Briefs
Fiscal health as important as physical health for older Americans
Multimillion dollar grant awarded to TMC Digestive Diseases Center
Researchers win NIH award to study how to correct protein defect in cystic fibrosis patients
Robert Todd named to lead BCM's Department of Medicine
Fiscal health as important as physical health for older Americans
Baylor College of Medicine has announced an initiative to focus on the growing problem of investor fraud among the elderly, particularly those with mild cognitive impairment.
The program, funded by a grant from the Investor Protection Trust, will train physicians and other caregivers to identify and assist individuals at risk of elder investment fraud due to mild cognitive impairment.
Robert Roush, M.D., associate professor of medicine-geriatrics at BCM, said while older patients who have mild cognitive impairment or early onset dementia are able to perform many routine day-to-day activities, they cannot always manage their investments as well as before.
"We talk about physical health and psychological health, but we also need to start asking about fiscal health," said Roush.
The "Preventing Investment Fraud in Older Adults" program focuses on raising health care professionals' level of clinical suspicion about potential investment fraud when they see a patient with mild cognitive impairment. BCM will work with experts and physicians to enhance existing screening tools to enable health care professionals to determine if an older patient with mild cognitive impairment is susceptible to investment fraud or mismanagement or to determine if the patient is being victimized. Clinicians would then be able to appropriately refer the individual for further neuropsychologic testing, to a professional geriatric care manager with expertise in assisting people manage their finances, or to the Texas State Securities Board.
Multimillion dollar grant awarded to TMC Digestive Diseases Center
A $5.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health assures the continuation of the Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center, a collaboration among Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
The center is one of 16 NIH Digestive Diseases Center for Gastrointestinal Infection and Injury in the nation and the only center in the Southwest region of the United States. BCM serves as lead institution.
"This center facilitates on-going digestive diseases research, promotes translational research between basic and clinical areas, develops new projects, nurtures new investigators, and provides GI (gastrointestinal) educational activities for scientists and physicians at institutions within the Texas Medical Center," said Mary Estes, Ph.D., director of the Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center. She is also a professor of molecular virology and microbiology and medicine at BCM.
The leadership team includes co-director David Graham, M.D., professor of
medicine-gastroenterology at BCM, as well as associate directors, Lenard
Lichtenberger, Ph.D., professor of molecular and cellular biology at UT-Houston, and Raymond DuBois, M.D., Ph.D., provost and executive vice president of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Researchers win NIH award to study how to correct protein defect in cystic fibrosis patients
A $700,000 award from the National Institutes of Health will help a team of researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston find ways to use nanotechnology to fight cystic fibrosis, a deadly inherited disease.
"Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease with a median life expectancy of 37 years. There is no cure, but there is supportive treatment," said N. Tony Eissa, M.D., professor of medicine-pulmonary at BCM and a co-leader of the study with Wah Chiu, Ph.D., director of the Center for Protein Folding Machinery, a NIH Roadmap initiative.
Roadmap initiatives group together clinical and research experts across the country and fund "highly collaborative approaches to solving biomedical problems," said Chiu. The center involves six institutions across the country. The researchers are focusing on the problems of misfolded proteins. Chiu is also a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and director of the National Center for Macromolecular Imaging at BCM. Eissa is also professor of immunology and molecular cell biology and the Nancy Chang Ph.D. Chair for the Biology of Inflammation Center.
The researchers will focus on how to correct the misfolded protein at fault in cystic fibrosis. "Getting that protein to fold correctly is the major challenge for us," said Eissa. "Essentially, we are trying to reverse the pathology of the disease."
Robert Todd named to lead BCM's Department of Medicine
Robert F. Todd, M.D., has been named chair of the department of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
Todd, an internationally recognized expert in cancer research, education and clinical care, currently holds the Frances and Victor Ginsberg Professorship of Hematology/Oncology and serves as the interim chair of the department of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and Health System. He will take on his new role Dec. 1.
U.S., Tanzania governments partner with Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative to open two new AIDS centers
A public-private partnership will enable the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) to significantly expand its network of centers of excellence in Sub-Saharan Africa by building two clinics in Tanzania, a country hit hard by HIV/AIDS.
The United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief announced a grant award to BIPAI of $22.5 million over five years to support the operations of the two centers of excellence and associated satellite clinic facilities.
His Excellency Mr. Jakaya Kikwete, president of the United Republic of Tanzania, participated in the announcement in Washington, D.C. The Tanzanian government is working in partnership with BIPAI to establish the two centers in Mbeya and Mwanza and to ensure their integration into existing public health programs. It is expected that the centers will provide care directly to at least 15,000 children. Another 4,400 children will receive care in associated satellite facilities
.
BIPAI is based at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. It has secured additional funding totaling more than $6 million for the Tanzania program from several private donors, including Abbott Fund, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Jan and Dan Duncan and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.
The new centers of excellence in Tanzania will be the seventh and eighth established by BIPAI in Africa. Mark Kline, M.D., president of BIPAI, said the large country in East Africa is home to about 1.4 million people with HIV/AIDS. Currently, there are few resources for the care and treatment of HIV-infected children.
