birth.
Update
News from all the UMDNJ campuses.
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s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 1

President (Interim)
DENISE V. RODGERS, MD, FAAFP
Senior Vice President, Public Affairs
JULANE MILLER-ARMBRISTER
Director, University Marketing Communications
BARBARA F. HURLEY
Project Manager / Senior Editor
EVE JACOBS
Editors
MARY ANN LITTELL, MARYANN BRINLEY
Photo Editor
DORIS CORTES-DELGADO
Contributing Writers
CAROLE WALKER, MERRY SUE BAUM
Editorial Assistant
RENEE MILTON
Business Coordinator
PATRICIA A. STALEY
Design
ERIC MILLER + ASSOCIATES
UMDNJ Schools:
UMDNJ-Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS)
UMDNJ-New Jersey Dental School (NJDS)
UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS)
UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS)
UMDNJ-School of Health Related Professions (SHRP)
UMDNJ-School of Nursing (SN)
UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine (SOM)
UMDNJ-School of Public Health (SPH)
UMDNJ’s University Hospitals and Networks:
UMDNJ-University Hospital (UH)
University Behavioral HealthCare (UBHC)
The Cooper Health System
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital
Hackensack University Medical Center
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Medical Center
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Medical Center
University Medical Center at Princeton
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University Heights
65 Bergen Street, P.O. Box 1709, Suite 1328,
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e-mail: umdnjeditor@umdnj.edu
Web site: www.umdnj.edu
For permission to reprint an article,
contact an editor.
UMDNJ Magazine is published twice a year
by the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey.
Its goal is to provide information about New Jersey’s
public university of the health sciences to alumni,
friends and health professionals.
2 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
This issue of UMDNJ Magazine explores a better
way of looking at how health care is delivered —
interprofessionalism — that promises better outcomes
for patients, encourages closer working relationships
among health professionals, and challenges the
traditional model of medical education.
Interprofessionalism is a specific way of
maximizing the potential of teamwork to emphasize
collaborative problem-solving. It’s a new vision for
health care, according to the Institute of Medicine, where a variety of
health professionals work to better serve the patient. Just as important,
it is a process in which different professionals learn from each other
through interaction and communication to achieve a shared objective —
better coordinated and more effective patient care — and ultimately
mutual respect. UMDNJ recently opened the Jordan & Harris
Community Health Center in Newark, a cooperative venture among
three of our schools and, as you will see, a prime example of putting the
process into practice.
The realization that patients benefit from teams that mutually
respect one another and can communicate, collaborate and coordinate
care has indeed challenged traditional medical education and health
care delivery. As New Jersey’s health sciences university, UMDNJ has
responded by preparing future health professionals for the workplace
by embedding the concept of and appreciation for interprofessionalism
in their learning experiences.
For example, dental and medical school faculty have developed
modules dealing with oral health issues that have been successfully
integrated into the osteopathic medical curriculum. Students in our
nationally ranked physician assistant program are working side-by-side
with medical students during hospital rotations. Doctoral students are
studying urban systems in a collaborative program with NJIT and
Rutgers-Newark. And you will also read about biomedical engineering
students whose mentors are NJIT engineers and UMDNJ bioscientists.
Experts note that changes in health care delivery over the last
decade have been driven by a growing emphasis on measurable outcomes,
best practices, continuity of care and cost containment. This has
led in turn to calls for interprofessional models to replace traditional
models both of patient care and health professionals’ education.
As you turn the pages of this magazine, you will see that, from our
classrooms to our research laboratories, UMDNJ has answered the call
to change the way we educate health professionals and the way we
deliver health care. This University will continue its journey to
outstanding as we advance an interprofessional approach to
patient- centered education, research, clinical care and community
service.
Denise V. Rodgers, MD, FAAFP
P R E S I D E N T ( I N T E R I M )

AmazingScience Collaboration drives research.
Scientists work in laboratories, small
communities of investigators who
pool resources to move projects
forward. As technology advances,
scientists also collaborate across universities,
cities, states and countries.
At UMDNJ, collaboration is alive
and well, producing “amazing”
results. In “Amazing Science,” you
can read about some of the remarkable
outcomes of this teamwork.
More Brain
Breakthroughs
MORE THAN 40 chronic stroke patients
have now taken part in a unique study of
whether training with robot-assisted virtual
reality can improve paralyzed hand and
arm functions by rewiring their brains.
Could playing songs on the keyboard of a
virtual piano, hammering down imaginary
pegs, catching birds on a computer
screen to place in a birdbath, or destroying
objects in a fake outer space alter
the landscape of a damaged brain? And
would it work as well as dose-matched,
repetitive practice of a task performed as
a more conventional therapy, which calls
for hours of grueling, one-on-one physical
therapy?
The answer to these two questions
is: Yes. As it turns out, in this kind of
neuro-biological situation, hard work
doesn’t always pay better. “Of course,
the virtual reality (VR) therapy is more
fun,” explains Principal Investigator Alma
Merians, PT, PhD, SHRP chair and professor,
Department of Rehabilitation and
Movement Sciences, “but the real issue
is the intensity. We were able to deliver
the intensity of lots of movement in a
non-grueling way. In a clinical physical
therapy intervention, someone might do
300 repetitions of a movement or exercise.
But even that happens only rarely.”
Patients can usually complete just 85
repetitions of an exercise for about an
hour per day. Meanwhile, “In VR, we can
have people do 2,000 repetitions and
they never even know or feel it because
they are just busy playing a game.”
— continued on page 4
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3

AmazingScience
— continued from page 3
More Brain Breakthroughs
Merians is part of a collaborative
team of researchers from both the
UMDNJ-School of Health Related
Professions (SHRP) Laboratory for
Movement Neuroscience and the New
Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT)
Laboratory for Movement Rehabilitation.
“There is a great deal of overlap and
cross-talk between the teams at UMDNJ
and NJIT. We submit joint publications and
grant applications regularly, serve on the
committees of each other’s students, and
meet several times a week formally and
informally,” explains Eugene Tunik, PT,
PhD, a principal investigator as well as an
SHRP assistant professor of rehabilitation
and movement science. (See box: “Who’s
Who on the VR Team?”)
These engineers, neuroscientists and
physical therapists are still analyzing data
and seeking more stroke survivors to participate
in their study but as the results of
this phase of the clinical trial become
clearer, the team is amazed by how much
their data supports the efficacy of VR.
Tunik says, “Though virtual reality training
is new, at the very least, we see that it
can give you comparable results to conventional
therapy. Additionally, it may
have certain advantages, such as having a
tremendous entertainment and motivational
component to engage the patient, as
well as the ability to provide calculated
4 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
assistance or resistance to movements
and sophisticated visual feedback.”
Merians adds, “The interesting part is
that we are finding therapeutically subtle
and positive differences in the way the
brain changes neuro-biologically with VR
therapy.”
Participants come to UMDNJ first to
have their brains scanned for a pre-training
baseline picture and then head to NJIT
to spend three hours, five days a week in
their lab performing personalized hand and
arm exercises while doing enjoyable virtual
reality tasks in gaming simulations on a
computer. The game library, designed “inhouse,”
as Tunik explains, has 13 options
to suit each patient’s interest, level and
type of impairment. Playing is straightforward.
Yet, “Every action is grounded in
neuroscience with robot-controlled algorithms,”
Tunik says.
Inside the brain, “We know that we
can increase blood flow to very specific
areas that have not been working properly,”
Tunik continues, especially in patients
where the damage is confined to a narrow
or specific part that controls motor function.
In some VR simulations, the participant
sits at a computer using his or her
good hand to play. On the screen, however,
the image is rigged to make it look like
the limb corresponding to the paralyzed
hand is doing the work. By doing so, the
brain is tricked into believing the motionless
limb is moving. “We activate the
motor centers that would be controlling
that bad hand or arm,” Tunik says. “This
is really a robust platform to make
changes in the brain and behavior.”
Meanwhile, Hamid Bagce, an MD-
PhD student at UMDNJ-NJMS and GSBS-
Newark, and other students, have been
using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS) to understand the
effects of the VR training on neural reorganization
in the participants’ brains. They
test the players’ brains before they start
training and after two weeks of training,
as well as a few months later. Bagce
explains, “The VR is producing changes
that are more consistent than what we
see in the control group’s” patients who
are receiving dose-matched repetitive task
practice without VR. While both groups
are showing expansion of brain activity
indicating that multiple areas of the brain
are communicating, the VR participants
are exhibiting more neural interaction and
connectivity even four months after completing
the training.” Bagce says that it
makes him think of studying in med
school. “Two students can learn something
and both get the same grade on a
test but will one of them do better later
on when they have to take the boards
because they have learned it a different
way?” He’s predicting that the VR group
will get the better grade.
A next step for the research is to
look at all this brain re-mapping and
match therapy to individual patients. “For
example,” Bagce says, “someone with a
lesion in their motor-cortex area might
respond better or worse to VR than someone
with a stroke in their sub-cortical
area.” And Tunik agrees, “Our Holy Grail is
to be able to say to a stroke patient,
‘Here are your deficits, your functions and
your brain lesion. Based on this evidence,
we suggest a particular therapy.’”
Who’s Who on the VR Team?
— Maryann Brinley
UMDNJ: Alma Merians, PhD, principal
investigator, chair, SHRP, Department of
Rehabilitation and Movement Sciences; Eugene
Tunik, PhD, principal investigator, SHRP
assistant professor; Hamid Bagce, MD-PhD
student, NJMS and GSBS; Gerry Fluet, PhD
student and faculty member, SHRP;
Mat Yarossi, PhD student
NJIT: Sergei Adamovich, PhD, principal
investigator, associate professor, NJIT,
Department of Biomedical Engineering;
Qinyin Qiu, PhD student; Soha Saleh, PhD
student; Ian Lafond, PhD student

Cognitive Therapy in MS
FEW STUDIES have examined
the effectiveness of memory
retraining in multiple sclerosis
(MS). Previous research in the
lab of Nancy Chiaravalloti, PhD,
Director of Neuropsychology &
Neuroscience Research at
Kessler Foundation, showed that
new learning is significantly
impaired in persons with MS,
but also demonstrated that modified
Story Memory Technique
(mSMT) improves new learning
and memory. And once something
is learned, MS patients can
remember it as well as healthy
individuals.
The mSMT teaches two
related skills, context and
imagery. In 10 one-hour sessions,
patients are taught to apply these
two skills to learning new information.
They work on relating
pieces of information to each
other — context — by putting
several different ideas into a story.
They also learn to form mental
images of verbal information,
picturing an apple instead of
remembering the word. “This
makes verbal learning easier,”
explains Chiaravalloti, “because
it teaches a person to use different
cognitive skills to learn verbal
information, not just remembering
the word but relating it to a
context and forming a mental
image. We have also found that
the person is engaging additional
brain regions when learning new
information in this manner.”
Now a new study by
Chiaravalloti, Associate Professor
in the Department of Physical
Medicine and Rehabilitation at
UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical
School, and a team of Kessler
neuroscientists is the first to
demonstrate that behavioral
interventions can have a positive
effect on brain function in
people with cognitive disability
caused by MS, an important step
in validating the clinical use of
cognitive rehabilitation. Using
functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI), the study
confirmed increased cerebral
activation in patients with MS
following memory retraining
using mSMT. The findings
were published online by the
Journal of Neurology in January.
MS, a nervous system
disease affecting the brain and
spinal cord, damages the myelin
sheath that surrounds and
protects nerve cells. This
damage disrupts messages
between the brain and other
parts of the body, leading to
familiar symptoms of the disease
— muscle weakness and
coordination and balance
difficulties, and cognitive
deficits.
The most frequent cognitive
abnormalities in MS have been
noted in new learning and memory
and processing speed. Thought
processes of the brain are interconnected
to the conscious areas
of the brain via myelinated
nerves. In MS, as the connections
between neurons become
more disrupted, there can be
problems transporting memories
and processing thoughts, thus
creating cognitive difficulties.
The new study used fMRI
to document brain activation
patterns before and after
memory retraining. Chiaravalloti
and her team recruited 16 people
with MS to take part in their
study; eight were randomly
assigned to receive cognitive
behavioral treatment and eight
to receive placebo. Both groups
met twice a week for five weeks
and both used computers. But
only the intervention group was
taught mSMT.
N A N C Y C H I A R AVA L L O T I , P H D
The researchers compared baseline
and post-intervention cerebral
activity in both groups while
performing a memory task. No
differences were seen at baseline,
but following the mSMT
training, the intervention group
had greater activation in specific
brain regions when completing a
memory task than the placebo
group.
According to Chiaravalloti,
this demonstrates that an
effective cognitive rehabilitation
protocol can lead to changes in
the way the brain is actually
processing information. “I hope
this intervention begins to be
used clinically to improve learning
and memory functioning in
MS patients,” she adds. “The
studies we published provide
evidence that mSMT does work
and costs should be covered by
third-party payors. That’s not
the case right now.” She also
urges further study of mSMT
with other patient groups and
exploration of how it can be
combined with other therapies to
maximize the effect.
She is optimistic about the
potential of cognitive therapy to
bring about other changes.
“Individuals with MS tend to be
young at diagnosis, usually
between 20 and 40, and can
present with significant cognitive
problems that negatively impact
their ability to live a full and productive
life,” she notes. “Family
functioning, social interaction
and employment status often are
negatively impacted by the
disease, yet these patients have
many potentially productive
years ahead of them. If we can
improve their cognition, we can
likely improve their overall
quality of life.”
— Barbara Hurley
F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N O N U M D N J S T O R I E S G O T O U M D N J . E D U
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P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G A N D T H I N K S T O C K
AmazingScience
The Female Advantage
WHEN ZOLTAN SPOLARICS talks about
his research on X chromosomes — tiny pieces
of twisted, cellular DNA and protein — and
the unique differences between males and
females, everyone routinely responds with the
word, “Wow.” This Hungarian-born scientist
leans forward in his chair and his enthusiasm is
contagious. He’s into basic and tantalizing
questions about biology here — male versus
female — and he knows it.
“I got here by accident,” he explains. “I
was studying genetic polymorphisms of metabolic
enzymes and cytokines and their effect
on the immune system.” It turns out that the
impact of any genetic polymorphism (small
individual differences in the genetic code) is
different if the gene you are studying is Xlinked,
or located on the X chromosome. This
is because the “behavior” of the X chromosome
in males and females is “trickier and a
little more complicated” than other chromosomes.
The X chromosome carries many more
genes from one generation to the next (1,098
to be exact) than the male Y chromosome (78).
“Everybody was
studying the impact
of polymorphic genes
located on non-sex
chromosomes but the
X chromosome was
being neglected.
This is just one of
the reasons why I
like this area of
research. Here was
this new, exciting and
impressive question
ZOLTAN SPOLARICS, MD,
PHD, NJMS, GSBS,
PROFESSOR, SURGERY
6 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
of how sex regulates
biology and the more
I read the more excited
I got about the
X chromosomes. I
could build a really exciting and novel hypothesis
around this. But it was also lonely and
scary at the start,” Spolarics admits.
A professor in the UMDNJ-New Jersey
Medical School (NJMS) Department of
Surgery, Spolarics earned his MD at
Semmelweis Medical School in1980 and his
PhD at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
in 1986. He fell in love with America during a
post-doc in the Department of Biochemistry,
Medical College of Virginia, and later as an
assistant professor at the Department of
Physiology at Louisiana State University
Medical Center in New Orleans. “New
Orleans was a nice city but it was also a partyall-the-time
kind of place,” not the perfect
atmosphere to raise children. He joined NJMS
in 1993 to investigate the immune systems of
critically-injured patients and he was among
the first researchers to point to the potential
impact of genetic polymorphisms in the clinical
outcome of trauma patients. He chuckles
about the fact that when he was entering
medical school, one of his mentors insisted
that DNA would take “us nowhere because it
is too big and difficult to isolate. Now,” laughs
Spolarics, “it is just shocking how sophisticated
this field has become and how much we
have learned as a result of decoding our
DNA.”
While it has been proposed that the way
X chromosomes are biologically configured
may play a role in autoimmune diseases,
which are more frequent in females than
males, what was scary for Spolarics was that no
one else, to his knowledge, was, or is, looking
at whether the gender differences in the X
chromosomes relate to why women have a
better general health status and an improved
innate-immune response to infection and
injury than men. “When I first started,
because I’m not a geneticist by training, I
wondered, ‘What am I missing? Why is no one
else studying X chromosome differences in
the context of gender and the host response?’”
Many studies addressed gender differences
but only from the hormonal aspect. The
Spolarics lab has a grant for $1,166,880 from
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to
find out how and why the female X chromosomes
works its clinical magic. “Females show
better general health and longer life span than
do males and even in a variety of conditions,
including infections, women do better than
men,” he explains.
While Spolarics is only at the proof of
principle, or early stage of the work, he
explains that sex hormones can’t be the only
reason for this female advantage in life
because both pre-pubertal girls and
post-menopausal women (when hormones
shouldn’t really be part of the puzzle) do
THE X CHROMOSOME, PICTURED HERE, CARRIES MANY MORE
GENES FROM ONE GENERATION TO THE NEXT (1,098 TO BE
EXACT) THAN THE MALE Y CHROMOSOME (78).
better than their male counterparts. For
Spolarics, it’s got to be the unique properties
of the X chromosomes which contribute to
these gender-associated differences in
physiology, pathophysiology and disease progression.
In fact, what he knows is that the X
chromosome carries a large number of genes
specifically encoded for proteins whose central
function is in immunology and the kind of
metabolic systems that play critical roles in
survival and shock responses.
In every single cell, women carry two X
chromosomes, one from their mother and one
from their father and their cells express either
one or the other, while men inherit just one X
from their mother along with one Y from dad.
“Whatever X chromosome a man gets from
his mother, ‘good or bad,’ that’s what he’s
stuck with,” a fact that explains why men are
more likely to manifest a severe X-linked
genetic defect than women. If a female inherits
a deficient X-linked gene, it impacts only
half of the cells. Meanwhile, the other half
expressing the normal gene can compensate
for the lack of function in the deficient one.
Thus, women are a cellular mosaic, or
mixture, of their two types of X chromosomes,
part of their mother or part of their father in
their cells. Half of the cells in females are finetuned
by the genetic variations from mom’s X
chromosome, while the other half of the cells
are fine-tuned by the variations unique to
dad’s X chromosome. And the presence of this
mosaic parental subset is at the heart of the
female advantage. The extra medley of Xlinked
cellular variability is a “more responsive,
or adaptive, system,” Spolarics says, that
will be available during the host response to

injury or infection which are dynamically
changing functional conditions.
In his most recent study published in
The Journal of Immunology which investigated
an X-linked protein that helps out when
bacteria need to be killed, Spolarics showed
that “mosaicism presents its own phenotype
and provides improved antibacterial defense.”
The responses of mosaic cells within a subject
are measurable and exactly what the Spolarics
team is currently looking at in animal models
to learn why and how mosaic-celled females
present improved outcomes as compared to
single X chromosome-expressing subjects,
like males.
An inflammatory response is a dynamically
changing physiological condition during
which cells are continuously multiplying,
dying, getting activated or paralyzed. The
broadened functional variability in mosaic
females accommodates better to these tough
conditions. “When one cell dies, the other
takes over,” Spolarics says. He is willing to bet
that understanding these differences between
men and women will add to more meaningful
approaches to medical care for both sexes. He
believes that medical practice will move
towards an era of more personalized medicine
when one size doesn’t fit all especially in
complex, pathophysiological responses such
as multiple trauma or polymicrobial sepsis.
According to Spolarics, to increase the
chances of surviving an accident or illness, or
to fight sepsis when the body’s own defense
system may become a killing machine, is
never going to require a single molecule or
gene as a therapeutic target. What is needed
to alter such a cascade of events is a whole
“set of genes and interactions.” And in the
meantime, this gifted researcher is getting a
much clearer picture of the mighty, maternal
X chromosomes.
— Maryann Brinley
Autism Findings
in New Jersey
NEW STATISTICS issued
by the Centers for
Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) indicate
that the prevalence of
autism spectrum disorders
found among 8-year-old
children in a sample area
of New Jersey is significantly
higher than in most
other states surveyed.
However, Walter
Zahorodny, PhD, assistant
professor in the
Department of Pediatrics
at NJMS who led the
New Jersey component of
the research, says he
believes the numbers in
New Jersey are higher
than elsewhere because
schools and health
providers in the state are
better equipped to detect
cases of autism than
elsewhere in the country
— and that the numbers
show no evidence that
New Jersey children are
at higher risk for autism.
The CDC surveyed
populations in 14 different
states, and, using
statistics compiled in
2008 and published in
the March 30 edition of
Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report, finds an
overall estimated prevalence
in those locations
of 11.3 per 1,000 (one
child in 88). The prevalence
found in New
Jersey is 20.5 per 1,000
(one child in 49). Union
County was the location
chosen for the New
Jersey survey, which
looked at the records of
7,082 children, of whom
145 were found to have
autism spectrum disorders.
Autism spectrum
disorders were found to
be 5.8 times more prevalent
among boys than
among girls.
According to
Zahorodny, Union County
is a good barometer for
prevalence in wider areas
of the state. “Over the
years, we have done
detailed analyses of
autism prevalence in four
counties, Essex, Hudson,
Ocean and Union, and
regularly found those
counties’ numbers to be
consistent with one
another,” Zahorodny
says. “That means there
is strong reason to
believe the numbers from
Union are representative
of the state at large.”
Zahorodny also
emphasizes that the numbers
speak well of health
care and education
systems in New Jersey.
“These prevalence numbers
are not higher here
because there are more
autistic children. There is
not a shred of credible
evidence that living in
New Jersey puts children
at higher risk,”
Zahorodny says. “The
numbers are higher
because health professionals
and educators
who work with New
Jersey children are more
attuned than elsewhere
to the signs of autism.
Many children with
autism spectrum
disorders are identified
while they are still in
preschool. In fact, the
median age when autism
is detected here is three
years and two months,
lower than in all but one
of the states surveyed.
This sensitivity to the
disorder and to the needs
of children it affects
makes New Jersey a
state where these
children can be, and
usually are, well
cared for.”
F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N O N U M D N J S T O R I E S G O T O U M D N J . E D U
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P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G
AmazingScience
Learning the Business of Science
N O A H W E I S L E D E R , P H D
AS A SCIENTIST and entrepreneur,
Noah Weisleder knows
the rewards and challenges of
launching a high-tech business
venture. He’s co-founder and
chief scientific officer of TRIMedicine,
an early-stage, privately
held biotechnology company
that is developing protein-based
therapeutics. Between his work
at TRIM-edicine and his ‘day
job’ as assistant professor of
physiology and biophysics at
Robert Wood Johnson Medical
School (RWJMS), he’s keeping
pretty busy.
“You learn a lot of useful
things in grad school, but running
a start-up business is not
one of them,” he observes.
Weisleder partnered with
his postdoctoral mentor, Jianjie
Ma, PhD, founder and president
of TRIM-edicine and professor
of physiology and biophysics at
RWJMS, to develop this new
company. Their most promising
8 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
research focuses on MG53, a protein
in the body that may have
blockbuster potential because of
its remarkable regenerative properties.
MG53 is an essential component
of the plasma membrane
repair machinery in human cells.
The researchers found that it has
the properties of ‘cellular superglue,’
targeting injuries and dramatically
stimulating repair and
healing. Repair of a cell’s plasma
membrane following injury or
damage is an essential part of
normal cell physiology. A breakdown
of this process is observed
in the progression of many different
diseases affecting the
heart, muscle, lungs, skin, brain
and other organs.
“MG53 is found in the
striated muscles of the body:
primarily the skeletal and cardiac
muscles,” explains Weisleder.
“We’ve found that it can be
applied to other tissues to
increase their regenerative
capacity. We initially looked at it
in diseases of the striated muscles
— for instance, muscular
dystrophy and heart failure —
and found that after an injury, it
will prevent cells from dying that
normally would die from that
injury, and restore the function
of that tissue.”
The researchers have taken
their discovery a giant step further,
finding that MG53 also has
tremendous potential for treating
a wide variety of diseases caused
by disruption of cell membrane
repair. “With collaborators we are
using MG53 with other tissues,
including the lung, and we’ve
seen some remarkable effects,”
says Weisleder. MG53 is part of a
larger gene family, the TRIM
(tripartite motif) family of proteins
— hence the name TRIMedicine.
The research team has
cloned many members of this
gene family (approximately 70)
and begun to explore other
members of the TRIM family
that may have the same function
as MG53 but are expressed in
other tissues. “We’re theorizing
that a similar protein, say, from
the brain, might have even
greater regenerating capacities
when applied to the brain.”
Weisleder’s interest in science
kicked in at an early age,
while he was growing up on a
farm in northern Maine. “I know
lots of scientists who got their
start on farms,” he says. “You
really learn an appreciation for
nature and its majesty. It stimulates
your interest in science and
how biological systems work
together.” Cleaning out his
childhood bedroom two years
ago, he dug out a pile of old
school papers. At the bottom was
one from kindergarten. “It asked
what you wanted to be when you
grew up,” he recalls. “I wrote
down either an astronaut or a
chemist — but I spelled it
cemist, without an h. I figured it
out from there.”
As a youngster, he launched
his first research project one
spring while listening to the
sounds of the tree frogs Mainers
call ‘peepers’ because their mating
call is a high-pitched peep.
“The frequency is determined
by the temperature,” explains
Weisleder. “The warmer it is, the
faster they peep. They only start
peeping when the temperature
drops to a certain level. That’s
usually at night when it starts to
cool off. I would count the peeps
and graph them with the temperature.”
He’s come a long way since
then, researching, teaching and
running a startup company. In a
typical week, Weisleder spends
about twenty percent of his time
at TRIM-edicine. It is managed
as a virtual biotech model,

MG53 IN SKIN CELLS
meaning that the staff is small
and each stage of scientific work
is contracted out to research
companies. “There are a lot of
organizations out there specializing
in every aspect of drug
development,” he says. “For
example, you can hire a
company to do your proof of
concept animal testing. Once
you get that data you take it to
another company specializing in
toxicology. A lot of the work I do
with TRIM-edicine is managing
our relationships with contractors.”
The company has also
partnered with a few major
pharmaceutical companies who
are interested in MG53 for different
indications and are doing
their own testing on the protein.
The rest of his time is spent
in the RWJMS lab, where he has
three major research projects.
One of them focuses on the
effects of calcium signaling in
muscle contraction and how
disruption of normal calcium
handling within the body leads
to muscle diseases. Weisleder’s
interest in muscle tissue is not
new. As a postdoctoral research
fellow in Ma’s lab, his studies
focused on calcium regulation in
both skeletal and cardiac
muscle. This work continued
when he moved to his own lab in
2008. “Calcium controls how
much muscles contract and how
much force they generate,” he
states. “Initially we thought that
MG53 was involved in that
process. But it turned out that it
didn’t really have much to do
with that.”
In March 2012, Weisleder
received the prestigious 2011
Kaufmann Foundation
Outstanding Postdoctoral
Entrepreneur Award, which
recognizes exceptional efforts in
commercializing research
conducted during a postdoctoral
fellowship. “It was a thrill to get
this award, which encourages
postdocs to acquire the skills
they need to become entrepreneurs,”
he says. “I didn’t really
expect it, because TRIMedicine
is a relatively young
company and the product cycle
for biotechs can be decades. I
guess they liked our potential.”
The company is currently
working to raise enough money
to launch clinical trials of MG53.
“In our best-case scenario, three
to five years to the marketplace
is our goal now,” he says. “Nine
out of every ten biotech
companies fail completely. One
unsolvable problem can derail
you. But so far, we’ve been
fortunate and skillful in moving
our company forward.”
He adds, “There is
something special to this work,
when you see some of the results
we’re getting with fairly
intractable diseases.”
— Mary Ann Littell
Zeroing in on
a New Therapy
Scott Kachlany, PhD, has
gotten one step closer to
realizing his dream of a new
treatment for leukemia and
autoimmune diseases that
will be gentler than
chemotherapy and other
drugs. Leukothera ® , a product
developed at his company,
Actinobac Biomed, Inc., is
in preclinical trials, or the last
phase before human testing.
During preclinical trials a
potential new drug goes
through rigorous assessments.
Using rodents and
monkeys, Kachlany tested
Leukothera’s® toxicity to
determine at what point it
begins having adverse effects
on the body. He explored its
stability, or the amount of
time it takes for the drug to
lose potency, and its pharmacokinetics,
or how long it
lasts in the body. And finally,
the scientist studied the
potential new drug’s
pharmacodynamics, or its
interactions with the body
and how quickly it reaches its
target. Kachlany did the testing
on healthy animals and on
animals with leukemia. He
quickly points out that none
of the subjects were harmed
during the testing.
Kachlany has been working
on his therapy for three
years. While investigating the
bacterium Aggregatibacter
actinomycetemcomitans (Aa)
he discovered that leukotoxin,
a protein secreted by Aa
specifically targets malignant
and hyper-inflammatory white
blood cells. After demonstrating
that leukotoxin effectively
destroys cancerous and diseased
white cells in vitro and
in a mouse model, he began
looking at using it as a
therapeutic agent in some
leukemias and lymphomas.
That’s when he founded
Actinobac Biomed, Inc. and
Leukothera ® was born. His
most recent studies have
shown that depleting diseased
white blood cells with
Leukothera ® seems to be
successful in treating psoriasis
and other inflammatory
diseases. And Leukothera ®
in combination with such
widely used drugs as etoposide,
mitoxantrone, daunorubicin,
busulfan and imatinib
killed leukemia cells much
more effectively than when
these drugs were used alone.
“The biological mechanism
of Leukothera ® differs
from that of other cancer
drugs,” he explains.
“Because it does not affect
the healthy white blood cells,
targeting only malignant
and/or inflammatory white
blood cells involved in disease,
it doesn’t cause harsh
side effects. We believe that
including it in blood cancer
treatment protocols may be
highly effective.”
Actinobac Biomed, Inc.
was founded in 2009 with
financial backing from
Foundation Venture Capital
Group, LLC, an independent
organization that invests
exclusively in research at
UMDNJ by funding new life
science companies. The
company has exclusively
licensed the rights to develop
Leukothera ® as a therapeutic
agent for the treatment of
hematologic malignancies,
autoimmune and inflammatory
diseases, and HIV infection.
— Merry Sue Baum
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P H O T O G R A P H S B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G , J O H N E M E R S O N A N D T H I N K S T O C K
AmazingScience
Epilepsy and Cataracts: the Missing Link
A COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH effort
from a team that included scientists from
New Jersey Medical School, New Jersey
Dental School and Columbia University
discovered that the most common receptor
for the major neurotransmitter in the brain
is also present in the lens of the eye, a
finding that may help explain the links
between cataracts, epilepsy and use of a
number of widely prescribed antiepileptic
and antidepressant drugs.
“Recent studies identified associations
between increased cataracts and epilepsy,
P E T E R F R E D E R I K S E , P H D and showed increased cataract prevalence
with use of antiepileptic drugs as well as
some common antidepressants,” explains
corresponding author Peter Frederikse, PhD, associate professor in
the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology at New Jersey Medical
School. “One common theme linking these observations is that our
research showed the most prevalent receptor for the major neurotransmitter
in the brain is also present in the lens.”
The research team found glutamate receptor proteins, and specifically
a pivotal GluA2 subunit, are expressed in the lens and are regulated
in a remarkably similar manner to the way they are in the brain. In
the nervous system, glutamate and GluA receptor proteins underlie
Grant Addresses Hospital-Delirium
DELIRIUM — defined as sudden and
severe confusion — is a common result of
hospitalization in those 65 and older. Patients
can experience hallucinations, loss of shortterm
memory, disorientation, difficulty
speaking, agitation, trouble understanding
speech, and extreme emotions, among other
symptoms. The incidence is highest among
post-surgical patients and those treated in an
ICU; and can result in long-term disability
and increased mortality both during the hospital
stay and in the year following hospitalization.
It also drives up healthcare costs.
Inflammation, infection, and many
medications including narcotic painkillers,
sedatives, sleeping pills, and certain drugs for
high blood pressure, incontinence, and
allergy, can trigger delirium. Since 30 to 40
percent is thought to be preventable, some
hospitals are setting up programs to lessen
1 0 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
the incidence. The Healthcare Foundation
of New Jersey recently awarded $100,000 to
each of four New Jersey hospitals, including
UMDNJ’s University Hospital (UH), to set
up a delirium prevention program.
At UH, researchers are using the grant
to create an interdisciplinary Hospital-
Acquired Delirium Prevention & Treatment
Initiative. The program’s goal is to reduce
hospital-acquired delirium through coordinated
interventions — both pharmacologic
(avoidance of medicines linked with delirium)
and nonpharmacologic (provider and
family education and complementary care).
Ultimately, a clinical protocol will be
established for delirium risk assessment,
prevention and treatment that focuses on
patients over 50 who are admitted to the
ICU and trauma units. Peter Yonclas, MD,
director of trauma rehabilitation at UH and
memory formation and mood regulation along with being an important
factor in epilepsy, which is considered the primary disorder of the brain.
Consistent with this, these receptor proteins are also targets for a
number of antiepileptic drugs and antidepressant medications.
“The presence of these glutamate receptors and neuron-like
regulatory processes in the lens suggests they contribute to associations
between brain disease and cataract, as well as providing secondary
‘targets’ of current drugs,” Frederikse notes. “Our goal now is to
use this information to explore the potential effects of antiepileptics
and antidepressants on these ‘off-target’ sites in the lens, and to determine
the role glutamate receptors have in lens biology and pathology.”
Frederikse believes that these findings are not only useful in
informing the medical community about the correlation between
cataracts and epilepsy but in moving closer to his ultimate goal:
determining if effective dosage of such drugs in current use can be
found so that the lens may be protected in a related manner as the
brain.
The research team included Rajesh Kaswala, DDS, and
Chinnaswamy Kasinathan, PhD, from New Jersey Dental School and
Norman Kleiman, PhD, from Columbia University’s Mailman School
of Public Health. Their findings appear online in Biochemical and
Biophysical Research Communications. The research was supported by
a grant from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of
Health.
— Jerry Carey
PETER YONCLAS, MD A N N E M O S E N T H A L , M D
assistant professor of surgery and physical
medicine and rehabilitation at NJMS and
Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation, and Anne
Mosenthal, MD, chair and professor of surgery
at NJMS, are the principal investigators.

Your Neighborhood
and Your Health
DOES WHERE YOU LIVE in your 20s and 30s affect your health in
later life?
Jeannette Rogowski, PhD, University Professor in Health
Economics at the School of Public Health, with labor economists at
the University of California and the University of Michigan, decided to
tackle this question.
The research team had access to studies from the Panel Study
of Income Dynamics (PSID), which collects data on socioeconomics
and health “over lifetimes across generations.” Between 1968 and
1997, PSID conducted interviews with more than 18,000 individuals
living in 5,000 families in the U.S. Since then, interviews have been
biennial. Survey content changes to reflect evolving scientific and
policy priorities, although many content areas have been consistently
measured since 1968. Information includes employment, income,
wealth, expenditures, health, education, marriage, childbearing,
philanthropy, and numerous other topics.
“Using this unique data,” Rogowski explains, “the estimates
suggest that disparities in neighborhood conditions experienced in
young adulthood account for one-quarter of the variation in mid-to-late
life health.” She also notes that three-quarters of the black-white gap
in health status for those over 55 are attributable to childhood
socioeconomic status and neighborhood and family factors.
The research study took five years to complete and used a
Amazing Science Awards
TWO UMDNJ FACULTY members were
honored for their research with 2012 Edward
J. Ill Excellence in Medicine Awards. Named
for a New Jersey physician who was a pioneer
in promoting continuing education, the
awards pay tribute to individuals in the state
whose work in education, research and public
service has significantly impacted healthcare
delivery.
Jeffrey L. Carson, MD, the Richard C.
Reynolds Professor of Medicine and chief,
Division of General Internal Medicine at
RWJMS, received the Outstanding Medical
Research Scientist Award for Clinical
Research. Carson conducted a landmark
study of mortality and morbidity among nearly
2,000 surgical patients who declined blood
transfusions. He is currently the study chair
and principal investigator of the 47-center
National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute
FOCUS Trial, an evaluation of blood
transfusions in patients undergoing surgery
to repair hip fractures. Results of his
research have recently been published in
The New England Journal of Medicine.
Paola Leone, PhD, associate professor
of cell biology and the director of the Cell
and Gene Therapy Center at SOM,
received the Outstanding Medical Research
Scientist Award for Basic Biomedical
Research. Leone is world-renowned for her
research on Canavan disease. She and her
staff are actively investigating that disorder
along with other neurodegenerative diseases
while pursuing potential treatments via the
application of gene transfer, and stem cell
and pharmacological technologies.
statistical estimation technique known as “four-level hierarchical
random effects models.” This technique studied the association
between self-assessed general health status and neighborhood
factors; the study controlled for individual and family factors.
One of the important findings is that living in poor neighborhoods
during young adulthood is strongly associated with negative
health outcomes in later life, including disability, chronic conditions
and obesity. The team’s paper, “Health Disparities in Mid-to-Late
Life: The Role of Earlier Life Family and Neighborhood Socioeconomic
Conditions,” was published in the journal Social Science and
Medicine.
Rogowski collaborated with Rucker Johnson, PhD, an associate
professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of
California Berkeley, and Robert Schoeni, PhD, a research professor at
the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and
co-director of PSID.
“There are only a few studies, mostly from other countries, that
analyze the effect of neighborhoods of residence earlier in life on
late-life health,” Rogowski notes. “The results of this study highlight
the need for further research in order to understand which aspects of
neighborhoods are most influential in determining health in later life
and health disparities.”
— Barbara Hurley
JEFFERY L. CARSON, MD PAOLA LEONE, PHD
Other winners: Jeffrey C. Brenner, MD,
a family physician who is an RWJMS alum
and an instructor at the school’s Camden
campus, received the Edward J. Ill
Physician’s Award; and William F. Owen, Jr.,
MD, former president of UMDNJ, received
the Outstanding Medical Executive Award.
F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N O N U M D N J S T O R I E S G O T O U M D N J . E D U
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P H O T O G R A P H S B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G
AmazingScience
Standing Up To Cancer
“CANCER CELLS are like
chameleons. They morph,” says
researcher Estela Jacinto, PhD. “We
need to be able to predict what they’ll
do next so we’ll be ahead of the game.”
She’s vigorously chasing this chameleon
through her study, “Targeting Protein
Quality Control for Cancer Therapy,”
which seeks novel ways of treating breast
cancer.
Jacinto, who is an associate professor
of physiology and biophysics at Robert
Wood Johnson Medical School and a scientist
at The Cancer Institute of New
Jersey, is a rising star in the research
world. Her work focuses on the regulation
of cell growth by the protein
mTOR. Cell growth is coordinated by a
series of events that are initiated by the
binding of a stimulus to a receptor on the
membrane. Once triggered, the receptor
communicates to the rest of the cell
through signaling molecules. In
cancer, the alteration of growth or
survival signals can ultimately cause the
signaling circuits to go out of control.
Abnormal changes in receptor levels generate
more cell defects that lead to
uncontrolled growth. Many cancer
therapies take advantage of this phenomenon
by blocking activity of growth
receptors at the membrane. However,
cancer cells can bypass the block over
time, leading to drug resistance.
“Understanding the bypass
mechanisms involved would provide new
avenues for cancer therapy,” says Jacinto.
Her lab discovered that a
protein complex called mTORC2 plays a
crucial role in some of these bypass
mechanisms. “Many cancer treatments
are designed to inhibit a protein that has
become too active. My research targets
this protein before it’s even functional.
There haven’t been many treatments
1 2 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
designed to do that.”
Jacinto’s study is funded by the
“Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C)” grant she
received in April 2011. She is one of 13
young scientists to share $9.74 million for
innovative studies. Over a three-year
period, each of the scientists will receive
$750,000 to continue their work. The
grants support cutting-edge cancer
research that might not receive funding
through traditional channels.
“Getting this grant was really difficult
because of the tough competition,”
she says. “They wanted ideas that are
‘out of the box,’ but would be highly
promising for translating into the clinic
and possible collaboration with the
SU2C Dream Team scientists.”
Visit the “Stand Up To Cancer”
Innovative Research Grants website and
Jacinto’s face is the first you’ll see on the
home page. Each grant recipient narrates
a video explaining their research. “They
look for innovation,” she says. Once her
written application made the cut, she
traveled to Philadelphia to present her
research proposal to a 25-member panel
of scientists, a process she describes as
“pretty nerve-wracking. But the scarier
part for me was the next step, when I
had to do a layman’s interview on
camera. I’m used to speaking about the
science; that’s easy for me. Presenting
the relevance of my research so that
someone, especially a cancer patient, will
understand what it can do for them, is
more challenging.”
— Mary Ann Littell
$
E S T E L A J A C I N T O , P H D
9. 74
This scientist
will share a
million grant from
“Stand Up To
Cancer,” to focus
on innovative
cancer research.
F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N O N U M D N J S T O R I E S G O T O U M D N J . E D U

Two Students
Win AMA Grants
VA N E S S A M E WA N I A N D C A I T L I N A B I D I N
TWO STUDENTS who are in the
MD/MSCTS dual-degree program at
Robert Wood Johnson Medical
School and the Graduate School of
Biomedical Sciences have each won
a $2,500 Seed Grant from the
American Medical Association
(AMA) Foundation. The Seed Grant
Research Program provides young
investigators at the beginning of
their careers with financial support
for basic science or clinical
research projects.
The AMA Foundation awarded
these grants to 43 junior investigators
nationwide. The recipients are
studying cardiovascular/pulmonary
diseases, HIV/AIDS, neoplastic diseases
and pancreatic cancer.
Many young scientists experience
difficulty finding resources to
support their investigations, and
consequently fewer physicians are
choosing careers in research. This
research program aims to build crucial
grant-writing and research skills
in young researchers by funding projects
that are applicant-conceived,
rather than supporting the ongoing
research of an experienced principal
investigator.
Just two such awards were
given in New Jersey this year. The
UMDNJ recipients are among
awardees from such prestigious
institutions as Weill Cornell Medical
College, the Hospital of the
University of Pennsylvania,
Georgetown University School of
Medicine, Yale New Haven Hospital,
Duke University School of Medicine
and Columbia University Medical
Center.
Caitlin Abidin's research will
provide data and rationale for the
clinical application of autophagy
inhibition in the treatment of locally
advanced rectal cancer. Vanessa
Mewani's research focuses on
understanding the role of TRIM24 in
DNA damage response and the
implication of this pathway for treatment
of neoplastic disease.
Both students have completed
their third year at RWJMS and are
spending the 2011-2012 academic
year conducting research toward a
Master’s degree in clinical and
translational science. They will
return to their medical school
studies in September 2012.
Science
Advances
in Spinal Cord
Injury
FOR THE 400,000 Americans with spinal cord
injuries, the national scientists who came together
on UMDNJ’s Newark campus on May 9 to share
their expertise had a message: We are working to
translate science into hope.
Researchers from California, Ohio and
Connecticut joined scientists from New Jersey
Medical School and the Kessler Institute of
Rehabilitation to explore current advances to help
individuals suffering the long-term, life-changing
effects of spinal cord injury. The symposium was
sponsored by the Reynolds Family Spine Laboratory
at the Spine Center of New Jersey at NJMS.
The speakers presented the latest findings in
areas ranging from the essential functions of the glial
scar to stem cell strategies for repairing the damaged
spinal cord to activity-based restoration therapies.
“Everything I’m seeing here is completely
different than what I learned as a medical student 25
years ago,” notes Robert Heary, MD, professor of
neurological surgery at NJMS and director of the
Spine Center. He is also co-director with Stella
Elkabes, PhD, associate professor of neurological
surgery at the medical school, of the Reynolds
Family Spine Laboratory. The two have brought to
their laboratory the combination of “a bench person
and a clinician,” according to Heary, which facilitates
the translation of research into new therapies.
One of the symposium presenters, Steven
Kirshblum, MD, medical director of the Kessler
Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange,
discussed new frontiers in rehabilitation research.
Kirshblum, who is also a professor of rehabilitation
medicine at NJMS, is nationally recognized for his
work in the area of spinal cord injury rehabilitation
and research. He shared some of the work involving
electrical stimulus implants that would allow
patients to sit up, move their toes, and improve
bladder and sexual function. “The goal is to
eventually translate to human mobility,” Kirshblum
explains, “and to a better quality of life.” He adds,
“We’ve seen mice and cats do it in the lab, now we
want to see humans do it.”
— Barbara Hurley
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P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G
AmazingScience
Truly Remarkable Proteins
THE TEAM BEHIND THIS “SENSATIONAL” RESEARCH: (FRONT ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT) T I B O R R O H A C S , E L E O N O R A Z A K H A R I A N ,
C H I K E C A O , D O R E E N B A D H E K A AND I S T VA N B O R B I R O ; (BACK ROW, L TO R): YA N N B I K A R D , V I K T O R L U K A C S A N D
Y E V G E N Y U D I N .
SCRUB YOUR TEETH with
mentholated toothpaste and the
cooling sensation is palpably
there. Your teeth and gums feel
cold. Eat chili peppers and the
resulting heat in your mouth and
right down your throat is unmistakable.
Right? Not so fast, says
Tibor Rohacs, MD, PhD, associate
professor, pharmacology and
physiology. These sensations are
much more complicated than you
might think. That menthol action
is not really physically cold. And
the actual temperature inside
your mouth doesn’t go up as a
result of eating extra hot chilis.
What you are experiencing is
from activation of transient receptor
potential (TRP) channels, the
cold sensor TRPM8 (also activated
by the menthol) or by heat
sensor TRPV1 (also turned on by
things like capsaicin, the active
component of chili peppers, and a
number of other pain-producing
stimuli).
1 4 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
“TRP channels are indeed
fascinating and even though the
abbreviation stands for transient
receptor potential, some people
prefer to think that the letters
stand for ‘truly remarkable
proteins’ instead.” Rohacs is
obviously one of those people. He
has been awarded more than $2
million in funding from the
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
and other sources for his TRP
research, which began when he
was a post-doctoral fellow at
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
in New York City back in 1998.
Since 2005, his lab at UMDNJ-
New Jersey Medical School has
been studying temperature and
pain sensation, with a long-term
translational goal of finding new
ways to design a better pain
medication. “We are going to
stay at the more basic science or
molecular level for now but the
main treatments currently available
for pain fall short,” he says.
“Sometimes, anti-inflammatories
are not strong enough while the
opiates, which can be quite
strong, are addictive. This is why
there has been quite a lot of interest
in TRP channels.”
TRPs are involved in a variety
of important biological
processes. “Their function is
remarkably diverse,” explains
Rohacs, who was born in Hungary
and earned both his MD and his
PhD at Semmelweiss University
of Medicine in Budapest. TRPs
are involved in temperature sensing,
mechanosensation (the
body’s response to mechanical
stimuli as well as the physiological
foundation for the senses of
touch, hearing and balance),
vision, taste, calcium and magnesium
transport across epithelial
cells, apoptosis (cell death) and
calcium signaling by hormones
and neurotransmitters.
They are part of a much larger
group of proteins, ion channels,
that are basically responsible for
all the electrical activities of the
cell and they sit right in the
plasma membrane. “Our laboratory
mainly focuses on TRPV1,
activated by heat and capsaicin
and TRPM8, the cold and menthol
sensitive channel.” And his
team is studying the mechanism
behind desensitization or why
these reactions are transitory.
Capsaicin has been used as a
topical analgesic for a long time.
Apply it to the skin and after an
initial burning sensation, it
provides relief from pain. And the
same sort of action exists for
reactions to cold. “It is well
known that we adapt to moderately
cold temperatures with the
same temperature feeling less
cold over time,” he says. The
Rohacs team wants to know why
desensitization occurs. “We are
using various electrophysiological
and molecular techniques to
study the regulation of the TRP
channels by a biologically important
component of the plasma
membrane known as PIP 2 .”
Puzzles like this one keep
Rohacs coming back into the lab.
“I went to medical school but
decided to go into research
because you are always facing
new problems and solving
puzzles. I like putting the pieces
together.” Married to a medical
researcher at the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, this
father of two has found America
“the most welcoming place for
foreigners.” His wife is also from
Hungary but they both “like the
opportunities here in the U.S. and
the openness of the society. If
you work hard, you can succeed.”
— Maryann Brinley
F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N O N U M D N J S T O R I E S G O T O U M D N J . E D U

The Eye as Window to the Heart in
Blacks with Diabetes
AMONG AFRICAN Americans
with type 1 diabetes mellitus,
retinal arteriolar narrowing (the
narrowing of the small arteries in
the retina of the eye) is associated
with an increased risk of
cardiovascular disease, according
to a report in the May issue of
Archives of Ophthalmology.
Monique S. Roy, MD, a
professor in The Institute of
Ophthalmology and Visual
Science at New Jersey Medicial
School, and colleagues set out to
evaluate the relationship
between the diameter of small
Restoring the Tumor Suppressor Function of Mutated
p53 Protein
INVESTIGATORS AT CINJ and the
Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in
Princeton have identified and validated a
drug compound that reactivates a primary
function in a mutated form of the p53 protein
— the ability to suppress cancer tumors.
More than three decades of research
into the p53 protein has substantiated its role
as one of the most important regulators of
human cancer. P53 recognizes cellular stress
and puts the brakes on cell proliferation.
Loss of p53 function is one of the most common
ways that cancer cells escape this control
and proliferate freely.
The gene encoding p53 is mutated in
more than half of human cancers. Most of these
mutations result in a small change in the amino
acid makeup of the protein, rendering it nonfunctional.
Research on animal models of cancer
has shown that restoring p53 function has
been both highly therapeutic and, in some
cases, curative. While rescuing the function of
p53 with a drug is a highly attractive cancer
therapeutic strategy, no drugs currently exist to
restore that function in humans.
arteries in the retina and the sixyear
incidence of cardiovascular
disease and mortality among
African Americans with type 1
diabetes mellitus.
“Retinal arteriolar narrowing
has long been described as one
of the characteristic changes
associated with hypertension and
cardiovascular disease (CVD),”
the authors wrote as background
information on the study.
The study included 468
African Americans with type 1
diabetes mellitus who participated
in the New Jersey 725 and
had undergone a six-year followup
examination. At both study
entry and follow-up, hypertension
and the presence of heart
disease, stroke or lower
extremity arterial disease were
documented and were confirmed
by review of hospital admission
and medical records.
During the six-year follow-up,
59 patients developed cardiovascular
disease (37 with heart
disease or stroke and 22 with
lower extremity arterial disease),
and 79 developed hypertension.
The authors found that retinal
Researchers on this study include
Cancer Institute of New Jersey resident
member Arnold J. Levine, PhD, RWJMS
professor and professor emeritus at IAS, who
co-discovered p53 more than 30 years ago.
The team developed a computer screening
methodology that identified a compound that
selectively kills cancer cells with the
p53R175 mutation, which is the third most
frequent type of p53 mutation in human
cancer. The findings are published in
Cancer Cell.
Utilizing anticancer drug screen data
from the National Cancer Institute, in which
more than 48,000 compounds have been tested
across a panel of 60 human tumor cell
lines, investigators identified the compound
known as NSC319726 as one that restores
“wild-type” structure and function to the
p53R175 protein. In addition, it activates the
protein to induce a program to kill the cell
(known as apoptosis). This observation
occurs at doses of the compound that are
non-toxic to normal (non-cancerous) cells.
When the compound was tested on
arteriolar narrowing at the study’s
beginning was significantly and
independently associated with
the development of cardiovascular
disease, lower extremity
arterial disease, and all causes of
mortality after six years; and
larger diameter veins in the
retina predicted hypertension.
This research was supported
by grants from the National Eye
Institute, a Lew Wasserman
Merit Award and an unrestricted
grant from Research to Prevent
Blindness, Inc.
human tumor cell lines with the mutation in
experimental models, cell death was evident
and tumor growth was blocked. Because of
its ability to selectively kill cancer cells while
leaving normal ones undisturbed, the authors
say NSC319726 can be considered a lead
compound for targeted drug development in
p53 and may allow for the design of other
compounds for different p53 mutations that
fail to bind zinc.
“Some 32,000 people in the U.S. are
affected by this mutation annually. This is a
large population that may find benefit from
the NSC319726 compound in its ability to
restore p53 tumor suppressor properties,”
says Darren Carpizo, MD, PhD, an RWJMS
faculty member and a surgical oncologist at
CINJ, who is the senior author of the
research.
The team includes: Xin Yu, CINJ and
RWJMS; Levine; and Alexei Vazquez, CINJ,
RWJMS, and IAS.
The research was supported by CINJ,
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation,
and the National Institutes of Health.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 1 5

AmazingScienceNews
Grand
Challenges
TB Biomarkers
Grant
DAVID ALLAND, MD, professor of medicine, chief
of infectious diseases, and director of the Center for
Emerging and Re-Emerging Pathogens at NJMS, is the
recipient of a TB biomarkers grant awarded by the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health
program. This initiative seeks to overcome persistent bottlenecks in
creating new tools to radically improve health in the developing world.
With the grant, awarded through the Foundation of UMDNJ, Alland will
pursue research to identify and validate TB biomarkers. The program underwrites
research aimed at developing a low-cost, simple-to-use tool that can quickly and accurately
diagnose TB in developing countries. Alland’s is one of 10 Grand Challenges TB biomarkers grants awarded.
“There is an urgent need to break through barriers in biomarker research in order to develop a highly
sensitive point-of-care diagnostic to improve identification of active TB cases,” says Chris Wilson, director of Global
Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Diagnostic assays are important components of TB control programs. Numerous methods exist that can
rapidly detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) in patient sputum (and potentially in other clinical samples). However,
a major limitation lies in the difficulty of extracting MTB from the clinical sample. This project will develop a simple,
rapid and sensitive method to magnetically extract MTB from any volume of sputum that can reasonably be produced
by a patient.
1 6 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
MANY PEOPLE WITH PAINFUL, creaky knees and
hips find relief after replacing their bad joints with new
artificial joints made from titanium. But some of them
develop painful inflammation that can lead to bone
destruction and loosening of the new joint. A study led by
researchers at NJMS and published by the Journal of
Immunology suggests that tiny titanium particles that flake
away from the artificial joints through normal wear and tear
may play a direct role in that inflammation.
Prior studies have suggested that inflammation is
caused by bits of bacteria that stick to dislodged titanium
particles and activate an immune response. But Pankaj
Mishra in the laboratory of William Gause, PhD, NJMS
senior associate dean and director, Center for Immunity and
Inflammation, in collaboration with Joseph Benevenia, MD,
D AV I D A L L A N D , M D
Titanium Debris May Cause Inflammation of Artificial Joints
chair, Department of Orthopaedics, found that titanium
particles themselves trigger inflammation in mice.
The type of inflammatory response that ensued when
titanium particles were introduced — known as a Th2
response — is typically associated with allergic responses
and parasitic worm infections and results in the generation
of immune cells called alternatively activated macrophages
(AAMs). The immune system thus responds to these
“inert” micron-sized particles as if they were allergens or
invading multicellular parasites. The potential effects of a
Th2 response in the joint are not completely clear, but
there is increasing evidence that AAMs contribute to bone
destruction in prosthesis recipients and in patients with
certain types of arthritis.
— news compiled by Doris Cortes-Delgado

Massage for Osteoarthritis of the Knee
THE NIH HAS AWARDED Duke Integrative
Medicine and its key research partners at SHRP
and Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center a
$2.75 million shared grant to investigate the
impact of massage therapy on people with
osteoarthritis of the knee. The combined research
team will conduct a randomized controlled trial to
definitively evaluate an eight-week course of
Swedish massage as a treatment for osteoarthritis
of the knee in terms of its effects on pain, stiffness,
and physical function.
Duke Integrative Medicine Executive
Director and Principal Investigator Adam
Perlman, MD, formerly of UMDNJ, comments,
“The team we have established has been working
to study the efficacy of massage for this prevalent
condition. The support from the National Center
for Complementary and Alternative Medicine for
our work on osteoarthritis demonstrates that our
health care system faces an imperative to identify
evidence-based approaches for common conditions
that call upon all of the tools and treatments
Starvation Can be
Deadly
A PROTECTIVE RESPONSE to starvation may
promote heart failure, according to a study recently
published in Cell Metabolism. Two proteins that team
up to conserve energy when food is scarce also limit
energy production in the heart — a situation that can
prove fatal when the heart is stressed and in need of
an energy boost.
During starvation, the body conserves energy by
slowing down the cell’s powerhouse organelles, the
mitochondria. This slackens the function of the vital
organs, including the heart, thus preserving available
energy and prolonging survival. Junichi Sadoshima,
MD, PhD, professor, Department of Cell Biology
and Molecular Medicine, and colleagues at the
NJMS Cardiovascular Research Institute, have
discovered that two proteins, called PPAR-alpha and
Sirt1, are induced by starvation in mice and turn off
the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial
function and heart contraction.
When the heart is stressed, it requires extra
energy to maintain heart beat and blood pressure.
Unfortunately, however, expression of PPAR-alpha
and Sirt1 was also increased in stressed hearts, thus
restricting energy just when the heart needs it most. If
the same holds true in humans, it may be beneficial to
target these proteins in patients with heart failure.
available in modern medicine.”
Perlman and his co-investigators, Susan
Gould-Fogerite, PhD, and Gwen Mahon, PhD,
from SHRP, and David Katz, MD, MPH, and
Ather Ali, MD, MPH, of the Yale-Griffin
Prevention Research Center, also will gather data
to study the cost-effectiveness of massage as a
form of treatment. Ultimately, they expect to
demonstrate that massage can serve as a valuable
option for treating osteoarthritis in clinical settings,
which could help set the stage for reimbursement
from health insurance companies for
this form of treatment.
The new study will recruit more than 200
participants with osteoarthritis of the knee, and will
follow them for one year. For those who qualify for
the study, the treatments will be available locally at
the Barnabas Health Ambulatory Care Center in
Livingston. For more information, contact Carl
Milak, research coordinator, at 973-972-8564,
(milakcj@umdnj.edu), or Mary Carola, research
assistant, at (973) 972-3449 (carola@umdnj.edu).
Parkinson’s Disease
Detecting Parkinson’s Disease Earlier
SCIENTISTS AT SOM and Durin Technologies, Inc. announced a possible breakthrough in the search for a
diagnostic biomarker for Parkinson's disease.
In an analysis that included more than 150 blood samples, Robert Nagele, PhD, professor,
Medicine and Cell Biology, and his team employed human protein microarrays to identify specific
autoantibody biomarkers that may be able to identify Parkinson’s disease with a high level of accuracy.
The findings were published online in PLoS ONE.
Approximately 50,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease each year. Today,
physicians can only diagnose the disease through medical history, patient observation and laboratory
tests that rule out other disorders. By the time a diagnosis is made using these methods, one-third of
the neurons affected by Parkinson’s may already be lost.
“Using this diagnostic strategy, it may soon be possible and feasible to develop an accurate, inexpensive
and relatively non-invasive test to detect and diagnose Parkinson’s disease,” Nagele comments.
An investment in Durin Technologies, Inc. by the
Foundation Venture Capital Group (FVCG), LLC, a New
Jersey Health Foundation affiliate that invests in start-up
companies founded by researchers at UMDNJ, provided
initial funding for this research. Durin Technologies, Inc
was founded in 2010 with the goal of developing new
diagnostics and therapeutic agents for use in the
treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 1 7

AmazingScienceNews
HIV Infection and
Geography
NEWARK IS ONE OF SIX LOCATIONS in the U.S. that are the
focus of a new study whose findings indicate that the HIV incidence
rate for women in this country living in areas hardest hit by the epidemic
is much higher than the overall estimated incidence rate in the U.S.
for black women. The study was designed, and the national research
team chaired, by Sally Hodder, MD, professor and vice chair of the
NJMS Department of Medicine.
At the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic
Infections in Seattle, the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN)
announced results from its HPTN 064 Women’s HIV Seroincidence
Study, which found an HIV incidence of 0.24% in the study cohort of
2,099 women (88% black), a rate that is five-fold higher than that estimated
for black women overall by the CDC. The rate noted in the
study is comparable to estimated HIV incidence rates in the general
population in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa including the
Congo and Kenya. The six geographical areas chosen for the study —
Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Newark, NJ,
and New York City — are locations where HIV and poverty are known
to be more common.
Between May 2009 and July 2010, the study, which was funded by
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, enrolled 2,099
women ages 18 to 44 years, 88 percent black and 12 percent
Hispanic/Latina. Women constitute roughly one-quarter of new HIV
infections in the U.S. with 66 percent of these infections occurring
among black women, although black women constitute only 14 percent
of the U.S. female population. In this country, the age-adjusted death
1 8 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
H I V V I R U S
rate of black women with HIV is roughly 15 times higher than that
observed for HIV-infected white women.
Another significant finding from the study is the high number of
women who were found to have HIV infection at the time of enrollment
(32 women or 1.5%). These women were previously unaware of their
HIV status. This finding highlights the need to increase awareness of
HIV risk and expand novel HIV testing and prevention efforts in high
prevalence areas.
Hibernation and Cardiac Arrhythmias
A NEW STUDY OF HIBERNATING animals may provide insight
into arrhythmia therapies. The findings were presented at
a poster session at the 56th Annual Meeting of the
Biophysical Society (BPS), in February. Lai-Hua Xie, PhD,
assistant professor at NJMS, and his colleagues, in
collaboration with Stephen Vatner, MD, director of the
NJMS Cardiovascular Research Center, completed
the research.
Hibernating animals, like bears and bats, can be
aroused from their slumber by external stimuli, but
woodchucks are “true hibernators,” who can enter a
profoundly altered physiological state. Their body temperature
drops sharply and heart and respiration rates slow
dramatically. Despite – or perhaps because of – these
changes, hibernating animals have been found to be more
resistant to cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
The research team examined muscle cells isolated in
winter and in summer from woodchucks. Using a charge-
coupled device (CCD) camera, the researchers monitored
the release and uptake of calcium ions when the cells were
activated. The team found that in winter woodchucks the
myocyte sarcoplasmic reticulum – the membrane system
in muscle cells that stores and releases calcium – had less
spontaneous leakage of calcium, released more of it during
excitation, and took it back up faster than that of summer
woodchucks or non-hibernating animals. Xie says this is
likely to generate a stronger contraction and faster relaxation,
and most importantly, to prevent abnormal changes
in the heart’s electrical activities.
Xie explains the overall effect is a higher resistance
to arrhythmia in woodchucks in winter. Understanding
these cardiac adaptive mechanisms in hibernators may
suggest new strategies to protect non-hibernating animals,
especially humans, from fatal cardiac arrhythmias induced
by hypothermic stresses and myocardial ischemia.

$1.3M Awarded for Blood-Based
Biothreat Tests
UMDNJ AND CEPHEID recently received a grant from the NIH to
develop sample processing and amplification methods for highly-sensitive
detection of bloodstream bacteria using nested polymerase chain reaction
(PCR) on the GeneXpert System. The $1.3 million grant is for the first
year of an expected five-year, $5.5 million program. The program is being
administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID) through its Partnerships for Biodefense special emphasis
program.
Because even an extremely low concentration of bacteria present in a
patient’s blood can cause life-threatening sepsis, tests to detect blood
stream infections (BSI) must be highly sensitive. Most blood stream
infections are currently diagnosed by performing a series of blood cultures,
a time-consuming process that typically takes days to produce a positive
result, and even longer to predict treatment susceptibility.
The overarching goal of the project, scheduled to run through
February 2017, is to develop tests to detect a variety of bacterial
bioterrorism agents in the case of a terrorist attack. Principal investigator
on the grant is David Alland, MD, professor of medicine, chief of
infectious diseases, and director of the Center for Emerging &
Re-Emerging Pathogens at NJMS and a long-time Cepheid collaborator,
and the work on select agents will be conducted in his laboratories.
Promising Vaccine Regimen for
Pancreatic Cancer
A SERIES OF VACCINE INJECTIONS given directly into a pancreatic
cancer tumor is associated with stable disease in patients who are not candidates
for surgery, according to research conducted at CINJ. Early results
of the clinical trial were presented as part of a “highly-rated poster” at the
Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
in Chicago.
Previous laboratory research has shown that injecting a vaccine and
other immunity-producing drugs directly into a cancer tumor — as
opposed to the normal injection site of the skin — can result in a reversal
of the traditional immune blockade and the development of specific
immunity to the tumor throughout the body. This has the potential of
blocking the growth of the original tumor as well as eliminating small
tumor deposits that can cause the cancer to spread. The current clinical
trial stems from this research, further testing this vaccine strategy.
CINJ Deputy Director Edmund Lattime, PhD, a professor at
RWJMS, is the senior researcher on the study, which is sponsored by the
National Cancer Institute. “We’re seeing results of clinically stable disease
for a year and a half now in some cases with this treatment regimen.
Considering pancreatic cancer only carries a five-year, five percent survival
rate, these findings are very encouraging and will hopefully lead to more
effective ways of managing and treating this disease,” he notes.
The research team includes Elizabeth Poplin, David August, Tamir
Ben-Menachem, Hazar Michael, Renee Artymyshyn, and Robert DiPaola
of CINJ and RWJMS and James L. Gulley and Jeffrey Schlom of the NCI.
The Impact of Exercise
and Nutrients on
Colorectal Cancer
A HEALTHY DIET ALONG WITH EXERCISE might be a
life-saver for patients with colorectal cancer. Elliot J.
Coups, PhD, behavioral scientist at CINJ and an associate
professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical
School, is the lead investigator along with five hospitals of
Meridian Health, a System Partner of CINJ, to offer a
clinical research study that examines physical activity
patterns and eating habits in colorectal cancer patients
who have recently finished treatment. The goal of the
study is to build the groundwork for future research on
health promotion among individuals with
colorectal and other cancers.
Previous research by Coups shows that 80 percent of
colorectal cancer survivors do not take part in regular
physical activity, while 57 percent do not meet recommendations
for consuming enough fruits and vegetables in
their diet. Because physical inactivity and poor diet may
be risk factors for colorectal cancer recurrence, Coups
notes further exploration in this area is needed.
According to the American Cancer Society, not
counting skin cancer, colorectal cancer is the third most
common cancer in both men and women. The death rate
from colorectal cancer has been on the decline for the
past 15 years, which means more patients are surviving
their disease. But are they surviving it in a way that
enhances quality of life and minimizes the risk of cancer
recurrence? That is one of the questions researchers at
CINJ hope to answer in an effort to promote positive
health behavior changes in this population.
Coups says the information collected from this study
will help determine what interventions may be successful
in helping patients in this population make healthy
behavior changes. It could also serve as an intervention
template for other cancers.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 1 9

LEFT TO RIGHT: TRANSPLANT SURGEON B A B U R A O K O N E R U , M D , DOING ROUNDS WITH RESIDENTS AT UH; HEPATOLOGIST A R U N S A M A N TA , M D
A D A Y I N T H E L I F E O F A
A
2 0 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
W O R D S B Y M A R Y A N N L I T T E L L
t age 57, Morristown resident Dagoberto Alvarado looked much older, a result of the devastating
illness he’d been battling. It left him pale and weak, vomiting and losing weight. In February he
was diagnosed with advanced cirrhosis. His physician advised him to go straight to the liver
transplant center at University Hospital (UH): “They will save your life.”
At UH, Alvarado was evaluated and put on the liver transplant list. On March 10, he
received a new liver in a grueling 12-hour operation. The next morning, his wife was amazed to
find him sitting up in his hospital bed, eating a light breakfast. “I couldn’t believe the
transformation in my husband — in less than a day,” she said.
“There are only two liver transplant programs in New Jersey. We are the first and the largest,”
says Baburao Koneru, MD, chief of liver transplant and hepatobiliary surgery at UH and professor
of surgery at New Jersey Medical School (NJMS). He launched the program in 1989 and that

L I V E R T R A N S P L A N T T E A M
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y J O H N E M E R S O N
year, 15 transplants were performed. Since then, Koneru and his
team have transplanted more than 1,000 livers, currently averaging
45 to 50 transplants a year. One-quarter of these patients have liver
cancer. Other major reasons for liver transplantation include
hepatitis C, alcoholic cirrhosis, primary sclerosing cholangitis,
autoimmune hepatitis, primary biliary cirrhosis, Wilson’s disease
and other serious disorders. The team also performs approximately
150 major liver operations annually.
The program is organized around a multidisciplinary team
that includes surgeons, hepatologists, physician assistants, social
workers, a psychiatrist with expertise in transplant issues, and
financial coordinators to help navigate the maze of payment and
reimbursement. Nurse coordinators (pre- and post-op) serve as
the liaison between the transplant team and patients, overseeing
the logistics of surgery and recovery.
A typical day with the medical/surgical team includes much
more than surgery. This group is all about sharing knowledge and
technical skills with residents, fellows, medical students, nurses,
physical therapists, nutritionists, pharmacists and other hospital
colleagues, on rounds and at weekly meetings and conferences.
“There are many key players,” says Koneru. “Teamwork is what
makes this program so successful.”
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 2 1

2 2 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
9:45am
8:00am
The day begins early with a radiology conference where the
team evaluates the X-rays of many patients, identifying
those who might benefit from a clinical trial or liver
transplant. Patients are referred to the UH program from
throughout the state. “We’re known for our excellent
outcomes,” says Koneru.
Above left: Samanta and Koneru on rounds, which are attended by
residents, medical students, social workers, nurses, pharmacists,
physical therapists, dietitians and others. Above right: Koneru
discusses patient histories with Michelle Wilkins, MD (left),
NJMS’09, an intern at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; and
UH hepatology fellow Eleazer Yousefzaden, MD.

The team checks on Dagoberto Alvarado, now three days post-transplant.
Dramatically improved, he’ll soon be heading home. Patients can wait for
months on the transplant list — or in the case of Alvarado, be fortunate
enough to secure a liver within a few weeks. “He might not have made it
otherwise,” says his wife. The length of time a patient spends on the waiting
list depends on many factors, among them the severity of their illness and
the availability of donated organs.
11:45am
1:30pm
NJMS students may take clinical electives in a
variety of specialty areas, including hepatology. This
offers opportunities for collaborative learning from
those in other health professions. It’s also a chance
for students to ‘try out’ a specialty and experience
first-hand what it’s like to be an active member of a
medical team. Left: Cynthia Quainoo, MD,
transplant hepatology fellow, discusses patient
management with Samanta.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 2 3

2:05pm
Above: Patient Jamie Feireria was admitted to
UH with cirrhosis of the liver and a severe
rash (a common complication of liver disease).
“I gained 30 pounds in one month,” she says.
The physicians order tests to find out why.
Right: Arun Samanta, MD, is professor of
medicine at NJMS and chief of hepatology
and transplant medicine at UH. The UH liver
unit accommodates patients who are potential
transplant candidates; those who are listed for
transplant and await a donor organ; and those
with severe liver disease — for example, acute
liver failure, metabolic liver disease, advanced
liver disease complicated with acute kidney
failure, or drug-induced liver injury — who
require care but do not need a transplant.
2:35pm
Patient Alita Cruz has hepatitis C and has been
on the transplant list for four weeks. She was
admitted to UH when a liver became available,
but unfortunately, the organ wasn’t in transplantable
condition. Her wait for a donor liver
continues.
2 4 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E

FRONT ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: G E O R G E M A Z P U L E , M D , SURGICAL RESIDENT; B A B U R A O K O N E R U , M D ; A R U N S A M A N TA , M D .
MIDDLE ROW: E L I S A B E T E D A S I LVA , PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT; E D I T H M E N C H AV E Z , R N , NURSE COORDINATOR; M A R I A D E A L M E I D A , FINANCIAL COORDINATOR;
VA L E R I E B R O O K S , SECRETARY; H E L E N E D U J A R D I N , PROGRAM ADMINISTRATOR; M A L I H A A H M A D , M D , ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE;
C O N N I E M U N O Z , PATIENT NAVIGATOR/REFERRALSCOORDINATOR; E S T H E R C A L A D O - A L I G M AY O , R N , NURSE COORDINATOR; T H O M A S LY N C H , M D , SURGICAL RESIDENT;
M A R L E N E A N D R A D E , MEDICAL ASSISTANT; F E L M A I Z A R , FINANCIAL COORDINATOR; A D I T I PAT E L , PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT; D O R O T H Y O ’ H A R E , R N , NURSE COORDINATOR;
M A U R E E N H E S T E R , R N , NURSE COORDINATOR; E L O I S A L A U D AT O - H U FA L A R , R N , NURSE COORDINATOR; I O N A M O N T E I R O , M D , ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PEDIATRIC
GASTROENTEROLOGY.
BACK ROW: G E O F F R E Y K O I Z U M I , DATA SYSTEMS MANAGER; J A C Q U E L I N E O ’ B R YA N T - T R AV I S , PROGRAM ASSISTANT; F O N D A S T E WA R T, MEDICAL ASSISTANT;
L AT O N I A B A L D W I N , MEDICAL ASSISTANT; C A R L O O P O N T, PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT; A D R I A N F I S H E R , M D , ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR/TRANSPLANT SURGEON; AND
D O R I A N W I L S O N , M D , ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR/TRANSPLANT SURGEON.
3:20pm
Transplanting an organ is not unlike staging a large, complex opera. There is so much drama — some of it life and death. The starring players —
physicians, patients, nurses and myriad support staff — often face obstacles and conflict. There’s the quest for a ‘holy grail’— in this case, a
healthy liver.
The group of people pictured above makes it happen at University Hospital. “Most patients are referred by their physicians, but some people
find us by themselves,” says UH nurse coordinator Maureen Hester. “When they come here, they’re frightened. They expect to go on the transplant
list right away, but it doesn’t work that way.”
Patients are first examined to determine whether they are transplant candidates. The workup includes evaluation by transplant hepatologists and
surgeons, cardiologists, social workers and dietitians. A psychiatric workup includes support for patients and evaluation for drug and alcohol abuse —
both primary factors in hepatitis C infection. Transplant candidates with alcohol — or drug-related illness must agree to give up these
substances completely. Their names will not go on the waiting list until they complete six months of sobriety.
Those who are accepted into the program go on a national waiting list until a liver becomes available. Statistical formulas are used to predict
which patients’ are in the greatest need of a new liver and they are placed higher on the list. Patients' placement on the list changes as their health
status changes.
The wait for a liver can be days, weeks, or months. It’s part of the drama. When the call finally comes that a liver is available, the patient and
the team are ready. And in the best-case scenario, there is a happy ending. .
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 2 5

OPPOSITE:
Making the Rounds
in South Jersey
W O R D S B Y B A R B A R A H U R L E Y / P H O T O G R A P H S B Y J O H N E M E R S O N
P
aul Boulos understands interprofessionalism better than most. “I have lots of
professionals in my family,” the second year student at the School of Osteopathic
Medicine says, an understatement to be sure. “My father’s a dentist and my mom
manages his office; my brother and his wife are both podiatrists. My fiancée is finishing
her first year at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. My aunt is a psychiatrist,
my uncle a nephrologist, and several cousins are pharmacists. And did I mention
that my sister is a first year student here at SOM?” He stops to take a breath. “Our
dinner table conversation almost always revolved around their amazing experiences.”
Home for Boulos is Holmdel, and growing up and
listening to these stories certainly impacted his ultimate
career decision. He admits that his “first true love” was
paleontology, but losing a 27-year-old cousin to complications
of a congenital heart defect drew him to cardiac
research at the University’s Graduate School of
Biomedical Sciences in Newark. He earned a Master of
Biomedical Sciences degree there before deciding on
SOM. Now a student senator representing the medical
school, he was a natural fit to become
PA U L B O U L O S , SOM '14,
AND HIS SISTER,
L A U R A B O U L O S , SOM '15
part of the planning committee for a
series of events on UMDNJ’s Stratford
campus that explore the future of
healthcare delivery and the role of interprofessionalism.
Effective teamwork among healthcare professionals
has been consistently identified as a key requirement for
improved patient care and ultimately better clinical outcomes.
This new emphasis on a team approach means that
many professionals — not just physicians — perform a
variety of specialized functions designed to meet the
physical, emotional and psychological needs of the patient.
But what makes healthcare professionals effective team
members? How are these skills developed? How will
healthcare professionals learn to understand and respect
the credentials, scope of practice and function of each
member of the healthcare team?
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 2 7

If collaborative work among
the professions — interprofessionalism
— is the future of
excellent health professions
education and healthcare
delivery, UMDNJ’s Stratford
campus is setting the pace.
These are some of the questions at the core of the Inter-
School Collaboration Group formed by the six schools of the
University with programs on the Stratford campus. In 2009, the
Group introduced an Interprofessional Grand Rounds (IPGR)
series, a response to a call to action from the Institute of
Medicine and other leaders in health professions education to
embrace and advance the concept of “team.”
Grand rounds have traditionally been an important teaching
tool and ritual of medical education and inpatient care. Usually a
specific medical problem and a particular patient were presented
to an audience of doctors, residents and medical students. Over
time, Grand Rounds have evolved into sessions rarely having a
patient present and more closely resembling a lecture. Adding a
new dimension to the concept, the IPGR presents the broader
picture, welcomes all healthcare professionals, and stresses the
value of working together to better serve the patient.
Planning the IPGR in Stratford has itself been an exercise in
collaboration among the schools and the Student Senate.
Students from all the schools are invited, and nearly 200 on
average attend the hour-long, late afternoon sessions. These
events have covered a variety of topics from an interprofessional
perspective: Diabetes and Weight Loss, Alzheimer’s disease,
Jillian Longobardo admits that she completed
her rotation in OB/GYN at Our Lady of
Lourdes in Camden with “chills and tears in
her eyes.” You see, she had delivered three
babies during this “incredible experience.” But
Longobardo, starting her third year in
UMDNJ’s Physician Assistant (PA) program,
was also one of the first on the University’s
southern New Jersey campus to experience a
new way of looking at clerkships, or rotations,
where future healthcare professionals are trained to function as
team members.
2 8 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
Fragile X and Autism, for example.
The latest session, on April 26, focused on smoking and
health and an interprofessional approach to a patient with chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema. Faculty included
professors and instructors from six UMDNJ schools in Stratford,
and Student Senator Boulos served as moderator. “The campus
goes smoke free on July 1,” he notes, “and the Grand Rounds
was planned with this in mind. We looked at smoking and
disease. But on the positive side, we also got to see how many
resources there were to help smokers.”
Boulos sees the IPGR as windows into his future, which at
this point he thinks may be research. Whether he ultimately
finds himself in a laboratory or a physician’s office, he already
understands how important it will be to patient outcomes for the
lines of communications between professions to be open. “I
think health care is becoming less about the disease and more
about the individual patient,” he says, “and this will require a
better understanding of how the different professions interact.
Everyone needs to be on the same page.”
The IPGR project is coordinated by the School of
Osteopathic Medicine, the largest school in Stratford, and not
coincidentally the one led by Thomas Cavalieri, DO, a recognized
national expert on interprofessional education. He was an
invited participant in a public-private collaboration of the Health
Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) and various foundations
that explored team-based competencies as a foundation
for education and clinical practice. And previously he had been
appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the
advisory committee on HRSA’s interdisciplinary and communitybased
linkages.
“Professional education has been very discipline specific,”
Dean Cavalieri notes. “Our Interprofessional Grand Rounds ask
faculty to go beyond sharing content in their own field of expertise
to talk instead about the potential of collaboration.” And he is
quick to add that the ultimate goal is to demonstrate how
patients benefit when healthcare professionals work together. He
is convinced they will. .
A New Spin on Rotations
Longobardo’s appreciation for teamwork came when a good
friend who was a physician assistant encouraged this pre-med
student to shadow her before choosing a career direction. “I’m
an outgoing, friendly person and saw that PAs got to spend a lot
of time with patients,” Longobardo recalls. “But I also saw how
closely the PAs work with doctors.”
This year for the first time students at the School of
Osteopathic Medicine (SOM) shared rotations with four PA students
and also saw firsthand just how closely the two work
together. Medical school students have traditionally spent the
first half of their training in the classroom and the second half in
clerkships in teaching hospitals. There they rotate through

N I Ñ A TA M AY O , SOM '13, AND PA STUDENT J I L L I A N L O N G O B A R D O
different medical specialties and treat patients under the supervision
of physicians. They learn by viewing and doing.
Now a third year medical student at SOM, Niña Tamayo has
been doing just that. She met Longobardo on the OB/GYN rotation.
“I felt camaraderie with Jillian from the moment we met,”
she remembers. “We would
see patients together and
discuss interesting cases. I
never really had the
mindset that she was the
PA student and I the med
student.”
Tamayo came to medical
school from Chicago
with a background in public
health and nutrition where
she had already experienced
working as part of a
team. “Bringing professionals
together not only facilitates
the communication
process and gets everyone
on the same page,” she
says, “but it also helps us
tackle a problem from different
angles and improve
our approach to patients. I
think it encourages thoroughness
and creativity.”
Matthew McQuillan,
MS, PA-C, is the assistant
director for clinical education
in the PA program,
located in the School of
Health Related Professions.
PA STUDENT K E L LY W E B B
“Now all the University’s
medical schools have interprofessional
clerkships,” he
says. Besides the educational importance of clinical training, he
believes that this shared experience will lead to the mutual
understanding and respect that will advance collaboration among
the health professions.
How are the interprofessional clerkships working? “Well,”
according to PA student Kelly Webb, who is completing an
eight-week rotation in internal medicine at Kennedy Hospital in
Washington Township. “We are all just students with the same
expectations,” Webb reports. “I think the med students now
have a greater respect for PAs and what we do. They asked lots
of questions.”
Webb herself answered some weighty questions about her
own future before embarking on PA training. An art school
graduate working as a graphic designer, she decided that life
sitting all day in front of a computer screen was not for her.
She enrolled in a post-baccalaureate pre-med program at Rider
University to prepare for shifting gears into a new career. She is
enthusiastic about her decision and has enjoyed the interaction
with medical students. “In the long run,” she notes, “it’s about
knowledge and each team member understanding and respecting
what the other one knows.”
— continued on page 55
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 2 9

P H O T O G R A P H B Y J O H N E M E R S O N
Q FIVE UESTIONS
with Carolyn Burr
Carolyn K. Burr, EdD, RN, is the deputy director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center at the School of Nursing. The FXB Center’s
goal is to improve the health of vulnerable women, children, youth and families — including those infected/affected by HIV — and to build capacity
in the communities and systems that serve them. Burr is a pediatric nurse practitioner and adult educator who has been actively educating
health care providers about HIV/AIDS for 20 years. As principal investigator of CDC-funded grants since 1999, she works with health care
providers and hospitals across the U.S. to implement innovative approaches that support the goals of eliminating perinatal HIV infection in the
U.S. and supporting routine HIV testing in health care settings.
Q
3 0 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
Tell me about the law in New Jersey mandating HIV testing for pregnant women.
Offering HIV testing to pregnant women has been the New Jersey law for many years, but since 2008 legislation stated
that HIV testing should be included in routine prenatal testing using an “opt-out” approach. The HIV test is done
routinely along with the standard battery of prenatal blood tests, unless the woman declines. The provider must give the patient
information about HIV/AIDS, the benefits of testing for her and her baby, the available medical treatment for her, and interventions
that reduce the infant’s risk of HIV infection.
Q
What about those women who “opt out?”
The law says that testing of pregnant women for HIV shall “be voluntary and free of coercion.” Physicians caring for
pregnant women explain to their patients that they will be tested unless they choose to opt out. Actually, few decline.
It’s the women who come to the emergency room to deliver their babies never having been seen by a physician or other health care
provider. These are the ones who have fallen through the cracks. So it’s really an issue of promoting prenatal care. The earlier a
woman is tested, the earlier treatment, if needed, can begin, and the better for the baby she is carrying.
Q
How has FXB been involved?
The FXB Center is a leader on a local level of a process called Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR)-HIV. The
project started in 2010 and was funded by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services to review the care
and services for pregnant women and their infants when an infant is diagnosed with HIV infection or a mother with HIV receives care
very late in her pregnancy. The goal is to identify the circumstances that prevented some women from seeking prenatal care.
The process starts with an in depth review of the mother’s chart and the baby’s care. But an important element is added. The
mother is interviewed, respecting her confidentiality. She is given a voice, and we listen. These are women who have not been wellserved
by the system. This is a chance to look at how a woman’s needs were not met, and why. What went on? Why didn’t she get
care? How did we miss the opportunity to serve this woman? We know what we think, but we try to see things from her perspective.
Q
What happens to the information gained from the interviews?
We’re not about assigning blame to either the patients or the providers. We’re focused on the system going forward and
how to do things better. The information from the interviews is passed on to the Case Review Team (CRT) that
includes clinicians from University and Newark Beth Israel hospitals, and representatives from mental health agencies, DYFS, and also
FXB. The CRT will review a dozen or so cases to look for common themes and trends.

The CRT distills the information so that
recommendations can be sent to the
Community Action Team. This group
includes those at the State level in positions to
make changes, like New Jersey’s health
department. FXB is represented there as
well. It’s important to understand that we are
working to understand the circumstances of
individual cases and using those findings to
recommend improvements in systems of care.
The goal is to develop a plan for community
action and to mobilize.
Q
We don’t hear much about
AIDS in children anymore.
Why is that?
It’s because almost all pregnant
women have a routine HIV test during
prenatal care. If a woman has HIV infection,
she can take antiretroviral (ARV) medication
during pregnancy and intravenously during
labor and delivery. And the baby takes ARVs
for six weeks. When that happens, the HIV
transmission rate from mom to baby is 1 or 2
percent. In the bad old days before treatment,
the rate was 25 percent. When mom
doesn’t get prenatal care and is first tested in
labor and delivery, ARV treatment then, and
treatment for the baby, can still decrease the
rate to 9 to 13 percent, better but not nearly as
good as it can be. Since 1994 the number of
children with AIDS has dropped 95 percent.
We’re very close to eliminating perinatal HIV
in the U.S. It would be wonderful to reach
that goal. The FIMR-HIV methodology is
one way of learning what we need to do to
get there. .
— as told to Barbara Hurley

(L-R)
C H R I S F R I T T O N , P H D , N J M S
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ORTHOPAEDICS;
J O S E P H G E I S S L E R
GRADUATE STUDENT IN THE JOINT
UMDNJ-NJIT BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
DOCTORAL PROGRAM;
D E V E N D R A B A J A J , P H D
NJMS RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

SPANNING THE
BIOLOGY-TECHNOLOGY
BRIDGE
A young graduate student in the joint UMDNJ-NJIT Biomedical Engineering Doctoral
Program is already making his mark researching bisphosphonates (marketed as Actonel, Aredia, Boniva, Didronel,
Fosamax, Reclast, Skelid and Zometa) prescribed to increase bone by reducing the bone-loss part of the bone life cycle.
But scientists are finding evidence that long-term use of the drugs can cause harm to the very bone
they are intended to support.
EXUDING CONFIDENCE AND POISE, 25-YEAR-OLD biomedical engineering graduate
student Joseph Geissler walks calmly through the large, open laboratory on the G level of the
NJMS-UH Cancer Center on South Orange Avenue in Newark that has literally become his
second home. Sometimes he spends 16 of 24 hours there, with no complaint — he finds it a
comfortable place to work, think, write, plan, and hammer away at sticky problems of bones and
muscles, cells and beams. His science portends a wave of the future, where such distinct
disciplines as biology, chemistry and engineering lose their hard edges and meld to create strikingly
new approaches to previously “unsolvable” human problems that have stumped some really good
minds. “A natural bridge” is what Joshua Berlin, PhD, NJMS/GSBS professor and founding co-director of the shared
NJIT-UMDNJ biomedical engineering doctoral program, calls this marriage of biosciences and technology. Biomedical
engineering students are riding a mighty wave into a really promising future.
With a degree in chemical biology from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia earned in May 2009, Geissler was
originally headed to medical school, at least in part because that’s what biosciences majors often do. But when biomedical
engineering was presented as an option, he “got” its potential value and the field intrigued him. He completed three
courses as a non-matriculated student — bioinstrumentation, tissue engineering and biomechanics — to make sure it was
a fit, then applied and was accepted into NJIT’s Master’s degree program.
W O R D S B Y E V E J A C O B S / P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3 3

P H O T O G R A P H B Y J O H N E M E R S O N
A SINGLE CORTICAL BONE BEAM READY FOR MECHANICAL TESTING. THE BLUE DOTS
INDICATE AN ANATOMICAL ORIENTATION FOR LOADING. THE BEAM IS 10 MM IN LENGTH.
Currently, Geissler is “just” completing his first year as a doctoral
student. However, he’s not a beginner in the field. His Master’s thesis
research on bisphosphonates — medication often used to treat
osteoporosis and cancer — plunged him headlong into the heart and
soul of his upcoming career. As technology officer and then president
of the Graduate Biomedical Engineering Society during his
first two years at NJIT, he helped to line-up industry and university
lecturers who could present students with a clearer picture of the
array of professional options in the field. Geissler himself “clicked”
with one of these speakers, Chris Fritton, PhD, an assistant professor
of orthopaedics at NJMS, who directs a lab in the NJMS-UH
Cancer Center, and the Master’s student came to work in Fritton’s
lab in late 2010. It has proved to be a very productive partnership.
Their research has focused on the long-term effects of this drug
3 4 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
on bone strength and has even earned Geissler a NASA-sponsored
New Jersey Space Grant Consortium graduate fellowship. “NASA
has been looking at techniques to overcome the adverse effects of
weightlessness on the musculoskeletal system. Because bisphosphonates
have been effective for treating osteoporosis, they have
been seen as an attractive countermeasure for astronauts on longduration
space flights,” he explains. In the U.S., 55 million prescriptions
for bisphosphonates are written annually, according to a 2007
report in the journal Osteoporosis International.
The UMDNJ research has focused on animals that were given
bisphosphanates for three years. “I received the right 11th rib of all 36
animals for my studies,” Geissler explains. Bone samples were provided
by collaborators at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
The challenges of the research were many. The first — fabricating
from the ribs “really small micro-beams, the size of two toothpicks
side by side,” to be tested — was “very tough,” he says. But
after mastering the skills taught to him by lab-mate and postdoctoral
fellow, Devendra Bajaj, PhD, Geissler cut 90 beams for mechanical
testing. Then he did what is called “cyclic loading,” applying a
small force over and over and over again until the bone fractures,
because, he says, “This is how we load our bones, in walking, for
instance.” The UMDNJ group was the first to do a cyclic loading
study looking at the effect of bisphosphonates. In other studies of
the drug, a high level of mechanical force was applied in a continuous
fashion to bone specimens until they fractured.
More and more fractures are being linked to long-time use of
bisphosphonates, according to Geissler. “Where the femur goes into
the pelvis at the hip is a region where you would expect to see osteoporotic
fractures,” he says. “But some patients who are on these
drugs for longer than five years may increase their susceptibility to
atypical fractures, such as a clean break right across the middle portion
of the femur. A small subset of bones have snapped as the result
of something as simple as getting up — not falling down. Some people
get two breaks nearly simultaneously — one at the same point
in each leg.” Some rib fractures may also be due to weakening bone
caused by the medication.
This drug stays in the body for a long time. “Your bone is like a
sponge,” explains the doctoral student. “It sucks the drug up and
holds it in. Five, ten years after stopping the drug treatment, it’s still
in your bones.” The growing data on bisphosphonates over the last
few years has translated into better dosing, he says. However, there
is not a clear scientific rationale for when the dose should be lowered
or discontinued.
In lay language, the research demonstrated that while bisphosphonates
do help strengthen osteoporotic bone in the short-run,
long-term treatment with the drug may have the reverse effect.
Geissler’s abstract on this research was among the 200 chosen from
several thousand submitted for a spotlight podium presentation at
this year’s Orthopaedic Research Society Conference in February, a
“unique opportunity” for a young investigator to present his findings
to a highly specialized research and clinical audience.
The team made other significant findings. Bone micro-beams
treated with higher doses of the drug failed more quickly (within
fewer cycles of loading) and the specimens did not return to their
original form after stress was applied because of reduced elasticity,
also called plastic deformation. Deformation is an engineering term:

A GROUP OF FOUR OSTEONS, EACH CONTAINING NUMEROUS OSTEOCYTE CELLS. NOTE THE
CIRCULAR STRUCTURE OF EACH OSTEON AND THE SINGLE CANAL THROUGH WHICH
NUTRIENTS ARE SUPPLIED TO THE OSTEOCYTES OF THIS BASIC METABOLIC UNIT OF
HUMAN CORTICAL BONE. THE OSTEON IS ALSO MECHANICALLY IMPORTANT TO FRACTURE
RESISTANCE. THE LARGEST CANAL SHOWN IS APPROXIMATELY 40 μM IN DIAMETER.
when an object is changed temporarily due to applied force, it’s
called elastic deformation. When it’s changed permanently, it’s
called plastic deformation.
In microstructural analyses, to determine why the mechanical
properties were reduced, Geissler looked at the number and size of
the osteons [the chief structural units of human cortical bone] and the
space between them. He says that in high dose specimens, each individual
osteon was smaller and the space between them was larger.
“The space between osteons is important. We form small cracks
in bone called microdamage. Our hypothesis is that the damage
accumulates in these spaces,” he explains. “Perhaps treatment
with bisphosphonates affects the size of these spaces.”
According to the young researcher, the UMDNJ team has
already collected enough data on this project to apply for a
National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. “But that type of funding
is not easy to come by,” he says.
The Indiana University Medical School collaborators are obviously
happy; they have recently shipped more bisphosphonatetreated
bone to UMDNJ to continue this research. Once again,
Geissler will create bone micro-beams, but this time will test the
samples differently — looking at shorter testing methods that
provide similar information as the cyclic loading. Some cyclic loading
tests require greater than a week to complete. An even more
clinically relevant test would require less time and might be completed
without subjecting a patient to a painful biopsy. This would
give both patient and doctor more definitive, scientifically based
information on when a drug should be discontinued to avoid an
oftentimes life-threatening fracture.
“The mechanical data is there,” he states. “Now we’re looking
for the ‘why.’ We’re looking for the ‘research payoffs’ for unraveling
several chapters of this story.”
Meanwhile, the life of the biomedical engineering student
marches on. Soon to begin a research rotation in the lab of NJMS
orthopaedics and cancer researcher Elizabeth Moran, PhD,
Geissler wants to “branch out, try new things.” This will help him
decide on a dissertation topic. Additionally, he is applying for his
next fellowship; he has sent out applications to the Department of
Defense and NASA.
But rest assured that this young man does not spend all of his
time in the Cancer Center laboratory. Over the last 10 months, two
to three days each week, Geissler has found his way to Science
Park High School in Newark, where he observes classes, teaches
modules on biology, anatomy and physiology, and talks with students
about their educational opportunities — all under the aegis
of a National Science Foundation Graduate Teaching Fellowship.
“It’s been wonderful,” he says. “I’ve formed great relationships
with students. I am very interested in education — especially
in this city.”
Now a resident of Society Hill in Newark, he is one of the
city’s greatest proponents, speaking out against negative stereo-
CURRENTLY, GEISSLER IS “JUST” A FIRST-YEAR
doctoral student, but he’s anything but a beginner in the field. His Master’s thesis
research on bisphosphonates — medication often used to treat osteoporosis and cancer
— plunged him headlong into the heart and soul of his upcoming career.
types. He wants to help rebuild a sense of community and is working
on a “trickle down mentorship” plan involving middle and
high school students, their parents, and college undergraduates
and graduates in Newark, who would provide mentorship, legal
and tax advice, health information, educational direction and other
practical help.
“I want to build a whole community of mentors who are
networked, starting with kids in middle school,” he says.
“Mentoring is such an awesome skill to have. Why not take on that
responsibility, have someone looking to you for advice?”
And why not? If doctoral student, researcher, teacher and
ardent Newark advocate Joseph Geissler is ready to take on another
complex task in his already crowded week, perhaps there are
others who will join him in building more stable bridges for young
people crossing into adulthood in New Jersey’s largest city..
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3 5

Y U R I J A D O T T E , M D , P H D STUDENT,
D U L A PA C Q U I A O , E D D , R N , C T N , PROFESSOR, UMDNJ-SN,
AND S H A R E S E P O R T E R , M P H , C H E S , P H D STUDENT

STUDYING CITY LIFE
Yes, it’s complicated. Start by thinking socially, culturally, politically, economically,
geographically, and bio-environmentally. You can’t pursue one line of reasoning without the others.
With backgrounds, advanced degrees and full-fledged careers already in public health, nursing,
medicine, architecture, education, social work as well as administration, 60 doctoral students are
capturing the essence of interdisciplinary education. What’s at stake is the health and everyday
life of the 222 million Americans who call a metropolitan area home.
T
hroughout the 2011-12 fall
and spring semesters, Yuri
Jadotte, MD, took the
CHEN bus traveling a loop
of city streets between the
University Heights campuses
of UMDNJ-School of
Nursing (SN), New Jersey
Institute of Technology
(NJIT) and Rutgers-Newark.
This PhD student laughs
easily about how many miles
he logged going from one
school to another and how different the cultures are
at each stop.
Fellow student Sharese Porter, MPH, CHES,
and their professor, Dula Pacquiao, EdD, RN, CTN,
sit alongside Yuri at a conference room table and nod
in animated agreement. “We are certainly a one-of-a
kind program,” says Dula. (By the way, this is a program
in which everyone, from full professors on down
to first-year students, is on a first name basis, a fact of
life that was not only hard for Yuri as a new physician,
but that we also found difficult to do as editors who
almost always refer to individuals as “Doctor” or by
their last name in our copy. In this story, as you see,
we bow to the Urban Systems’ style.)
A 4:14 p.m. CHEN bus departing from Rutgers
could get Yuri to UMDNJ by 4:26 or to NJIT by 4:37
with one stop on this regular route taking him as far as
the train station by 4:46. Classes were all in the
evening to accommodate his day-time work schedule
and typically, he’d be on that bus between 4 and 5
p.m. and later heading home between 8 and 9 p.m.
CHEN stands for Council for Higher Education in
Newark, established back in 1971 to encourage
collaborations among the four public institutions of
higher education in Newark: UMDNJ, NJIT,
Rutgers-Newark and Essex County College. This
unincorporated association works well and has served
as a force in the revitalization of the community
bounded by Springfield Avenue/Market Street,
Littleton Avenue, Orange Road and Halsey Street.
The CHEN institutions have a combined daytime
population of almost 50,000 and close to 35,000 of
them are degree-seeking students like Yuri and
Sharese, a public health educator who is at the
dissertation stage of her PhD journey.
W O R D S B Y M A R Y A N N B R I N L E Y / P H O T O G R A P H S B Y J O H N E M E R S O N
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3 7

THROUGHOUT THE 2011-12 FALL AND SPRING
Yuri Jadotte, MD, took the CHEN bus traveling a loop of city streets between the
University Heights campuses of UMDNJ-School of Nursing (SN), New Jersey
Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Rutgers-Newark.
A medical resident who intends to
pursue dermatology as well as a research
associate at the New Jersey Center for
Evidence-Based Practice, Yuri earned his
MD in 2010 from UMDNJ-New Jersey
Medical School (NJMS). The reason for
all that local travel last year was his first
year of core coursework in a unique 72
credit doctoral program, the PhD in
Urban Systems that draws on the combined
strengths of three universities:
health at UMDNJ’s School of Nursing,
environment at NJIT’s School of
Architecture and education at Rutgers’
School of Public Affairs and Adminis-
3 8 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
tration. Yes, doctors debate architects and
educators show healthcare administrators
what’s really happening. Where else in
the world would someone like Yuri with
his medical background be able to follow
the link to “how biology influenced the
language of urban planning”? His
professor at NJIT thought it was an
amazing research project topic, and one
that no one else would have proposed.
“I’m hoping to get that paper published,”
Yuri says.
“During the first two years you have
the most cross-pollination of all three
campuses directly,” Yuri explains. “In sub-
sequent years, I’ll be collaborating with the
different areas but I may not have to travel
physically to all the campuses.” Each
school offers six credits of that core curriculum
for a total of 18. After that, students
stick closer to their fields of concentration.
Yuri, one of just 16 students on the urban
health track, actually carries three school
IDs: one for UMDNJ, one for NJIT and
one for Rutgers. And, they come in handy
because on any given day this student
could be anywhere in Newark, the rich
multicultural city that provides a natural
laboratory for students who want to do this
kind of cross-disciplinary research and, in

the long run, make a difference in complex,
challenging, urban areas.
“This lack of hierarchy is just one of
the secrets here,” explains Dula, the
UMDNJ professor who is the coordinator
of the PhD in urban health. “It’s a real cultural
change from medicine and all of
health care, in fact. We are very comfortable
in our informality and very collegial.
Students should feel at ease approaching
faculty or arguing a point. This is what I
believe a PhD program should be all about
and this program is very visionary. It began
back in 2001 and we have integrated the
three areas and three schools so well now.”
Even the diploma at graduation is awarded
by all three universities. Graduates go on
to be employed as faculty, researchers, program
planners, policy developers, and
administrators in education, health care,
government, and public health agencies.
“Everyone, no matter what track you
are in, works towards social justice,” says
Sharese, an educator with Rutgers
Cooperative Extension, the communitybased
outreach and research arm of their
School of Environmental and Biological
Sciences. “Whether we are designing a
building, teaching, developing a curriculum
or working as health practitioners, we
incorporate social dynamics. Health is not
just based on an individual’s behavior. In
fact, one of the features of the program is
that we always look at those social reasons
for illness and disease as well as the environment
and the individual.”
Sharese, who is in her fourth year,
was born and raised in Newark and has
always gravitated to urban environments
so, for her, finding this multi-faceted graduate
program was “magic. I fit right in
here. This program has really allowed me
the flexibility to create my own particular
path and interact with the faculty not only
here at UMDNJ but at Rutgers and
NJIT.” Her job with Rutgers sends her
out into multiple counties statewide,
including the Newark community, which
dovetails perfectly with her studies. “I am
doing a lot of work around town now on
childhood obesity and I’ve had practical
experience in public health but I needed
to build more skills to do research.”
Sharese treasures the interdisciplinary
nature of this program and has watched
how students interact and teach one
another. “Our group is really outspoken.
We are definitely advocates and it really
does take this combination of disciplines,
experiences and backgrounds to help us
understand the complex connections in
an urban world.” For her dissertation, she
is addressing the influence of racial
residential segregation on the life course
and health of black immigrants. “I want
to focus on how a neighborhood affects
health.”
Yuri jumps in to agree. “Health can’t
just be a matter of telling a patient, ‘You
smoked, therefore you’ve got lung
cancer.’ There are so many steps in
between if we really look carefully at
people and not simply blame them.” Born
in Florida, Yuri spent much of his childhood
in Haiti, where his parents were
from. Eventually, he returned to the U.S.
when he was 15 for high school, college
and then medical school. “One of my
parents lived through the devastating
earthquake in Haiti and is still down
there. I remember thinking, ‘I want to do
something about this, to change the environment
there or to make sure it can’t
happen in another urban situation.’ So
many people died or were injured in Haiti
because of the way urban systems were
designed. I want to be in a position if I
am ever in any similar situation to be able
to say, ‘This is what we should do.’” And
while dermatology may be his clinical
interest, he explains that “any disease,
particularly infectious and allergic
diseases, fits spatial patterns and can be
distributed in certain geographical ways.
Few have looked at the socio-economic
and geographic aspects of dermatology.”
Karen Franck, PhD, at NJIT, is the
overall director of the Urban Systems
program, and she coordinates the environment
track. At Rutgers, Alan Sadovnik,
PhD, manages the urban educational
policy specialization. Karen believes that
“urban problems are multifaceted and
cannot be understood or solved within the
confines of an individual discipline.” So,
students are “expected to acquire an
appreciation of issues related to urban
environment, health and education.”
Some, according to Dula, actually move
from one track to another track as their
careers take shape. Faculty members
from all three universities meet regularly
and work together. At UMDNJ, Dula also
holds monthly meetings and invites SN
professors outside the program because “I
want to filter information to everyone, so
they understand the program and can participate
in dissertation committees.”
Dula explains, “It has been a big
responsibility to get these three huge university
administrations working together.
In medicine and with the growth of all
health-related professions, there is always
a lot of turf protection.” Specialization, in
nursing and all the allied health fields, is
the norm. Meanwhile, those in the social
sciences are way ahead in realizing that
collaboration between specializations are
keys to success. “You can’t study anthropology
without sociology, or art without
history,” says this nurse educator.
For her own doctorate in education
at Rutgers she majored in anthropology
but had to be prepared to teach in three
specialties so she opted for sociology and
history as well. The former director of
graduate education at Kean University,
Dula was thrilled to come to UMDNJ in
2005 to teach in this PhD program. “I’ve
always been interested in the social
determinants of health and it’s all coming
together now. There is a big push in
health care today to look at health and not
just disease. While we may be good at
helping people after they are sick, we
have not been good at promoting health.
We’ve got to address those behaviors that
keep people healthy before they get
sick.” In nursing, there has been too
much emphasis on patients as individuals
and not enough on populations. “Let’s
talk about why some groups are more or
less healthy than other groups. Let’s talk
about class and environmental issues and
discrimination. Think about it, your
health has so much to do with education,
income and access to care.”
At conferences she attends now,
Dula can’t help but smile about the
Urban Systems PhD. “Everybody is
talking about inter-professional doctorates
but we’ve been doing it for years here.
It’s very exciting.” .
Other faculty who teach in the Urban Systems Program
are: Barbara Caldwell, PhD, APN-BC; Huey-Shys
Chen, PhD, RN, CHES; Tony Forrester, PhD, RN;
Daniel Gundersen, PhD; Frances Munet-Vilaro, PhD,
RN; Melanie Percy, PhD, RN, CPNP, FAAN, FAANP;
Rula Wilson, DNSc, R.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 3 9

Engineering New Cells for the Injured
B R A I N
F
Doctoral student Nolan Skop — collaborating with his faculty mentors from NJIT, NJMS and GSBS —
jumps head-first into what may be the toughest research challenge of our time.
or most of us, the idea
of regenerating the
brain is just as remote
as pigs flying. For others,
like neuroscientist
Steve Levison, PhD,
and biomedical engineering
doctoral
student Nolan Skop,
the likelihood of
growing functional
brain cells where none
existed before is not
quite so farfetched.
A 2007 graduate
of the University of
Connecticut with an undergraduate degree in biomedical
engineering, Skop took a year off to work as a lab technician
at Yeshiva University before beginning the joint
UMDNJ-NJIT doctoral program in the fall of 2008. What
drew him to the Newark schools is the quality of the
academics as well as the strong relationship between
UMDNJ and its medical center, University Hospital.
“Most other biomedical engineering programs are solely
university-based. A program that’s closely integrated with a
hospital is a big deal,” he says.
Students in the joint PhD program complete at least
one six-month rotation at a lab at NJIT and one at
UMDNJ — as well as 12 graduate credit hours in
engineering coursework and 12 in biosciences — before
choosing the focus of their research. Skop’s first stop was
the lab of NJIT biomedical engineering assistant professor
Cheul Hyung Cho, PhD, whose interests span stem cell
bioengineering, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering
and polymeric biomaterials. Creating biomaterials and
supporting structures for spinal cord injury repair is high
on Cho’s list of research priorities. Skop set out to investigate
chitosan (a naturally occurring polymer used for many
pharmaceutical applications) micropsheres as a “vehicle for
increasing the efficacy of neural stem cell transplants to
promote brain and spinal cord regeneration after severe
traumatic injury.”
Although intrigued by math and engineering, it was
the pull of medicine — with the opportunity to heal and
even cure — that pushed Skop to contact neuroscience
researcher and NJMS/GSBS professor Steve Levison,
PhD, whose work on the infant brain’s potential for
regeneration after stroke and traumatic injury seemed a
good match for where he wanted to go. Levison, in turn,
introduced him to NJMS assistant professor of neurosurgery,
Chirag Gandhi, MD, a research collaborator.
With its daunting complexity, the human brain is truly
the final frontier. Among this group of scientists, not
intimidated by the myriad of challenges inherent in brain
research, Skop found a comfortable “research home.”
Levison is currently one of six collaborators in the U.S. and
W O R D S B Y E V E J A C O B S / P H O T O G R A P H B Y J O H N E M E R S O N
4 0 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E

LEFT TO RIGHT:
C H E U L H Y U N G C H O , P H D , N J I T
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR;
N O L A N S K O P, BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING DOCTORAL STUDENT;
S T E V E L E V I S O N , P H D , NJMS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF NEU-
ROSCIENCES; AND C H I R A G G H A N D H I , M D , N J M S ,
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF NEUROSURGERY

Skop’s ultimate
goal is to use his
scaffolds and fetal
stem cell line to
regenerate the
injured brain at
the site of a severe
injury.
4 2 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
Europe — calling
themselves the
Transatlantic Network
on Newborn Stroke —
who received a $6 million
grant from the
Paris-based Fondation
Leducq to investigate
their premise that newborn
brain injury may
be reparable. His
dream is to impact clinical
practice with his
lab’s findings within
just a few years.
Levison’s lab has
demonstrated that brain injury in the infant stimulates the proliferation
of stem cells within the “brain marrow,” resulting in a doubling
of their number after just three days, and that the new stem
cells can generate new neurons and glia. What they are battling is a
highly destructive cascade of inflammatory molecules that is set off
at the time of trauma.
Levison is also the principal investigator on a sizable grant
from the New Jersey Commission on Brain Injury Research,
which underwrites three collaborative projects at UMDNJ and
NJIT to devise strategies to enhance regeneration of brain cells
and to promote recovery of function after traumatic brain injuries
(TBI). Cho and Gandhi work with him on these projects.
In May 2009, Skop began his research work on neural stem
cells in Gandhi’s NJMS lab. His undergraduate degree had concentrated
primarily on civil and electrical engineering, so the doctoral
student now focused on bolstering his knowledge of biology,
specifically neurobiology, in order to delve headlong into medical
research. “I took all four of the graduate stem cell classes offered
plus a regenerative medicine class,” he says. Skop earned a certificate
in stem cell biology in 2010 and also took on the presidency
of the Stem Cell Education Society at UMDNJ.
In Gandhi’s lab, he learned how to harvest stem cells from
the subventricular zone of a healthy animal and transplant them
adjacent to the damaged cerebral cortex of another that is braininjured.
The transplanted cells — glowing a fluorescent green —
are easily distinguishable from the native cells.
Skop has worked with both fetal neural stem cells and adult
neural stem cells. “We transplanted both kinds after a fairly
severe brain injury to see which would give the best results,” he
says. “We were looking to see what the stem cells differentiated
into and the numbers of transplanted cells that survived.”
Unfortunately, “very few of the cells survived the transplant,”
he states, “which is in line with other research out there.”
But since science is all about asking the right questions,
Skop took the next step and worked on framing the pivotal question
for his research project. Could new engineering techniques
— some of which he had recently learned in Cho’s biomedical
engineering lab — be applied to improve the model and consequently
the outcomes?
One answer was obvious: He needed to abandon working on
the adult stem cells because of their serious limitations and
concentrate on the fetal stem cells, which were showing far more
promise for regeneration. The second answer was less obvious
and would demand further investigation: The stem cells needed
to be placed differently in the cavity formed from the brain
injury. “I started injecting the cells into the tissue surrounding
the cavity but they weren’t migrating into the injured tissue to
replace the damaged neurons,” the student explains.
Skop was on the right track, but not quite there. Tissue
engineering is all about applying engineering principles, as well
as knowledge and skills in the life sciences, to develop new
strategies to repair, and new materials and structures to replace,
tissues and even whole organs that are no longer functional or
viable. Stem cells, novel biomaterials, and growth factors are used
hand-in-hand with bioengineered structures — such as scaffolds
— to support the growth of new tissue.
Now the graduate student decided he was ready to move
forward with his doctoral project, using his engineering background
to create a unique scaffold to promote the regeneration of
brain tissue. “My first step was to optimize my scaffold, which
turned out to be a lot of work. I’m still trying to improve it,” he
explains.
His idea was that the scaffold would be multifunctional,
serving as a delivery vehicle to get the stem cells to the right
place, to provide a “hospitable” surface for the stem cells to grow
on, and, by attaching a growth factor to the scaffold, a means to
enhance the growth and survival of the newly introduced cells.
The scaffold that Skop created in the NJIT lab—made of
microspheres of chitosan — is still being tested, but is “95 percent
complete,” he says with a smile. One of his major hurdles
was to radically reduce the size of the microspheres in order to
facilitate transplantation into the brain of the animal model. With
his engineering skills and ingenuity, he accomplished his goal.
He physically carries his mini scaffolds — small enough to fit
in the palm of his hand — on the CHEN bus linking the campuses
of Newark’s major universities. They are “engineered” at
NJIT but it is in the UMDNJ lab that he has tested them with a
fetal rat stem cell line. “It works!” he says proudly.
Skop’s ultimate goal is to use his scaffolds and fetal stem cell
line to regenerate functional brain tissue at the site of a severe
injury. “I want my work to be clinically relevant,” he states.
“We produce a cavity-type of brain injury, which causes cell
death under the injured site. This area would normally scar, but
the scaffold also provides a physical and chemical barrier to the
scarring process,” he explains.
Skop sees this as the beginning of a “huge, very ambitious
research project,” in which he will show that the stem cells can
be transplanted at the site of the injury, survive, proliferate and
regenerate dead neurons. He hopes that in one year he will have
some significant results to show.
Rebuilding an injured region of the brain is among the most
complex undertakings in the world of medical research. “The
brain and nervous system are difficult. People are afraid of this
field,” says Skop, “If we are successful, our work will send ripples
throughout the whole regenerative medicine community.”
And that is just a glimpse of what one doctoral student with
three supportive research mentors in two distinct specialties can
accomplish when they put their heads together. .

A NEIGHBORHOOD’S
NEW HEALTH
OUTLOOK
TW O R D S B Y M A R Y A N N L I T T E L L / P H O T O G R A P H B Y J O H N E M E R S O N
Cindy Sickora, DNP, RN, assistant professor
of prelicensure programs at UMDNJ’s School of
Nursing (SN), has been working hard for the past
five years to improve the lives and health of the
residents of these developments. Her mission
began simply — a nurse measuring blood
pressure. But she wanted to do more. “There’s a
disconnect between health care professionals and
the community, and that’s why some people don’t
get the care they need,” she explains. “We’re here
to bridge that gap.”
Sickora received a $900,000 grant from the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Health Resources and Services Administration, to
4 4 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
he Ironbound section is home to the latest expansion of
UMDNJ’s health care initiatives in the city of Newark.
UMDNJ’s School of Nursing recently opened a community
health center to serve three public housing developments
located in the Ironbound — Hyatt Court, Pennington Court
and Terrell Homes. They are home to approximately 3,000
residents, many of whom face serious health issues, including
obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma.
launch the Jordan & Harris Community Health
Center in the Ironbound. Centrally located at Hyatt
Court and named for longtime Hyatt residents
Lillie Jordan and Esther Harris McArthur, the
center is staffed by a full-time nurse and other
UMDNJ health professionals. They offer comprehensive
health services to the residents of the three
housing developments, including physical exams,
home visits for the elderly and housebound, HIV
testing, screenings for hypertension, asthma and
diabetes, and vaccinations. Sickora is director of the
center and Hosseinali Shahidi, MD, MPH, assistant
professor of emergency medicine at New Jersey
Medical School (NJMS), is medical director.

ON-SITE AT THE JOHNSON & HARRIS
COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER,
LEFT TO RIGHT:
STAFF NURSE M Y R L A N D E
M E T E L L U S , B S N , R N ;
H O S S E I N A L I S H A H I D I , M D , M P H ,
MEDICAL DIRECTOR;
C I N D Y S I C K O R A , D N P, M S N , R N ,
DIRECTOR; AND
D A M A R I S G R O S S M A N , RECENT
GRADUATE OF THE SCHOOL OF
NURSING’S ACCELERATED BSN
PROGRAM.

NJMS and UMDNJ’s School of Health Related Professions are
collaborating with SN on the program.
As a complement to the center’s activities, UMDNJ has also
started a community health worker program. A collaboration
between SN and NJMS, it is funded by a $135,000 grant from the
Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey. The program trains
residents of the housing developments to educate their peers
about the most common health problems affecting underserved
urban populations. “So much of disease management is lifestyle,”
says Shahidi. “By providing health information, we’re empowering
people to improve their health.”
At first glance it’s hard to figure out how Shahidi and Sickora,
total opposites in personality, came together to pursue their common
goals. Shahidi is soft-spoken, courtly and precise. Sickora talks
a mile a minute. She’s in constant motion, her cellphone vibrating
4 6 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
nonstop with calls from students and community health worker
trainees. “This is the most rewarding experience I’ve had in my
35-year career as a nurse,” she states.
The community health center is the direct result of Sickora’s
doctoral project, which she started in 2008 when she enrolled in
SN’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program. As part of her
project she was assigned to the Ironbound — specifically, to Hyatt
Court. “It was a neighborhood I didn’t know much about. In the
beginning, I found it intimidating,” she recalls. “People would
look at me strangely and I’m sure they were thinking, ‘What’s she
doing here?’”
Sickora was assigned to care for 84-year-old Agnes Younger, a
stroke survivor. “She was feisty — she kept a baseball bat by her
door. I saw her every week for years and we became close. She was
the inspiration for this center.” As other residents would see

CENTER PHOTO:
AT THE RIBBON-CUTTING CEREMONY FOR THE
OPENING OF THE JORDAN & HARRIS
COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER ARE
S U S A N S A L M O N D , E D D , R N , C T N , DEAN
AND PROFESSOR AT THE SCHOOL OF NURSING;
C I N D Y S I C K O R A , D N P, M S N , R N ;
AND L I S A B L O C K , SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER
AT THE HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION OF NEW
JERSEY, WHICH PROVIDED A GRANT TO THE
CENTER TO ESTABLISH ITS COMMUNITY HEALTH
WORKER PROGRAM. THE SURROUNDING PHOTOS
ARE FROM THE GRADUATION CEREMONY FOR
THE JORDAN & HARRIS COMMUNITY HEALTH
WORKER TRAINING PROGRAM.
Sickora day in and day
out, they’d ask to have
their blood pressure
checked, and relationships
blossomed.
Eventually Sickora set up
shop in the recreation
room at Hyatt Court to
offer blood pressure
readings and other
services. At first,
residents trickled in
slowly. But as they got to
know her, they returned for follow-up, bringing their friends,
neighbors and relatives. Then, the federal grant enabled Sickora
to hire staff and establish the new center in renovated housing
authority space.
Sickora invited key stakeholders to create a Community
Advisory Board for the center, a step she said was crucial.
Influential residents from all three housing developments were
elected to the board. Over time, she involved more of the nursing
school staff and faculty and continued to bring SN students for
training. One of them, Damaris Grossman, a recent graduate of
the accelerated BSN program, found the experience invaluable
and continues to volunteer there. “We do health assessments,
home visits, head-to-toe examinations,” she says. “A lot of the
work is routine, but sometimes we have a patient who needs specialized
care, so we call in one of the nurse practitioners or Dr.
Shahidi. Many of these residents don’t have physicians and they
don’t look for help. You have to go to them.”
That’s where the community health workers come in,
explains Shahidi. A native of Iran, he did his obligatory military
service in the 1970s and later was part of an initiative launched by
the Iranian government to improve the country’s health care. He
spent several months in the countryside, traveling with nomads.
There, he observed the community health model in action.
“Groups of nomads moved around constantly with their tents and
animals, making it impossible to provide medical services,” he
says. “So a plan was developed in which community members
were trained to provide basic care. We worked with many great
educators and the program really took off. In fact, 17,000 of the
people who were trained and went on to train others are still doing
this work in Iran.” The notion of community health workers is not
new. The World Health Organization estimates there are over 1.3
million of them worldwide. In addition to large-scale implementa-
tion by countries such as China, Brazil and Iran, many countries
have implemented CHW programs on a smaller scale for a variety
of health issues.
Shahidi has met for the past four years with a small group of
UMDNJ colleagues to brainstorm ways to bring a community
health program to Newark. “Our health system doesn’t work
right,” he observes. “We wait until people get sick, and then we
help them. My goal is to prevent them from getting sick in the first
place. You do that through education. People eat unhealthy food,
don’t exercise, smoke, drink and use drugs. If we can change those
behaviors, we improve health.”
In April, the first group of community health workers completed
12 weeks of intensive training in basic health information,
overseen by Shahidi and Sickora. They learned about diabetes,
hypertension, asthma, healthy eating and the importance of exercise.
The project’s goal is to have the health workers visit the
homes of all 3,000 residents. “They will knock on doors, call on
friends and neighbors, take blood pressure, talk about diabetes,
asthma and other health issues,” says Shahidi. All the visits will be
documented and data on health outcomes will be compiled.
What these projects offer is outreach and coordination of care,
SHE ENVISIONS THE COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS
eventually providing services in collaboration with physicians, medical students,
physical therapy and respiratory therapy students.
explains Sickora. “If someone needs medical treatment, we’ll be
sure they see a nurse practitioner or physician. We’ll check to see
that they get their medications and take them. We will follow them
every step of the way.” She envisons the community health
workers collaborating with the nurses and nursing students as well
as physicians, medical students, physical therapy and respiratory
therapy students.
Already, success stories abound. Sickora tells about one man
with diabetes who lost his job and his health insurance. “He came
to us with his blood sugar out of control,” she says. “We connected
him to services provided by the American Diabetes Foundation
and within a week he had medication and was stabilized.” Another
man, coughing and wheezing, sought help with his severe asthma.
Shahidi came to the center and successfully treated him. A third
young man came for hypertension treatment and later returned
with his three children for additional services. “You get to know
people and develop relationships, and trust is built,” says Sickora.
In the five years she’s been spending in the housing
complexes, Sickora notices some real changes. “The environment
seems safer here now,” she says. “Yes, part of the reason is more
police presence. They got rid of some drug dealers and crime is
down. But the center has also played a role in the rehabilitation of
this neighborhood. When you put nurses in a housing project, it
changes things.”.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 4 7
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G A N D O . F L O R I A N J E N K I N S

WHEN I GROW UP…
IW O R D S B Y E V E J A C O B S / P H O T O G R A P H S B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G
4 8 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
t’s April 19th and the health science careers
classroom at Sussex County Vocational-
Technical School in Sparta is buzzing with high
energy. Ready to spring into action, 20 juniors
and seniors are dressed in their adult-best, waiting
their turns to role-play a job interview. Their
future feels so tantalizingly close to them — and
so filled with incredible possibilities.
In the current job market, where 53.6 percent
of those under age 25 with a bachelor’s
degree are unemployed or underemployed
(according to an analysis of government data
conducted for The Associated Press), and many students and
their families are drowning in education-related debt, these 17and
18-year-olds have a huge “leg up.” Not only are they better
prepared than most to present their best selves to a potential
employer, but most chose to “specialize” before they even
entered their freshman or sophomore year in high school and will
soon reap some substantial rewards.
They are enrolled in a college credit program started almost
20 years ago by Suzanne D’Anna, RDH, MS, the current director
of UMDNJ’s School of Health Related Professions Health
Science Careers program, and Julie O’Sullivan Maillet, PhD,
now the interim dean of the school, under a grant awarded by

(L-R) M A A M E Q U A I N O O , 18, A SENIOR AT SUSSEX COUNTY VOCATIONAL-TECHNICAL SCHOOL IN SPARTA, “INTERVIEWS” WITH S U Z A N N E D ’ A N N A , R D H , M S , DIRECTOR OF THE
HEALTH SCIENCE CAREERS PROGRAM AT UMDNJ-SCHOOL OF HEALTH RELATED PROFESSIONS.
the State of New Jersey. First launched in technical-vocational
high schools in Bergen, Sussex and Hudson counties, the
program is currently offered in 51 high schools throughout the
state, in every county except Salem and Camden.
D’Anna, who taught at Fairleigh Dickinson and Columbia
universities before coming to UMDNJ, says the program’s early
years were hectic and challenging. Developing the curriculum,
then teaching the high school teachers how to teach the collegelevel
courses, responding to SOS calls, and simultaneously
recruiting additional high schools to make this program available
to their students translated into an enormous commitment of
time and energy. In those first years, the program’s UMDNJ
creators spent a lot of time on site in the high school classrooms.
Now, with more than 180 faculty members, 2,500 students,
and two to three schools signing up each year (five to six are
expected to join next year), D’Anna still maintains close contact
with all of the teachers, but does so via phone and email. (She
continues to make periodic visits.) Running such a wildly
popular program leaves her little “down” time, yet she and
Maillet have a goal of making this curriculum available to all
interested New Jersey high schools.
High school teachers in this program are granted an adjunct
faculty appointment, says Maillet, if they meet UMDNJ’s
criteria. “Many are nurses with a BSN degree, but all individuals
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 4 9

(L-R) B R E N D A R O S E , 18, AND A S H L E Y H E R N A N D E Z , 17, BOTH SENIORS AT SUSSEX COUNTY VOCATIONAL-TECHNICAL SCHOOL AND BOTH WINNERS OF THE SCHOOL’S ACADEMIC
EXCELLENCE AWARDS, WITH C H R I S M C K I E R N A N , ALLIED HEALTH PROGRAM TEACHER. (IN THE BACKGROUND): A M A N D A D O E R N E R , 17, A JUNIOR, PARTICIPATES IN AN INTERVIEW
FOR PARTNERSHIP DAY.
teaching anatomy must have a Master’s degree,” she says.
“We charge nothing for the program,” Maillet continues.
“We do this as a community service to give students a chance to
learn about the wide range of health career options; and we hope
they go on to choose a health profession. Also, their self-esteem
soars if they pass the exams and earn college credit before
starting college. The students feel very good about that.”
Chris McKiernan can vouch for this program’s popularity.
She is in her 20th year as THE teacher in the allied health
program at Sussex County Vocational-Technical School.
“Commercial art, engineering and health science are the school’s
three most popular majors,” she says proudly. Cosmetology
comes in at number four. Eighty of the high school’s 650 or so
students will be enrolled in the four-year, health sciences
curriculum next year.
McKiernan has built this program “brick by brick”— with
help, of course, from D’Anna — into the education magnet it is
in Sussex County today. No aspect of its day-to-day operations
slips by her attention. Budgets and ordering supplies go hand-inhand
with teaching her students laboratory skills and tough
academic subject matter. She also concentrates on forming the
kind of supportive relationships that in many of today’s overcrowded
schools have gone by the wayside. This teacher has
several school years to help students wrestle with the challenging
science courses and also with the growing pains that most
encounter during their high school careers.
5 0 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
What do her students hope to do after high school? Some
are interested in veterinary science, nutrition, physical therapy or
dental sciences. Others hope to be doctors, pharmacists, athletic
trainers or teachers. All are willing to take on a heavy-duty
science curriculum that includes basic lab techniques, anatomy
and physiology, medical terminology, health dynamics, and
microbiology.
“Health dynamics” (also called dynamics of health care in
society) introduces students to the many different types of health
careers. “Many think they want to be doctors,” says D’Anna,
“but they don’t know what other health professions there are.”
The teens learn about ethical issues, cultural sensitivity,
advocacy, personal hygiene; and also how to take blood pressure
and pulse. They complete 10 hours of clinical shadowing as part
of the course.
On April 19th, Partnership Day at this high school, students
dress in professional clothing and carry a portfolio, which holds a
cover letter, resume, a statement of career goals, and a paper or
project that shows their ability to do classroom assignments.
They have worked hard to pull their presentations together.
Remember—many of them have never held a job, or at least not
one in health sciences. Each student is interviewed by a
professional from a local business (or by D’Anna), and each
student is evaluated on his performance.
“The students take this seriously and they improve from
year to year,” comments McKiernan. Some will even secure a

part-time or summer job in a doctor’s or
dentist’s office, a rehabilitation facility or
pharmacy as a result of these interviews.
Many of her students go on to college
and almost all stay in New Jersey. Some
begin their schooling at Sussex County
Community College, staying close to home
since financing is often an issue, and many
of those later join fellow graduates of the
high school program at the College of St
Elizabeth, and Montclair State, William
Paterson, Fairleigh Dickinson and Rutgers
universities.
McKiernan actively recruits future
participants, hosting a special forensics lab
on one Saturday each year in the fall called
TECH TREK DAY, when parents can
come into the high school and “study” the
UMDNJ curriculum. She explains that
students who complete these courses have
“an ace in the hole.” They finish high
school with the potential of earning 14
college credits at no cost to their parents or
themselves. “Self-study is also available in
emergency medicine, and other courses, for
the really motivated student,” she says. A
total of 20 college credits can be earned by
the truly ambitious.
In spring of their junior or senior years
(and occasionally at the end of the sophomore
year) all students in the Health
Science Careers program statewide who
want college credits for their coursework
come to UMDNJ’s Scotch Plains campus
for testing. (The testing is spread over many
days because of the large number of
students.) Over the years, 6,000 high school
students have taken the tests. “Even if a
student chooses not to test for college
credits, exposure to the college level
courses turns out to be valuable for them,”
D’Anna says.
With the U.S. economy still faltering,
and many young adults floundering in their
search for a place in the job market and in
their communities, a program that introduces
teens to the wide array of professional
options in health care is just what the doctor
— or dental hygienist, respiratory therapist,
physical therapist, radiation technologist,
occupational therapy assistant, nutritionist,
psychiatric rehabilitation counselor, etc, etc
— ordered. The future, for these students,
is still filled with incredible professional
possibilities in health care because they
know about them. .
GREGORY DEVRIES
ALLISON STRIANO
A PIPELINE TO DENTISTRY
Gregory Devries knew in high school that he wanted to go into
health care, but he didn’t know which career to choose. He
loved science and biology, so he thought medicine might be the
profession for him. Then again, he always enjoyed working with his hands,
so maybe dentistry was a better fit. So, the Kinnelon, NJ, resident enrolled
in the Decision for Dentistry program at New Jersey Dental School (NJDS).
The unique pipeline program for high schoolers,
particularly minority students, is unlike any in the
country. It gives qualified students the opportunity to
spend three days on campus while the dental school is
in session. The teens take dental impressions on mannequins
in the clinic, observe procedures being performed
on patients, and learn how to prepare for dental
school. They find out everything from what college
courses they need to what to wear to their dental
school interview.
After completing Decision, Devries thought
dentistry was probably right for him, but to be
absolutely sure, he enrolled in Gateway to Dentistry.
An intense, two-week program for undergraduates,
Gateway, like dental school itself, is extremely competitive.
There are only 30 available spots and 150 to
300 applicants. Every student is assigned a student
mentor and can opt to live on campus. The participants
perform hands-on clinical techniques on artificial teeth and mannequins,
and learn about research opportunities and various dental
careers, as well as the details involved in the admissions and financial aid
processes.
The program gave Devries the answer he was looking for. “Gateway
really did it for me,” he says. “I wasn’t even finished with the program,
and I knew dentistry was it. There was no doubt in my
mind.” Now known as Dr. Devries, the brand new alumnus
is the first NJDS graduate to have completed all
the pipeline programs available at the time. Devries will
be pursuing a general practice residency and then go
into private practice. “The pipeline programs are
great,” he says. “I highly recommend them. They were
definitely instrumental in helping me make a major life
decision.”
Unlike Devries, Allison Striano knew at age 6 she
wanted to be a dentist. A second-year student at NJDS,
she recalls that on career day in first grade, a classmate
brought her father, a dentist, to their Nutley, NJ,
school. “I was fascinated by what he said,” she comments.
“He left pamphlets on dentistry, and I asked if I
could take two. I guarded them with my life. Becoming
a dentist was all I ever wanted to do.” Even as she got
older and had semi-annual dental check-ups, Striano
never wavered. When her high school guidance counselor told her about
the pipeline program, she immediately applied. “I absolutely loved Decision
for Dentistry, and I wanted more,” she says. “When I got to college, I enrolled
in Gateway to Dentistry.” She became NJDS’s second student to go through
both programs and then be admitted to the dental school.
Striano says the programs did more than cement her career choice;
they gave her an inside look at NJDS. “I interviewed at three other dental
schools on the East Coast, but I didn’t feel the same warmth I felt here,”
she says. “Everyone here, the faculty, students and staff, were extremely
helpful and welcoming. I knew this was the school for me.” .
— Merry Sue Baum
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 5 1

AN OCCUPATION
to Count On
W O R D S B Y D O R I S C O R T E S - D E L G A D O / P H O T O G R A P H B Y A N D R E W H A N E N B E R G
T
he flip side of high unemployment
in the U.S. is that many skilled positions
remain unfilled — and that’s
not just in highly technical jobs
requiring years of post-high school
education or in geographical locales
way off the beaten track. Several
health care fields have thousands of
openings in all parts of the country
— and not many takers. And, interestingly,
some are in careers that few
job seekers consider because they
just don’t know much about them.
According to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, occupational therapy is one of
these fast-growing fields, with the demand for
occupational therapists projected to increase 26 percent
and occupational therapy assistants 30 percent
from 2008 to 2018.
But currently, established
OPPOSITE:
K A R E N K O WA L S K I
A N D C AT H E R I N E C O L U C C I
training programs can not turn
out enough graduates to fill
the open slots, so the jobs are
there, but the trained employees
to fill them are not.
UMDNJ’s School of Health
Related Professions (SHRP),
which already has 36 programs and grants degrees
in collaboration with 31 colleges and universities in
New Jersey, has a successful history of meeting
unmet needs in the education of health care professionals.
In September, it will launch the only
Associate of Science Degree in Occupational
Therapy Assistant (OTA) in New Jersey with the
support of a $500,000 grant from Genesis Rehab.
The grant will be used for start-up costs and
student scholarships.
On May 8, the program passed a milestone and
was granted Developing Program Status by the
Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy
Education (AOTE); and the State of New Jersey
has approved the program, according to Catherine
Colucci, MA, OTR, the program’s director. Those
approvals “will allow us to admit our first class for
fall 2012,” she explains.
The program is currently going through the
required four-step accreditation process. “The first
two steps have been completed and we are on to
step three — preparing a self study, which we will
submit by December 1 of this year. In the fall of
2013, reviewers will come on site to do a full
review,” Colucci states. The new program will
likely achieve full accreditation before the first
class graduates in January 2014.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 5 3

Students earn a total of 74 credits — 32 in “general
education” given through partnering community colleges. The
other 42 credits of professional course work are taken at the
University’s Scotch Plains campus and at clinical locations.
Currently, there are four approved partners: County College of
Morris, Mercer County Community College, Passaic County
Community College and Salem Community College. Others in
the process of developing partnerships are: Raritan Valley
Community College, Camden County College, Cumberland
County College and Hudson County Community College.
There will be more partnerships in the future.
Occupational therapy treats individuals with injuries,
illnesses and disabilities through the therapeutic use of everyday
activities. Occupational therapists and assistants help these
clients to develop, recover and improve skills needed for daily
life. While many in this profession work with older adults in
long-term care and assisted living facilities, others work in
rehabilitation with adults of all ages. There are also opportunities
to work with children with developmental disabilities in the
public and specialty schools and in the community, with military
personnel returning from duty, and persons with mental illness
transitioning from the hospital to the community.
Students applying to UMDNJ’s OTA program must first
complete their general education prerequisites, which include
courses in English composition, social sciences, general psychology,
developmental psychology, sociology, science and math,
anatomy and physiology I and II, both with lab, college-level
algebra or statistics, humanities, ethics and diversity studies.
Before applying to the UMDNJ program, students should
have completed 16 credits of prerequisites with a GPA of 3.0 or
higher, including at least one of the anatomy and physiology
courses and a developmental psychology course. Applicants also
need to spend a minimum of 40 hours observing an occupational
therapist or OTA in two different settings.
“We want to make sure the students really know what an
OTA does and that this is the profession they want to pursue,”
says Colucci. “The applicant should also enjoy people and want
to work closely with them. The crux of being an occupational
therapy assistant is taking a hands-on approach. And the OTA
must have great oral and written communication skills, too.”
Fifteen students will be accepted into the first class beginning
this fall and they can choose either the full-time (completed
in about 15 months) or part-time (completed in about 24
months) option. “We anticipate accepting about 25 percent of
5 4 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
the students for the part time option, which will start in
January,” says the program director. “We will begin smaller, and
eventually the program will admit 20 per year.”
Full time students will take 12 credits per semester and, if
they successfully complete all requirements, will graduate in
January 2014. Part time students will take six to nine credits per
semester and graduate one year later in January 2015.
Each semester includes classroom learning as well as field
work. The final 16 weeks of the program are spent at two
different clinical sites, one with adults and one with children or
adolescents. Genesis Rehab, with more than 20 sub-acute facilities
in New Jersey, will provide some of the sites for fieldwork
education.
“We want every student to have the experience of working
with individuals across the lifespan in different areas of
practice,” explains Colucci. “In all our work, we look at the
physical, mental, emotional, psychosocial and family factors. We
are not just looking at someone who had a stroke.”
She states that helping students to make the transition from
school to being professionals is an emphasis of the program.
“OTAs are truly professionals in their own right,” she says.
Graduates can sit for the certification exam administered by
the National Board of Certification in Occupational Therapy;
In September, UMDNJ will launch the only Associate of Science Degree
in Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA) in New Jersey.
and once certified, can get licensure to practice as a certified
occupational therapy assistant (COTA) in New Jersey and many
other states.
To maintain National Board certification, COTAs are
required to demonstrate proof of continuing education.
“Additional education is very important in this field, as it is in
many health care fields. Students are not going to learn
everything here,” she says.
Working directly under an occupational therapist,
occupational therapy assistants develop and update intervention
plans, contribute to the evaluation process, gather information
about clients and carry out treatment plans. Some go on to
become occupational therapists.
“Being an occupational therapy assistant is a rewarding
career,” concludes Colucci. “They are so needed out there in
the workforce.”
To learn more about the Associate of Science Degree in Occupational Therapy
Assistant program, please contact Catherine Colucci, program director, at
(908) 889-2474 or colucccn@umdnj.edu or call Karen Kowalski, academic
fieldwork coordinator at (908) 889-2525..

— continued from page 29
Dentistry & Medicine, Better Together
T
he Journal of the American Osteopathic Association recently published a letter submitted by faculty members at
UMDNJ-New Jersey Dental School and UMDNJ-School of Osteopathic Medicine describing a successful collaborative
venture that integrated modules dealing with oral health issues into the osteopathic medical curriculum. The faculty signing
the letter were all key to the success of this educational innovation. Their thoughts are summarized below.
The Oral Cavity and Total Body Health
Hundreds of diseases affect and manifest
themselves in the oral cavity, and a
developing area of knowledge and
research connects oral and systemic
health. Conditions such as periodontal
disease, for example, may impact such systemic conditions as cardiovascular
disease and diabetes mellitus. Conversely, systemic
disease can adversely impact the oral cavity.
Head and neck cancers are an area of particular concern.
In many patients, diagnosis of these cancers is not made until the
disease has metastasized; consequently the five-year survival rate
has remained at only about 50 percent. By expanding awareness
among physicians of the clinical appearance of oral and head and
neck cancers, more precancerous lesions and early cancerous
lesions could be detected, vastly improving the cure rate.
Comprehensive oral, head and neck examinations will allow
physicians to observe adverse oral health conditions, leading to
appropriate diagnoses and referrals for treatment. In addition, multiple
diseases that have oral manifestations will be diagnosed in a more
accurate and timely manner, improving treatment for the patient.
An Innovative Collaboration
These concepts were the driving force of a groundbreaking
collaboration between the University’s New Jersey Dental School
(NJDS) and the School of Osteopathic Medicine(SOM). The
result was a unique curriculum on oral health for osteopathic
medical students and the creation of a Department of Dental
Medicine at the medical school.
Faculty from the dental and medical schools developed a
dental medicine curriculum taught within existing medical
disciplines as modules to coordinate with and enhance the
education of osteopathic medical students. These modules are
currently integrated into the second, third and fourth years of the
medical curriculum. They build upon each other and require
students to call upon knowledge gained in other medical classes.
The modules range from Comprehensive Oral/Head and
Neck Examination to Prevention and Early Detection of Oral
Cancer to Clinical Pathways Protocol. The latter protocol was
developed at the dental school and is now shared with the osteopathic
medical students. The focus is an algorithm for patients
who have specific medical diagnoses that may require dental or oral
consultation or additional treatment before, during or after primary
medical treatment. The goal is to teach students to deal with oral
conditions and improve medical treatment outcomes.
Education Beyond the Lecture Hall
In addition to classroom-based lectures and laboratories, secondyear
medical students have the opportunity to rotate through the
UMDNJ Dental Center to observe patients being treated for
various oral conditions, allowing them to observe the clinical
application of the knowledge they have gained.
In their third year, students participate in an Enrichment
Program as part of their family medicine clerkship. Students are
presented with a series of case-based scenarios covering the
oral-systemic connection and dental medicine in various medical
specialties. Each student has an opportunity to discuss and
present a differential diagnosis, drawing upon previous experience
in both the medical and dental medical curricula.
The faculty of the Department of Dental Medicine is also
involved in the fourth-year geriatric program at SOM. There are
plans for further enrichment of the curriculum in such areas as
head and neck pain and treatment of dental pediatric patients.
Both medical and dental professionals need to be aware of
the importance of assessing, managing and referring patients with
oral health problems in order to maintain the optimal general
health of patients. The oral health curriculum for osteopathic
medical students at UMDNJ has proven to be a successful
approach to enhancing skills and raising awareness. .
Signed by:
Arnold H. Rosenheck, DMD,
Assistant Dean, Acting Chair, Community Health, NJDS
George J. Scott, DO, DPM, Assistant Professor,
Family Medicine, SOM
H. Timothy Dombrowski, DO, MPH,
Associate Professor, Chair, Internal Medicine, SOM
Harold V. Cohen, DDS,
Professor, Diagnostic Sciences, NJDS
Jill A.York, DDS, MAS,
Associate Professor, Community Health, NJDS
Alan Kleiman, DMD,
Clinical Instructor, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Community Health, NJDS
Joshua S. Coren, DO, MBA,
Acting Chair, Associate Professor, Family Medicine, SOM
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 5 5

P H O T O G R A P H B Y D O U G L A S M C A N D R E W
NEWS, AWARDS, GRANTS AND OTHER UMDNJ HAPPENINGS IN BRIEF
Update
GSBS Student Earns National Research Award
L
ISA MARIE MOORE, a PhD candidate at GSBS in Newark, was
awarded a three-year, Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service
Award F31 Fellowship in the amount of $42,323 per year. The goal
of her proposal will be to evaluate the tumor-forming potential of several
unique neural progenitors that are responsive to platelet-derived
growth factor (PDGF).
She has hypothesized that there are multiple PDGF-responsive “cells of origin”
that contribute to glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) tumor formation. GBMs are
aggressive and fatal brain cancers that are resistant to current treatment therapies.
Ultimately, if she can identify and characterize the “cell of origin,” then scientists
will be better equipped to make drugs that will specifically target the cell that continues
to give rise to the tumor.
Biomedical research wasn’t Moore’s first calling. The Queens native attended
Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where she received a bachelor’s
degree in business administration, with a concentration in information technology.
She earned a master’s degree in computer engineering from NJIT before beginning
doctoral studies at UMDNJ five years ago.
Moore will work with Steven Levison, PhD, in the NJMS-UH Cancer Center,
and with Peter Canoll, MD, PhD, from Columbia’s Department of Neuropathology.
A PIONEER IN OSTEOPATHIC MANIPULATIVE MEDICINE
C
HARLES STEINER, DO, A PIONEER in the field of osteopathic medicine,
was a beloved physician in Maplewood, where he practiced for more than 68
years, affecting the lives of thousands of patients statewide. As a testimony to
Steiner’s profound impact, the New Jersey Association of Osteopathic
Physicians and Surgeons named him the “2011 D.O. of the Year.”
Steiner passed away last summer just before his 93rd birthday; and to
honor his memory, members of the Steiner family, the Alumni Association of
SOM and leaders in the osteopathic community have started a campaign to raise $2 million in
his name to support a cause near and dear to his heart — the Osteopathic Manipulative
Medicine Residency Program at SOM.
As the founding chair of the Department of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM)
at SOM, Steiner wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of OMM and to validate its healing
qualities through comprehensive research. He felt strongly that reliable and reproducible data
were needed to substantiate its effectiveness.
Gifts to the campaign will establish a residency position for a Doctor of Osteopathic
Medicine interested in expanding his or her OMM knowledge. The training will allow the physician
to treat patients using osteopathic manipulative medicine, to conduct research into the
overall effectiveness of OMM and to participate in the education of current students at SOM.
Gifts to the endowment can be made at www.foundationofumdnj.org/make-a-gift/ or mailed to The
Foundation of UMDNJ, 120 Albany Street, Tower II, Suite 850, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. For
more information, contact Gail Forman, director of development, at (856) 282-4417 or
gforman@njhf.org.
5 6 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
L i s a M a r i e M o o r e
C h a r l e s S t e i n e r, D O

Kudos to Broadway House
for Perfect Score
N
AMED ONE OF “America’s Best
Nursing Homes” ” by U.S. News &
World Report, The Broadway
House for Continuing Care, an
affiliate of UMDNJ, earned a perfect
five-star rating. U.S. News
rated and profiled more than 15,500 homes
across the country, and fewer than one in eight
of those facilities earned a perfect five-star rating
in all four quarters of 2011.
The ratings are based on data from
Nursing Home Compare, a consumer website
run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services, the government agency that sets and
enforces standards for nursing homes.
Broadway House is the only long-term care
facility in New Jersey for adults with
HIV/AIDS. Since opening its doors more than
15 years ago, the focus of treatment has
dramatically evolved. At its inception, the facility
was a hospice, but with the discovery of
anti-retroviral drugs, its focus shifted toward
rehabilitation. Now many residents regain
their health and are discharged to live in the
community.
UMDNJ Experts Battle New Jersey's Obesity Epidemic
W
ITH NEARLY 25 PERCENT OF NEW JERSEY ADULTS classified as
“obese” and chronic health conditions such as diabetes and hypertension
dramatically on the rise, the role of the healthcare professional in leading
obesity prevention, identification, and treatment has become increasingly
vital.
In “New Jersey’s Obesity Epidemic: The Role of the Health Care
Professional,” the latest event in UMDNJ’s President’s Lecture Series,
University experts met these statistics head-on, analyzing the causes of obesity and its
impact on New Jersey residents and also giving health care providers valuable prevention
strategies that can be incorporated into their practices and into their patients’ lifestyles. The
event attracted an audience of more than 200.
Among the themes explored were:
• How personal biases towards their obese patients prevent some health professionals from
effectively providing needed care;
• Why older communities and neighborhoods are more conducive to walking than newer
neighborhoods;
• Why workplace wellness programs are often a win-win for employers and employees;
• What health professionals can do to make their practices more user friendly to their obese
patients.
The distinguished panel of UMDNJ public health, medical and nutritional experts
also discussed the social determinants of obesity, the sometimes overlooked environmental
factors that can trigger excessive weight gain, and obesity prevention and intervention
strategies that can be put in place in the workplace and by local communities.
SOM Grad Wins Federal Grant
C
LAUDIA CLARKE, SOM '12, was
awarded the only National Health
Service Corps (NHSC) grant in the
state, and is one of only 77 medical
students chosen nationally. Clarke,
who hopes to complete a residency
in internal medicine and pediatrics,
will be eligible for a total award of $120,000 to help her
repay educational loans of $210,000. Passionate about
primary care, treating populations that are at risk, and
working towards the elimination of health disparities,
the NHSC grant recipient will work in a medically underserved
area for at least two years once she completes
her residency. At SOM, Clarke was the Founder and
President of the Med-Peds Interest Group and an administrator
of the Camden Saturday Health Clinic.
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 5 7

Update
SOM PROFESSOR HONORED
FOR SERVICE TO ABUSED CHILDREN
A
FEDERAL AGENCY, a national organization and a statewide physicians’
association have all recognized Martin A. Finkel, DO, the co-founder and medical
director of the CARES (Child Abuse Research, Education and Service) Institute,
honoring his 30 years of service devoted to child victims of abuse and neglect.
A professor of pediatrics at SOM, Finkel is an internationally recognized authority
on the medical evaluation and treatment of children who are alleged to have been
abused.
At its National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect, the Administration on Children,
Youth and Families (ACYF) presented its 2012 Commissioner’s Award to Finkel for “making an
exceptional contribution to the prevention and treatment of child abuse and neglect.” The
ACYF is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The New Jersey
Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons (NJAOPS) selected Finkel as the 2012
NJAOPS Physician of the Year during the organization’s Anniversary Reception and Gala. And
the Ray Helfer Society, a national honorary society of physicians who are leaders in the prevention,
diagnosis and treatment of child abuse and neglect, named Finkel as the recipient of its 2012
Ray Helfer Award, citing his “longstanding dedication to teaching, research and clinical care.”
Founded in 1987, the CARES Institute at SOM sees nearly 2,500 patients annually, all
drawn from the seven South Jersey counties. In addition, Finkel and other healthcare professionals
from the institute have provided training throughout the world in protocols developed at CARES
that help children and their families overcome the effects of abuse and violence.
IT’S A MATCH
I
T'S NOT OFTEN
that people are
happy to hear
they are going
to the hospital.
But that news
was exactly what nearly 400
fourth-year medical students at
UMDNJ wanted to hear. On
Match Day 2012, thousands of
medical students across the country
learned where they will spend
their years of residency training.
The graduating medical students from NJMS, RWJMS, and SOM were extraordinarily
successful in securing residency positions. Overall, 429 UMDNJ students, 99.1 percent
of those who applied, succeeded in securing post-graduate positions, compared to
the national average of 95 percent. UMDNJ’s results include students from SOM who
participated in the osteopathic match program and students who matched to residency
programs related to their military service.
More than 135 of the University’s students will remain in New Jersey for their residency
training, including 93 who matched to UMDNJ programs. UMDNJ students also
matched to such prestigious out-of-state programs as Yale University, Johns Hopkins,
University of Pennsylvania and New York Presbyterian/Columbia University.
Nationally, more than 38,000 students from the U.S., Canada and other countries
competed for just 26,772 residency positions.
5 8 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
M a r t i n A . F i n k e l , D O
Educating Nurses to Serve Children
in Foster Care
T
HE FOUNDATION OF UMDNJ, an affiliate of New Jersey Health
Foundation, received a $300,000 grant from the Rosanne H.
Silbermann Foundation for the Child Health Program at the
School of Nursing’s François Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center.
The grant will be used to develop a child welfare curriculum
at SN that will address the health care and mental health
needs of children in New Jersey’s foster care system.
Children in foster care, otherwise known as “out of home placement,” often
experience physical, developmental, behavioral and mental health problems that
require specialized nursing skills. “It is our great hope that the curriculum developed
at UMDNJ’s School of Nursing will attract qualified nurses to this important subspecialty.
It is also our aspiration that this curriculum becomes the national standard in
teaching and attracting nurses to this extremely important field,” said M. Steven
Silbermann, spokesperson for the Rosanne H. Silbermann Foundation. The non-profit
charitable family foundation supports medical, educational and religious organizations.
This is the first nursing school to offer a subspecialty in child welfare nursing.
This three-year grant allows the school to expand a one-day elective field practicum
for students enrolled in the bachelor’s degree program to four semesters, adding a
preceptorship experience and student paper presentations, explains the school’s dean
Susan Salmond, EdD, RN. “ We will also host a national symposium to share our work
and promote discussion and action aimed at improving nursing care for these vulnerable
children.”
C O P Y T O C O M E COPY TO COME

And the Winners Are …
T
HREE NJDS STUDENTS WHO CONDUCTED RESEARCH last summer
submitted their results in a competition held by the New York
Academy of Dentistry (NYAD). They won and were invited to present
their poster there in February. Second-year students Grigoriy Efros and
Jonathan Snow and third-year student Benjamin Immerman presented
“Analysis of Charged Silica Adhesion to Deep Dentin.” The poster
won a $4,000 prize, which will be used for research in the laboratory of Daniel Fine, DMD,
NJDS professor and chair of the Department of Oral Biology and director of the Center for
Oral Infectious Diseases, where the three conducted their winning investigation. Kenneth
Markowitz, DDS, Oral Biology, and Marc Rosenblum, DMD, Restorative Dentistry, were
the students’ mentors.
AVOIDING UNNECESSARY HOSPITALIZATION
T
O HELP PATIENTS WITH multiple chronic conditions avoid re-hospitalization at
UMDNJ’s University Hospital, intensive case management will be provided under the
new I CARE-4-Healthcare Transition Project, made possible by a $300,000 grant from
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s New Jersey Health Initiatives program. The
Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey will provide supplemental funding, and the program
will be implemented in partnership with the Visiting Nurse Association Health
Group based in Newark.
The I CARE-4-Healthcare Transition Project targets patients who do not have regular primary care
physicians and have one or more of the following diseases: diabetes, cardiovascular disease (such as heart
failure, uncontrolled hypertension and atrial fibrillation); respiratory disease (such as asthma, chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia); HIV; and sickle cell disease.
According to Melissa Scollan-Koliopoulos, EdD, APRN-BC, CDE, BC-ADM, an NJMS assistant
professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, discharged patients
often return to the hospital and go to the emergency room when they shouldn’t, while other patients fail
to go to the emergency room where they should be. Such patterns contribute to excessive healthcare
costs and disparities in health outcomes.
She and David Bleich, MD, associate professor and chief of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, will serve as co-project directors with the
overall goal of improving care for a healthy transition using a four-tiered approach that includes a certified home health aide/patient navigator,
registered nurse, advanced practice nurse (APN) and physician team.
“Our goal is to extend the attention and care that patients receive from us beyond the four walls of the hospital, thereby improving patient
outcomes,” says Bleich. Other program goals include educating patients about medications and overall health and wellness.
Participants also are linked to resources such as health insurance.
TOP PAPER BY NJMS RESIDENT
K
(l-r) K E N N E T H M A R K O W I T Z , D D S , NJDS assistant professor, Oral Biology, with the
winners (left to right): G R I G O R I Y E F R O S , J O N AT H A N S N O W and
B E N J A M I N I M M E R M A N
RISTIN COOK, MD, a surgical resident in the Department of Surgery at NJMS, won the American College of Surgeons
Committee on Trauma (ACS-COT) prize for Best Clinical Paper at its 90th annual meeting in March. The winning
paper, entitled “The Association between Plasma G-CSF Level and Signs of Bone Marrow Failure Following Severe
Trauma,” competed against the submissions of residents and fellows from across the U.S., Canada and South
America. This is the second time in the past six years that a surgery resident from NJMS has won this prestigious
award.
— compiled by Carole Walker
s p r i n g / s u m m e r 2 0 1 2 5 9

6 0 U M D N J M A G A Z I N E
UMDNJ Graduation
MAY 2012
Happiness is...a long-awaited graduation
day. The largest graduating class in the
history of UMDNJ — approximately 2,000
— celebrated their achievements at the
University's 42nd annual commencement.
UMDNJ Interim President Denise V.
Rodgers, MD, led the ceremonies and
delivered the keynote address to the
graduates and their guests at the IZOD
Center in East Rutherford.
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