Osteoarthritis, a common side effect of obesity, is the greatest cause of disability in the US, affecting 31 million people. Sometimes called “wear and tear” arthritis, osteoarthritis in people who are obese was long assumed to simply be a consequence of undue stress on joints. However, in a study published in JCI Insight, Medical Center researchers provide the first evidence that bacteria in the gut – governed by diet – could be the key driving force behind osteoarthritis.

The Medical Center team, led by Michael Zuscik,  associate professor of orthopaedics in the Center for Musculoskeletal Research, Robert Mooney, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and Steven Gill, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, fed mice a high fat diet akin to a Western ‘cheeseburger and milkshake’ diet.

Just 12 weeks of the high fat diet made mice obese and diabetic, nearly doubling their body fat percentage compared to mice fed a low fat, healthy diet. Their colons were dominated by pro-inflammatory bacteria, and almost completely lacked certain beneficial, probiotic bacteria, like the common yogurt additive Bifidobacteria.

The changes in the gut microbiomes of the mice coincided with signs of body-wide inflammation, including in their knees where the researchers induced osteoarthritis with a meniscal tear, a common athletic injury known to cause osteoarthritis. Compared to lean mice, osteoarthritis progressed much more quickly in the obese mice, with nearly all of their cartilage disappearing within 12 weeks of the tear.

Surprisingly, the effects of obesity on gut bacteria, inflammation, and osteoarthritis were completely prevented when the high fat diet of obese mice was supplemented with a common prebiotic, called oligofructose. The knee cartilage of obese mice who ate the oligofructose supplement was indistinguishable from that of the lean mice, even though their weight didn’t change.

Just reducing inflammation was enough to protect joint cartilage from degeneration, supporting the idea that inflammation – not biomechanical forces – drive osteoarthritis and joint degeneration.

Though there are parallels between mouse and human microbiomes, the bacteria that protected mice from obesity-related osteoarthritis may differ from the bacteria that could help humans. Zuscik, Mooney and Gill aim to collaborate with researchers in the Military and Veteran Microbiome: Consortium for Research and Education at the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs to move this research into humans.

Read more here.

The Medical Center has been selected to participate in a national network created to develop new ways to diagnose and treat Lewy Body Dementia (LBD). The new initiative, organized by the Lewy Body Dementia Association, will seek to raise awareness and advance research for this complex disorder.

“Lewy Body Dementia is a challenging, multifaceted disease and research to find new diagnostic tools and treatments is still in its infancy,” said Medical Center neurologist Irene Richard, who will serve as director of the URMC Lewy Body Dementia Association Research Center of Excellence.  “This new network will create an infrastructure of clinician researchers  who understand the disease, are able to identify patients to participate in research, and have experience participating in multi-site clinical trials.”

LBD is a progressive brain disorder marked by abnormal protein deposits – called Lewy Bodies – in areas of the brain important for behavior, cognition, and motor control. The complex disease gives rise to a range of symptoms, including cognitive impairment, sleep disturbances, hallucinations, difficulty with blood pressure regulation, and problems with movement and balance. Individuals with the disease often experience marked fluctuations in their levels of alertness and clarity of thought.

The diagnosis of LBD can be challenging and is frequently mistaken for Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s dementia. Once identified, the disease is difficult to treat as many of the drugs available to address specific symptoms – such as those enhancing dopamine for movement and anti-psychotic drugs for hallucinations and behavioral problems – have side effects that can make other features of the disease worse.

The LBDA Clinical Research Centers of Excellence program, which consists of 33 leading academic medical centers, will provide a centralized, coordinated research resource to support government, industry, and foundation-supported clinical studies investigating new ways to identify and treat the disease.

The program will also serve as an educational resource for providers to improve care for patients and their families.  The centers were chosen for their clinical expertise in LBD and experience conducting clinical research trials in related conditions.

• John Osburg, an associate professor of anthropology,  who has been named to the 2018 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. Osburg is one of 31 scholars in the humanities or social sciences to be awarded the prestigious honor this year. The Carnegie Corporation of New York will give each fellow a $200,000 stipend to support their research projects over the next two years. In Osburg’s case, that support will help him pursue two book projects exploring the contemporary revival of religion in China. Read more here.
• Henry Kautz, professor of computer science and founding director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science, who has been appointed to serve a three-year rotation as director of the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation. The division supports artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and data science. Kautz will help create calls for research proposals, manage the process for reviewing proposals and making award decisions, and work with other NSF officials to set strategy and policy. Read more here.
• Llerena Searle, assistant professor of anthropology; Joshua Enck, an adjunct instructor in art and art history; and Steven Rozenski, assistant professor of English, all of whom have received Fulbright Scholar awards for 2018-19. Searle will conduct ethnographic research for a book she is working on, examining how an influx of goods and media has restructured home-making practices among India’s middle and upper classes in Delhi. Enck will create sculptures that pay homage to the lotas, katoris, and other metal vessels of everyday life in India, to help document an industry that has received little scholarly attention. Rozenski will work on his book project, Wisdom’s Journey: Continental Mysticism and Popular Devotion in Trans-Reformation England, at Queen Mary University of London. Read more here. 
• Tracy Stuber and Anastasia Nikolis, who have been awarded Public Humanities Fellowships from Humanities New York for next year.  Stuber, a graduate student in visual and cultural studies, will carry out a project titled “No Filter:  Conversations on Color Photography and Race.”  She will develop “a series of workshops and conversations about the history and present of racial representation in color photography.”  Nikolis, a graduate student in English, will undertake “Poetry and the People,” creating “a regularly-scheduled, participant-led discussion group in which the participants bring poems, song lyrics, or fragments of other literature to share with the group that takes place at partner establishments around the city of Rochester.”   Both will present the results of their projects in the Rosenberger Work-in-Progress seminar next spring.

River Campus Libraries, in partnership with Out Alliance, have recently completed an NEH-sponsored digital collection, Rochester, New York Voices of the LGBT History, which houses the audio and video recording used for the film Shoulders to Stand On and the Green Thursday radio program. Shoulders to Stand On is a documentary that reveals Rochester’s rich yet generally unknown LGBT history.

In celebration of the completion of the collection, River Campus Libraries and Out Alliance will host a special event at 5:30 p.m. May 2 at The Out Alliance, 100 College Avenue. The event will include presentations by Rochester students who were instrumental to the collection’s processing, and a live demonstration of the collection’s digital functionalities.

Getting volunteers to participate in clinical studies is essential to the clinical research enterprise, but the experiences of the volunteers are very rarely assessed.  The University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) in collaboration with 13 other institutions developed the Research Participant Survey, which is available to all investigators and is designed to gauge participants’ experiences during a research study.

The survey consists of 23 questions which address the full continuum of a participant’s experience from consent to study completion. The survey also collects detailed demographic data so the institution can evaluate participants’ experiences within different socioeconomic groups.

A previous study showed that a longer version of the survey provided investigators with concrete information that can be used to improve participants’ experiences, as well as protections for participants and the general conduct of clinical research.

CTSI aims to ask every volunteer who participates in a study at Rochester to complete the 10 minute Research Participant Survey. Any investigator who would like to collect feedback from their study participants can access the survey in REDCap. The survey can be implemented at the department, study, or investigator level.

Responses from participants will guide future work and will help make the research experience as engaging as possible.

For a link to the survey in REDCap, contact the Research Help Desk.

This unique mentored postdoctoral research training program combines research training at the University with instruction in critical academic skills, including experiential training in teaching at our partner institution, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) and other colleges at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

The program aims to develop a group of highly trained biomedical and behavioral scientists who have the necessary knowledge, skills, and experiences to pursue independent research and teaching careers in academia, thereby diversifying the nation’s workforce to include deaf and hard-of-hearing scientists. Click here for additional information and instructions for submission.

The Spinal Cord Injury Research Program is accepting applications for a grant promoting recovery from chronic spinal cord injury (SCI).

All animal and human subject protocols must be approved prior to the start date. No funds will be released until these approvals have been documented. See Submission Guidelines. Email applications to Chelsea Costanzo by 5 p.m. May 25.

The Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Institute is accepting applications for funded pilot projects with the potential to give new life to the overall scientific portfolio of the University and keep the institution abreast of, and even ahead of today’s fast-paced and competitive scientific landscape. Multidisciplinary and multi-investigator proposals are strongly encouraged.

All animal and human subject protocols must be approved prior to the start date. No funds will be released until these approvals have been documented. See Submission Guidelines.  Email applications to Chelsea Costanzo by 5 p.m., May 25.

The Center for AIDS  Research announces a new pilot opportunity for the summer of 2018, with funding up to $30,000 in direct costs per pilot.  All opportunities require an investigator from each site (University of Rochester and University at Buffalo) and also require that the submitting investigator hold a faculty appointment (not adjunct) at Rochester.  All applications are due by 5 p.m. May 14.

See the CFAR Pilot Funding Opportunities page and the specific RFA for additional information.

The pilot program is intended to generate preliminary data that will facilitate the submission of subsequent competitive proposals for NIH or other grants. Interested PI’s can contact CFAR administrator Laura_Enders@urmc.rochester.edu for additional information on eligibility, budgeting guidelines, and required cost sharing forms no later than May 7.

April 28: All In: When Theory Meets Practice in Education Reform. Symposium sponsored by the Warner School Center for Urban Education Success (CUES). 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., East High School. Free and open to the public. Read more here.

April 30: Deadline to submit pre-proposals for University Technology Development Fund awards. Submit to omar.bakht@rochester.edu. More information can be found at Rochester.edu/tdf

April 30: “Zionism: Conflicting Dreams.” Public lecture by Israeli author Amos Oz, the inaugural Farash Fellow for the Advancement of Jewish Humanities and Culture. 5 p.m., Hawkins Carlson Room at Rush Rhees Library. The lecture will be followed by a reception in the Humanities Center. Presented by the Farash Foundation, the Humanities Center, and the Center for Jewish Studies. For more information, contact Jennie Gilardoni.

May 2: Presentation and demonstration of NEH-sponsored digital collection Rochester, New York Voices of the LGBT History, hosted by River Campus Libraries and The Out Alliance. 5:30 p.m. at The Out Alliance, 100 College Avenue.

May 14: Deadline to apply for Community Health Mini-Grants from the Center for Community Health and Prevention. Applications are welcome from the Medical Center and community partners. Application directions can be found here. Contact Gail Hamilton via email or at 224-3062 for additional information.

May 14: 5 p.m. deadline to apply for pilot funding from the Center for AIDS Research for projects in collaboration with the University at Buffalo. See the CFAR Pilot Funding Opportunities page and the specific RFA for additional information.

May 15: Respiratory Pathogens Research Center Scientific Symposium. Featured speakers, lectures by RPRC investigators, poster session. Lunch and refreshments provided. 7:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Saunders Research Building. Registration is free, but pre-registration is required by April 27 at RPRCSymposium.urmc.edu

May 17: “Ever Better Teams: A CTSI Team Science Summit.” Interactive symposium featuring keynote presentation by Gaetano “Guy” Lotrecchiano, an associate professor of clinical research and leadership at The George Washington University, and breakout sessions for networking and dialogue on the future of team science at URMC. 1 to 5 p.m. Hosted by the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Contact Oksana Babiy with questions.

May 25: 5 p.m. deadline to apply for pilot projects from the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Institute. Submission Guidelines.  Email applications to Chelsea Costanzo.

May 25: 5 p.m. deadline to apply for a grant from the Spinal Cord Injury Research Program promoting recovery from chronic spinal cord injury (SCI). Submission Guidelines. Email applications to Chelsea Costanzo.

June 1-3: “Frontiers in Virtual Reality,” the 31st Center for Visual Science Symposium. Memorial Art Gallery. Click here for a list of speakers, and details about registration.

June 2: “An ‘Un-Meeting’: Addressing the Opioid Crisis through Translational Science.” 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saunders Research Building Atrium. Hosted by the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration. There is no cost to attend. Register here by Wednesday, May 23.