Tuesday, October 14

1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Maternal Child Health Center Auditorium

This session, hosted by Medical School Dean James O. Woolliscroft, M.D., is FREE but registration is required.

The Personal Training Approach to Writing for Education Journals - Ready, Set, Go!

Are you interested in learning more about how U-M Medical School (UMMS) Office of Research units can help advance your research?

In conjunction with the annual NCRC EXPO taking place on Wednesday, November 5, the UMMS Office of Research will host a FREE seminar series highlighting several case studies from researchers who have utilized the services of UMMS Office of Research units to further their research.

All sessions will take place in the Research Auditorium of NCRC Building 10 and include:

9:00 AM

Offering Specialized Care Inside and Out: How the Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine Can Help Advance Your Biomedical Research

10:00 AM

Benefits and Rationale for Centralization

of a Disease Biorepository:

A Chronic Kidney Disease Use Case

featuring Matthias Kretzler, M.D.

11:00 AM

From Sample Submission to Meaningful Results: Exploring Integrated Core Services with DNA Sequencing & Bioinformatics featuring Jim Cavalcoli, Ph.D. and

Robert Lyons, Ph.D.

1:00 PM

Health Record Data Access a la Carte:

How a Menu of Services from the Honest Broker Office is Helping Accelerate Clinical Research featuring staff from

the Higgins IBD Research Group

Register for one session, or all four!

Researchers across campus have been receiving expertise and instrumentation for cell sorting and cytometry analysis for 30 years. Join us for a celebration in October:

Wednesday, October 22

South Lecture Hall - Room 3699, Med Sci II Building

9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Speaking Sessions

12:00 PM - 1:00 PM FREE Lunch

1:00 PM - 5:00 PM Open House at all Flow Core Locations

RSVP for this FREE event

Sessions & presenters include:

• Amnis
• Beckman Coulter
• BD Biosciences
• Joseph Burnett, Ph.D. Candidate, College of Pharmacy, "How to Treat Trastuzumab Resistant Breast Cancers: Do You Eat More Broccoli?"
• Kathryn Luker, Ph.D., Research Investigator, Radiology, Medical School: "Strategies for Multi-Scale Imaging in Live Cells and Mice Using Novel Fluorescent Proteins"
• Sean McDermott, Assistant Research Scientist, Internal Medicine, Medical School: "Drug Screening Against Cancer Stem Cells Using High-Throughput Flow Cytometry"
• Miltenyi Biotec 
• Thomas A. Moore, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Director, Flow Cytometry Core

The open house will feature demonstrations with staff and partner vendors. For more information, contact Flow Cytometry Core Manager Dave Adams. 

Learn more on the event page.

We look forward to celebrating this important milestone with you!

The Biomedical Research Store is pleased to announce that they are now carrying Corning products, focusing mainly on the Mediatech, Cell Grow, and Axygen product lines.

"We're excited to increase our product offerings and give our customers more choices and resources to complete their research," said Chris Stilson, Manager of the Biomedical Research Store.

For a full list of available Corning products, please download the stocked product list.

Tuesday, October 21

University of Michigan researchers are invited to bring their lab to attend this fun and educational event happening on Thursday, October 16 from 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM in the Great Lakes Room of Palmer Commons.

This inaugural event will be a collective showcase of university resources and laboratory safety products. Attendees will move from table to table discussing the challenges they face and learning about solutions available.

Occupational Safety & Environmental Health (OSEH) representatives will be on hand to address questions with

regard to:

• Biological Safety
• Research Health & Safety
• Radiation Safety
• Hazardous Material Management
• Ergonomics
• Sustainability Issues

Representatives from the Division of Public Safety and Security, the Institutional Biosafety Committee, the Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine, and the University Committee on Use and Care of Animals will also be present to consult on related issues. 

Attendees can also see the latest research products and services, try on samples, and meet with the experts from 17 different suppliers at the vendor expo. They will showcase everything from personal protective equipment, flammable storage cabinets, signs, labels, containers, and equipment.

There will be food and giveaways, as well as prizes, so be sure to join us in the Great Lakes Room of Palmer Commons on Thursday, October 16 from 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM.

Don't miss this great opportunity to meet and network with other researchers at one convenient location! 

Stay up to date on the latest OSEH news by liking us on Facebook.

You've probably heard the acronym "COI", but do you know what COI really means?

In simple terms, a conflict of interest or "COI" related to research happens when a person's private interests could have a negative impact on his or her research work for the University.

For example, if you get a contract from a big pharmaceutical company to do research at U-M on a new treatment, and you also do consulting work for that same company outside of your university duties, the public could get the impression that there may be some bias in your research results because of the money you personally earned from the sponsor of your study.

Image courtesy of Naypong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Of course, there are other situations that can create a COI. A couple of the most common happen if you invent a device or a test that you will use in your research, or if you or a close family member own part of a new company that will sponsor your research.

Having a COI does not mean that anyone thinks you lack integrity or that you would consciously bias your research or do anything to harm your human subjects. Often, the situation is related to the possible perception of bias or risk to subjects.

So what happens if you have a COI? The Medical School Office of Regulatory Affairs has a great team of people who can help! We will analyze the situation and determine the best strategies to manage your COI. This may be as simple as disclosing your COI to your study team, students, and subjects, or it may be a conflict management plan that will outline things you can and cannot do during your research project.

If you have questions about COI and research, you can email us at [email protected].

Stay tuned for our next article on the differences between an outside interest and a conflict of interest.

The University of Michigan's commitment to safety relies on the support of faculty, staff, and students, and the Department of Occupational Safety & Environmental Health (OSEH) recognizes those individuals who excel in creating and maintaining a safe workplace with this award. 

Individuals and work groups from the U-M Ann Arbor campus are eligible to receive the award, and the OSEH Safety First Recognition Team will determine the award recipient(s) from nominations received from the U-M community. 

Each award winner will receive:

• A Safety First pin
• A Safety First pen
• An OSEH flashlight
• A $50 gift certificate to be used toward the purchase
  of Safety First merchandise
• A Recognition plaque listing each individual, and
• A catered reception hosted by OSEH at the winner's workplace.

OSEH's Executive Director, Terry Alexander, and the Safety First Recognition Award Team will present the award.

Criteria:
Nominees must satisfy at least one or more of the five criteria listed below:

1. Outstanding in-house safety program - for broad implementation of safety throughout the workplace
2. Active role in safety - for being a strong advocate of health and safety
3. Improvement - for demonstrating significant improvement over previous conditions
4. Consistency - for maintaining an outstanding safety program over a number of years
5. Product or process development and implementation - for special effort given to a specific aspect of safety at U-M

Judges will look for: 

1. Evidence that the individual or work group went above
   and beyond his/her or their job duties
2. Overall impact to department, stakeholders, and the
   U-M community as a whole 
3. Information that validates the benefits of this nomination
   to the department

Nominations are due no later than Friday, November 21.

Click here to learn more about OSEH's Safety First Recognition Award program.

Contact us via email with any questions you may have regarding this program.

The Center for the Discovery of New Medicines (CDNM) recently awarded its third round of grants, providing funding to eight projects from labs across U-M.

The support allows researchers to move promising potential early-stage drug discovery to the next phase of development. Projects will investigate new treatments for cancer, infectious disease, and heart failure.

As the pharmaceutical industry decreases investment in early drug discovery research, more academic groups have started to identify compounds that could become drugs and to test and refine those compounds.

CDNM pilot grants jump-start these non-traditional projects to speed their progress toward commercialization and, ultimately, clinical use. Awards up to $50,000 support research in U-M drug discovery cores including high-throughput screening, pharmacokinetics and medicinal chemistry.

"We're very impressed with the breadth and creativity of the submissions in this round," said Alan Saltiel, director of the Life Sciences Institute. "It's great to see so much growing interest in drug discovery at U-M."

Selected projects include:

• Ronald J. Buckanovich, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical School, "Isozyme-selective ALDH Inhibitors for Sensitizing Ovarian Cancer Stem-like Cells to Chemotherapy"
• Gregory R. Dressler, Department of Pathology, Medical School, "Identifying Novel Small Molecules for Renal Disease"
• George A. Garcia, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, "Identification of Novel Inhibitors of MTB RNA Polymerase via HTS"
• Eric C. Martens, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical School, "A live cell screen for chemical inhibitors of colitis caused by commensal bacteria"
• Maria Sandkvist, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical School, "High throughput screen for the identification of type II secretion inhibitors in Acinetobacter baumannii"
• John Tesmer, Life Sciences Institute and Department of Pharmacology, Medical School, "Synthesis and Characterization of Hybrid Analogs for the Inhibition of G Protein-Coupled Receptor Kinase 2"
• John Tesmer, Life Sciences Institute and Department of Pharmacology, Medical School, "High-throughput screening for small molecule inhibitors directed against the PH domain of P-Rex1, an enhancer of metastatic potential"
• Matthew Young, Department of Pharmacology, Medical School, "A non-active site directed approach to inhibit deubiquitinases for cancer therapy"

As a virtual center, the CDNM provides financial support and mentorship to researchers with promising potential therapeutics in order to leverage existing investments in informatics, robotics and high-throughput screening, and to promote new opportunities in drug discovery and development.

The next deadline for submission of CDNM pilot grants is Monday, December 1 at 11:59 PM, with grants being awarded in early 2015.

For application information, visit the CDNM website. 

MCubed, the University of Michigan's one-of-a-kind funding program designed to spark innovative research without traditional peer review, is wrapping up its first cycle in December.

Launched in 2012 as a grassroots effort to jumpstart daring, boundary-crossing work, the program has allowed U-M faculty to spin their MCubed seed money into millions more.

"The enterprise of research at a place like the University of Michigan must be innovative and forward-looking, and MCubed has blazed a new trail in this regard," President Mark S. Schlissel said at the recent MCubed Symposium.

MCubed has led to new grants, studies, inventions and other scholarly work:

• The $14 million initiative brought in $20 million in additional grants from 31 projects, or 15 percent of the total so-called "cubes." Thirty-two other grant proposals are pending.
• More than 60 groups have either submitted or published studies in peer-reviewed journals, and many more are being written.
• Forty-two cubes have achieved other scholarly products, such as conference presentations, interactive websites, digital archives, and artistic performances.
• Eleven teams filed invention disclosure reports.
• MCubed gave $60,000 early-stage grants to more than 200 trios of professors. To get the money, qualifying faculty members only had to agree to work with collaborators outside their disciplines on a brand new project.

Over 175 Medical School faculty participated in cubes, including a cancer biologist and an epidemiologist who teamed up with a mathematician in exploring the links between HPV - the virus that causes cervical cancer - and head and neck cancers. It's a complex problem at the intersection of infectious disease and cancer, and the faculty had never worked together before.

"You really need an interdisciplinary, out-of-the-box team to tackle this and try to understand how sexual behavior can lead to the transmission of HPV, and how that eventually shapes the trends we see in cancers that occur many years after the transmission. There are a lot of questions and we're trying to fill the gaps in understanding," said Rafael Meza, assistant professor of epidemiology. "MCubed gave us the momentum to take our small project even further."

Click here for more details about MCubed.

A cross-functional team comprised of representatives from the university's research community and Procurement Services Department has developed new and significant discounts on antibodies (primary and secondary), ELISA kits (including multiplex assays), and recombinant proteins with three key vendors:

• EMD Millipore
• Life Technologies
• Sigma-Aldrich

These vendors are now offering discounts that range from 10 to 30 percent, with some including free shipping. The process to realize these discounts began when the team took a close look at a variety of factors, ranging from the most commonly ordered supplies to shipping costs.

After reviewing this information, the team requested and analyzed proposals from appropriate vendors, which included detailed information on their product discounts and options for free shipping. Based on this assessment, the team then chose the top three vendors that could best meet the needs of the university's research community.

The table below displays the vendors, discounted supplies,

and free shipping that are available: 

Researchers can take advantage of these discounts by placing orders through M-Marketsite and using their shortcodes.

Representatives from Procurement Services and the vendors are available to answer questions and provide more information.

For more information:

1. EMD Millipore

Jeff Lehrer

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (734) 635-1269

2. Life Technologies

Sharon Robins

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (248) 425-9027

3. Sigma-Aldrich

Lora Marsh

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (269) 408-0272

4. U-M Procurement Services

David Gilbert

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (734) 615-9304

Vidya Sarma

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (734) 763-8701

The U-M Medical School (UMMS) Office of Research has implemented a pilot digital badging initiative in a concerted effort to build and support the continuing education and professional development of the Medical School research community.

Digital badges complement your formal training by emphasizing a more complete picture of your skill set. They make meaningful achievement and experiences visible to anyone, anywhere, anytime on the web including current employers, instructors, peers, and communities of shared interest.  

When you share or display your digital badge, anyone who clicks on the badge will be able to see detailed information about the learning and time commitment you invested to earn your badge, including information about the badge issuer.

The UMMS Office of Research awards badges via Credly.com, and you manage how your badges are shared with your network. You can view your badges on the Credly website, display them on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, or add them to your online CV and email signature.

Questions?

Click here for more details about the UMMS Office of Research pilot digital badging initiative, or contact us via email at [email protected]. 

Charles A. Parkos, M.D., Ph.D.

From routine blood tests to studies of new diagnostic tools, the U-M Medical School's Department of Pathology performs millions of lab tests a year, and conducts millions of dollars' worth of advanced research. 

Now, the department will have a new leader, with the recent approval by the U-M Board of Regents of Charles A. Parkos, M.D., Ph.D. as chair. 

Coming to Michigan from Emory University in Atlanta, Parkos plans to grow the already thriving department to serve patients, the community, and the future of medicine even better.

Medical School Dean James O. Woolliscroft, M.D., welcomed his arrival, noting, "His superb record of scientific investigation, educational leadership and clinical acumen make him ideally suited to continue the legacy of excellent leadership in pathology."

Parkos' own research focuses on the way that white blood cells and other aspects of the immune system interact with the cells of mucus membranes throughout the body, especially in the gut - and the diseases that can alter this interaction.

He will continue his prize-winning laboratory research at Michigan, and hopes to recruit additional scientists who focus on this rapidly growing field while enhancing the entire department's research effort.

"We have an outstanding talent base in this department, and the school has made generous investments of institutional resources in research. I'm confident that these factors, combined with targeted recruitment, will allow us to rise to a level shared by only a few of the very top pathology departments in the nation," he says. "I'm pleased to be able to bring my energy, enthusiasm and experience to lead the effort." 

Deep in the brains of the million Americans with Parkinson's disease, changes to their brain cells put them at high risk of dangerous falls -- a problem that resists even the most modern treatments.

Now, University of Michigan scientists and doctors have launched a five-year, $11.5 million effort to better understand the cause of these problems, and find new options based in the latest brain science.

With the new grant from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health,

U-M becomes home to one of only nine Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence in Parkinson's Disease Research in the country.

Named for a noted member of Congress who battled the disease, the Udall Centers bring together researchers from many fields to tackle big questions in Parkinson's, to educate the next generation of Parkinson's researchers, and to serve as a vital resource for patients with the disease.

The new center will conduct three interrelated projects to better understand the role of the cholinergic system in falls, focusing on the effect of lost cholinergic neurons in brain areas called the basal forebrain, which regulates attention, and the pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN), which controls balance. 

U-M neurologist William Dauer, M.D., will serve as the center's director

The U-M Udall Center team includes researchers in many units of the university. They include Medical School doctors who treat Parkinson's patients at the U-M Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, and study the disease in their labs, as well as a neuroscientist in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, and biostatisticians from the schools of Nursing and Public Health.

The center will also partner with the Michigan Alzheimer's Disease Center in minority outreach efforts, and run a Udall Center Fellows program, co-funded by the U-M Medical School and the Department of Neurology, which will allow physicians and physician-scientists interested in Parkinson's disease to receive two years of intensive training and participate in center research.

Richard A. Miller, M.D., Ph.D.

A $3 million grant from The Glenn Foundation for Medical Research will allow the University of Michigan to establish a national center of excellence in biogerontology research. 

The Glenn Center for Aging Research at

U-M will focus on exploiting and expanding the growing evidence that drugs can slow the effects of aging and postpone diseases in animal models. Researchers aim to unlock mechanisms of aging that can help develop medications that may help people live longer, healthier lives.

The award recognizes U-M as among a select group of elite members of the Glenn Consortium for Research in Aging in the country. "To be named as a member of the Glenn Consortium for Research in Aging is a highly-prestigious designation by the Foundation," says U-M Medical School Senior Associate Dean for Research Steven L. Kunkel, M.D.

"The award is a testament to the quality of the U-M's biogerontology research program and the excellence of our faculty."

The Paul F. Glenn Center for Aging Research at the University of Michigan has been established as a component of the U-M Geriatrics Center and Institute of Gerontology. It is directed by Richard A. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology and the Geriatrics Center's associate director for research.

"It is a tremendous honor to have been invited to join the Glenn Center Consortium," Miller says. "We are confident that this newly inaugurated research program will let us show how work involving cells, worms, flies, and mice will lead to major advances in our understanding of aging and disease, and we expect that the program will help Michigan attract students and fellows who want to make biogerontology the focus of their own research careers."

Click here to read the full announcement.