Medicine

Campus News Briefs Fall 2020

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs Fall 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/10/2020 - 23:00

While in quarantine, �� professor of piano David Korevaar performed and recorded all of Beethoven’s sonatas on his living room piano.

Years on faculty at ��

3.23.20

First sonata posted to YouTube

Weeks to complete the sonatas

Sonatas performed

17,621

YouTube views as of Oct. 8

2020

250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth

Cannabis and Pregnancy

Marijuana use during pregnancy has been linked to childhood sleep problems for up to a decade, according to a �� study, which is the first to suggest marijuana use can impact children’s sleep long term. As legalization spreads, roughly 7% of pregnant women in the U.S. are using marijuana to help curb morning sickness. Lead author John Hewitt, director of CU’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics, said, “This study is one more example of why pregnant women are advised to avoid substance use, including cannabis.”

Teensy, Fast and Strong

Inspired by cockroaches, mechanical engineering assistant professor Kaushik Jayaram created one of the world’s smallest, fastest robots, HAMR-Jr. Weighing less than a paperclip, the four-legged robot is roughly the size of a penny. It is able to carry 10 times its body weight and moves about one foot per second. According to Jayaram, there are a lot of potential applications with HAMR-Jr., such as airplane engine inspections or human surgeries. "I want to build robots that can get out of the lab and run around like bugs,” Jayaram said.

New Center to Advance Quantum Science and Engineering

With a $25 million National Science Foundation award, �� is launching a new quantum science and engineering research center, led by physicist and JILA fellow Jun Ye. The center will partner with 11 other research organizations in the U.S. and abroad — including Harvard, Stanford and MIT — to create new technologies using advancements in areas related to quantum entanglement, quantum sensing and more.
“We’re asking how we can take advantage of recent advances in quantum physics to actually solve useful problems for society,” said Ye.

Everything...connects back to wanting to make sure that Black women in particular — [and] Black people in general — get to pursue [their] dreams in the daytime, not just when everyone else is asleep.”
-Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, during a virtual panel for CU students, faculty and staff on Sept. 16.

With a $25 million National Science Foundation award, �� is launching a new quantum science and engineering research center.

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Stronger Together

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 18:04:00 +0000

Stronger Together Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/10/2020 - 11:04

Christie Sounart

The beeping was constant.

In the chaos of rushing between ICU patients and making critical decisions on the spot, calls flooded Marco Uribe’s (Soc’12) pager.

People desperate for an update on their mother, father, spouse. Needing to know — unable to see or speak to them — their conditions.

Marco had to explain on the phone to families that their loved one was dying from the COVID-19 virus, sometimes being forced to ask if their ventilator could go to someone else with a higher probability of surviving.

“Many nights I stay up thinking about those conversations with families.”

One shift, he became overwhelmed. He slipped into an empty room in the Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, to call the person he needed to speak to most — his wife, Whitney Lewis Uribe (Jour’12).

“I remember him calling me completely shaken, asking, ‘How do I even ask a family to answer this question?’” Whitney said.

Marco added, “Many nights I stay up thinking about those conversations with families.”

It was March 2020 and Marco was three months away from completing his first year of residency through the CU School of Medicine’s advanced anesthesiology program. The residency includes three years of specialized training after completing an intern year. CU assigned Marco to a hospital system in the Bronx for his intern year, which began in June 2019.

“New York was definitely a surprise for us,” said Whitney.

But as the pandemic ripped through the city, the couple realized they were exactly where they were supposed to be. New York was an experience to learn, grow and lean on each other — just as they had for the past 12 years.

Hallett Hall

Marco and Whitney Uribe met in August 2008 during freshman move-in day at ��.

Marco and Whitney met in August 2008 during freshman move-in day at ��. Marco was coming from Austin, Texas, to start a pre-med track, and Whitney from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, to study journalism. They were on the same floor in Hallett Hall.

“We both caught each other’s eye,” said Whitney.

When Marco’s mom and sister, Marisa, came to visit for Homecoming, he solicited Marisa to invite Whitney to join them at a family tailgate — and 13-year-old Marisa was very insistent.

“The litmus was how Whitney interacted with my little sister, who had special needs,” Marco said. “When I saw that she treated Marisa with love and respect, I knew she had a big heart.”

As their relationship developed, Whitney learned how special Marisa was and how much she meant to Marco. Doctors diagnosed her with brain cancer as an infant, and the chemotherapy and radiation she underwent until age 5 stunted her neurological development and altered her hormonal balance.

“She had an extra big capacity to love everyone around her,” said Whitney.

“She was my reason to go into medicine,” Marco said.

Med School

After graduating from CU in 2012, Marco applied to medical schools while he skied, fly-fished and waited tables in Colorado. Whitney moved to Los Angeles to work for an entertainment production company. They dated long-distance.

In 2013, Marco was accepted to medical school at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. After a year and a half, Whitney joined him in Texas to work in the nonprofit sector. They were engaged near the Flatirons during a trip to Boulder in 2015, which is where they had their first date.

In Marco’s second year of medical school, Marisa was diagnosed with colon cancer. The couple put their lives on hold to spend time with her. She died in September 2016 at 21 years old.

“We leaned on each other a lot during that time,” said Whitney. “We grew closer.”

Focusing on his studies was “a serious challenge” during that period, Marco said, but after some time off and Whitney’s support, he continued with medical school.

Marco and Whitney married in July 2017 in Steamboat Springs. Two years later, Marco graduated and pursued residency options. CU’s advanced anesthesiology program at the Anschutz campus was his top choice.

“Anesthesia really came to me,” said Marco. “When Marisa was really sick, an anesthesiologist gave her an epidural catheter which greatly helped in managing her pain so we could spend quality time together. It gave me some of the most cherished time with my sister.”

After Marco was accepted into CU and subsequently assigned to New York, the couple — both 29 years old at the time — rented a 500-square-foot apartment in Manhattan and moved in with their 65-pound wirehaired griffon, Rooster.

Whitney volunteered for a childhood cancer research organization and trained to get her certification in Pilates. Marco worked in the general surgery department at a hospital system in the Bronx, where many units were understaffed and overwhelmed before the pandemic.

“It was sink-or-swim kind of training,” Marco said.

“I’d go to the emergency department and ask colleagues, ‘What do you think of this COVID thing? Are we prepared?’”

The COVID Tidal Wave

Marco first heard of COVID-19 in December.

“It was something we knew was out there but hadn’t been completely studied. There didn’t seem to be anything concrete,” he said. “In January it became more of a discussion.”

In February things seemed different.

“I’d go to the emergency department and ask colleagues, ‘What do you think of this COVID thing? Are we prepared?’” Marco recalled. “They said it’s coming and it’s going to hit us like a tidal wave.”

Marco prepared to dive in.

“I remember the day when he came home and he said this is going to be really hard and a lot of people are going to die,” Whitney said. “I stopped watching the news. I needed to match his fearless energy because he was now going to be seeing this firsthand.”

Marco volunteered to work in his hospital’s ICU doing critical care for COVID-19 patients. He started work at 5:30 a.m. and sometimes wouldn’t return home until 9 p.m. or later. Whitney remembers giving him protein shakes often as he was too exhausted to eat.

“Eight hours of sleep minus the commute time wasn’t a lot, but it was worth going home,” Marco said. “I would change out of scrubs in the hallway, take my shoes off, put those scrubs in a bag, go straight to the laundry and take a shower.”

In mid-April, Marco, top, second from left, was featured on CBS News wheeling a recovered COVID-19 patient out of a New York City hospital.

By the end of March, the entire hospital and every ICU floor was overflowing, and ventilators were running sparse. While attending physicians frantically tried to obtain supplies, staff and space for dying patients, the residents helped run the ICUs.

“I quickly learned how to serve my patients as a critical care physician,” Marco said.

Whitney helped him create talking points for difficult conversations with families.

Despite it all, Marco knew he was where he was supposed to be.

“This is why we go into medicine,” he said. “This is our call.”

In mid-April, Marco — wearing a �� lanyard — was featured on CBS News wheeling a recovered patient out of the hospital to his family.

“I would have wanted to be in the fight whether or not I was in New York,” Marco said. “The fact that I was there by luck — I thank God for the experience.”

Return to Colorado

At the end of June, the couple moved from New York to a historic house in the Berkeley neighborhood of Denver.

“Every time we move to a new city it feels like a new chapter,” Whitney said. “We trust what is in store for us, good or bad.”

Whitney sought out an advertising position and is continuing her volunteer work in childhood cancer research. In July, Marco began the second year of his residency at CU's medical campus, focused once again on anesthesiology.

But, he added, “We’re excited for whatever could come next.”

Photos by Matt Tyrie; Courtesy CBS News (bottom)

Marco and Whitney Uribe met at CU in 2008. While living in New York City for Marco’s medical residency, he fought COVID-19 head-on.

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Fighting COVID from the Lab

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 18:00:45 +0000

Fighting COVID from the Lab Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/07/2020 - 12:00

Twins Cara (MCDBio'11) and Amy Faliano (MCDBio'11) have been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic in the labs of the UC Health system: Cara is the coordinator of laboratory safety for UCHealth in the Denver Metro area, and Amy is a lead medical laboratory scientist at UCHealth's Highlands Ranch community hospital. Here, the sisters discuss their love for biology, what it’s like working in separate labs and the benefits of having each other.

What drew you to biology and medical testing?

Cara: Amy and I have loved science since we were little girls. Our mom used to take us to the library and we'd check out stacks of books at a time. We stayed study buddies throughout our schooling and found that biology, specifically things on the microscopic level, sparked our interest the most, so studying MCDB at CU was an easy choice for both of us.

What was your favorite thing at ��?

Cara: Having a Division 1 football team to support was a dream for both of us. We never missed a football game and attended a lot of basketball as well — and still love to go watch CU play.

Amy: I loved the extracurriculars, like sports games, giving campus tours and being in CU Collegiate Chorale.

Amy Faliano

When did you first become concerned about COVID-19?

Cara: I help manage the special pathogens unit in my hospital, so I'm always reading about infectious disease news. I would say around Christmas is when COVID-19 really started to catch my attention, because it's well-known that a SARS-like or flu-like respiratory illness would be the next "pandemic" and this seemed mysterious enough to fit the bill.

What COVID-related questions have you been getting most from friends and family?

Cara: We're getting a lot of questions about how the testing works, which is great! Lab testing and medical laboratory science has always been one of the less-talked-about fields in the medical world, so it's been great to have a spotlight shined overall on the great work that clinical labs do to support patient care.

Amy: A lot of friends and family who have reached out had questions about how the testing is performed, what the results look like. One of my aunts just had to know if the novel coronavirus really looks like the "spiky ball' picture she has seen on the news. The answer is yes, that is what it looks like under an electron microscope.

Cara Faliano

What has it been like working through this difficult time?

Cara: Like anyone in healthcare would say, this has been a very tiring and trying couple of months of hard work, rapid changes and adapting to the situation as it develops. I've personally been involved on the more administrative side of the laboratory, so I've re-written the lab's "COVID-19" procedure more times than I can count, have been tasked with things like helping to create drive-thru testing locations, have had to find creative new inventory for the lab to use in supply chain shortages — like 3D-printed swabs — and have been managing the inventory of testing supplies for the entire hospital system. Everyone is wearing many hats in this pandemic, and it's been a scramble for all in the lab.

Amy: I am a leader in the laboratory at UCHealth Highlands Ranch Hospital, a community hospital in the UCHealth system. I had to quickly validate new testing for COVID-19, train all staff and figure out how to balance that testing with all of our normal testing for patients seen at our hospital and clinic. It was stressful to have to get the validation paperwork and new procedures at a rapid pace, and I have worked a lot of long hours.

You both worked in blood banks during the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting. What was that like?

Amy: We both got called into work the night of the shootings and came to the hospital blood bank right away. That was a crazy night of assisting in testing and preparing blood products for a mass-casualty situation, but definitely affirmed my decision to go into the career field. What the hospital laboratory does is so important, and this pandemic is another reminder of that.

How has having each other been therapeutic?

Cara: My work on the admin side directly impacts Amy in her lab, as her lab follows the procedures I've written and uses the same materials, so we've been able to brainstorm together on some things or bounce questions off of each other.

Amy: Through the stress of the pandemic it was nice to have someone who was there for me, and understood how hard it was to have to continue working as if things were business as usual. Cara understood how physically and mentally exhausting it was to have to work hard and work long hours. I needed her to vent to, but also to inspire me to go work hard again the next day since we were in this together.

Both of you went to the same university, same degree, same career field — just how competitive are you two?

Cara: Neither of us have a competitive bone in our bodies! We've always been really supportive of each other and want the other to do well.

Amy: I agree with that! It makes sense that we ended up in similar careers since our love of science has always been the thing that bonded us. I think we used our different strengths to find our niches in the career field, no competitiveness there.

What's one common misconception about being a twin?

Cara: I think people sometimes love to assume that we do everything together since we're in the same career field. We've rarely worked directly together, and have our own lives and interests outside of work. We're just like any other really close friends!

Amy: I don't think twins are that different from any other siblings who are close.

Interview condensed and edited.

Photo courtesy Cara Faliano

Twins Cara and Amy Faliano have been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic in the labs of the UCHealth system.

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Healthcare at Home

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 17:40:00 +0000

Healthcare at Home Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2020 - 11:40

Christie Sounart

�� computer science assistant professor Mirela Alistar wants to make healthcare more personal. Her work with microfluidic biochips is getting us there. Here, the director of the ATLAS Institute’s Living Matter Lab discusses her biochips, in-home testing and melding science with art.

What brought you to CU?

I was ready to start my own research group, so I embarked on an exciting journey of applying to more than 100 universities for a faculty position. While interviewing all over the world, I was impressed with the interdisciplinarity of ATLAS Institute, with CU’s ambition and drive to support young faculty and with Boulder’s natural beauty and progressive culture. Needless to say, choosing �� was the easiest decision I ever made.

What is your main intention with the Living Matter Lab?

As the name says, I am interested in living matter, especially in its non-human form. In the Living Matter Lab, we explore the connection between humans and the life around us by focusing on personal healthcare. Specifically, we are investigating how far we can push healthcare into the hands of people by the means of technology. To do this, we develop biochip instruments that can be used at home by people for various medical applications.

Can you describe these instruments?

Biochips are small electronic devices that manipulate droplets of fluids by executing bio-protocols — programs that move, split and mix droplets containing chemical compounds (reagents). Biochips automate processes traditionally performed in wet labs. The key advantage of biochips is that they are adaptable, thus capable of running different bio-protocols. Instead of going to a specialist, a patient can download a bio-protocol.

Why do we need biochips?

Microfluidics is the engineering that figures out how to manipulate fluids in very small amounts, at micro level. You see, fluids at large scale — the coffee in your cup, the water coming from the tap — behave very differently than when in very small amounts. To give you an idea of how small we are talking, the size of a rain droplet is about 20 microliters [one-millionth of a liter] and that is around the maximum size approached with microfluidics. Such tiny amounts of fluids are hard to manipulate because they have a strong surface tension that has to be overcome. Biochip instruments are able to manipulate such droplets in the picoliter [a trillionth of a liter] range.

What sort of tests might people perform with these?

Biochips have been shown to be able to perform basic tests, such as detecting the glucose levels on physiological fluids such as blood, saliva, urine and serum. We are working on developing a procedure that allows biochips to test for bacterial and viral infections.

Mirela Alistar

Could these biochips detect coronaviruses or other viral infections?

I am working on developing biochips that can perform ELISA [enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay], a standard procedure used to detect viral infections. ELISA is currently used as one of the methods of testing for [the novel] coronavirus. We do hope during the next year we will have a biochip that can run ELISA, and that means it will be able to detect various viral infections. I am also aware and even had collaborated with other research labs working on the same problem. However, even if any of us are successful in developing such biochips, they will still need quite a few years of development until approved to be used as a diagnosis tool.

What do you see them being used for the most initially?

I foresee a progressive roadmap for biochips, where they first will be adopted by doctors as an effective way of performing quick tests, an essential step in differential diagnosis. Then, I see a lot of potential for biochips to be used in mobile settings, such as during traveling or outdoor activities. Finally, biochips will empower patients to perform selected tests at home, as part of their decision whether to see a doctor.

How could these change our healthcare system?

Similar to how mobile computing has enabled over 60% of the population to solve a wide range of problems by means of software, I believe that biochips will change how people interact with a wide range of healthcare processes. In the long run, I believe biochips will lead to democratizing healthcare, and to a process that moves away from the current ‘one size fits all’ concept towards more personalized care.

Are there non-health uses for these biochips?

Yes, for example, researchers at University of Washington forked one of our older biochip devices and are using it for DNA computing. That means they embed DNA inside the droplets and use the droplet mixing and splitting to perform operations on the information contained in the DNA. I am also aware of people that replicated our biochips to use them for perfume mixing. One of the students in my class is designing a biochip that tells the time, basically a clock with fluids.

What other things are you working on right now?

Apart from personal healthcare, we have a second angle to approach our work in the Living Matter Lab. This angle is an artistic one, where we explore and design interactions and tangible interfaces between humans and non-human life. Examples of current projects include designing an escape room where humans and dinoflagellates [algae] collaborate to find the exit, developing do-it-yourself spirulina bioreactors for at-home use and inventing biomaterials that allow kids to grow their own toys and people to ‘cook’ their own clothes.

What do you do outside of your work?

I am focused right now on building a strong community in Boulder that engages in sci-art and bio-art. I would love to see science, technology and art coming together in interactive installations and performances available to the public at large.

Interview condensed and edited.

Illustration by TheiSpot/ Keith Negley

�� computer science assistant professor Mirela Alistar wants to make healthcare more personal. Her work with microfluidic biochips is getting us there.

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Photo of the Week: Nighttime on Mars

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 19:33:36 +0000

Photo of the Week: Nighttime on Mars Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/26/2019 - 13:33

Giordan Thompson (MechEngr’20) was one of 21 �� engineering students enrolled in the Maymester course, "Medicine in Space and Surface Environments," focused on aerospace engineering, human physiology and medicine. For one week of the three-week course, the students lived at the Mars Desert Research Station in southern Utah, where they simulated medical scenarios. The course was taught by faculty from ��’s aerospace department and from CU Anschutz.

Photo by Matt Kaskavitch/CU Anschutz

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Campus News Briefs — Winter 2018

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 20:23:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs — Winter 2018 Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2018 - 13:23

Campus Living

2021

Year �� will finish new housing master plan

Percent of first-year students live on campus

Percent of all undergrad and graduate students live on campus

775

Graduate students live on campus

330

Students in Sewall, CU's oldest residence hall

Floors in the new Williams Village east residence hall, opening fall 2019

CU Engineering: More and More Women

The first-year class in the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences is 40 percent women in 2018-2019, an all-time high and major milestone in Dean Bobby Braun’s march toward gender parity among students in the college, ��’s second-biggest. On average, women make up about 20 percent of students in U.S. engineering schools, despite constituting well above 50 percent of all college students.

Heard Around Campus

As our antibiotics work less and less, we risk essentially going back to a period 200 years ago when even a minor infection could mean death.”

— CU scientist Corrie Detweiler, whose team is exploring compounds that can rejuvenate existing antibiotics.

Drones to the Rescue

When disaster strikes, it may be the drones that save us.

Armed with a $4.5 million federal grant, �� and partners will test themselves against six other teams in a national competition to develop advanced search-and-rescue drones. The winning team walks away with $2 million.

In an initial mock rescue, drones guided by the �� team’s software will zoom through miles of steam tunnels seeking disaster survivors.

Later they’ll audition in tunnels like those of the New York subway system and in caves.

Called the Subterranean Challenge and sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the competition ends in 2021. The CU team includes CU Denver and Boston-based Scientific Systems Company.

Get more details.

CU Engineering's latest milestone, campus living by the numbers and CU's new drone challenge.

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Winter 2018

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Adventure Dentist

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:35:00 +0000

Adventure Dentist Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/01/2017 - 11:35

Clint Talbott

John Warner has climbed and skied mountains in the United States and abroad, raced motorcycles and mountain bikes and, by the way, also served as a mayor, search-and-rescue volunteer, orchestra backer and dentist-of-mercy in Guatemala.

If life is what you make of it, Warner (Bio’73) knows the drill.

As a �� student, Warner liked the natural sciences and initially planned to pursue medical school. But as an undergrad, he happened to work with a group of CU dentists who were pioneering a protocol to stimulate dental-bone growth using bone marrow that Warner harvested from cadavers. He went on to dental school instead, at CU’s School of Dental Medicine, and later opened a practice in Breckenridge.

When Warner and his wife, Carre, moved there, Breckenridge was a lot smaller and his practice didn’t keep him too busy. Civic engagement filled the gap. He led the Breckenridge Music Institute and volunteered for the Summit County Search and Rescue Group. He also founded the Summit Huts Association, a nonprofit that rents backcountry cabins, and served multiple terms on the town council and as mayor.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he provided free dental care in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. Later, he volunteered similar services in Guatemala.

The Guatemalans Warner treated lived far from dental clinics. Many had never seen a dentist. His patients sat on bags of grain while he mostly pulled teeth and filled cavities. He did this without basic diagnostic tools, such as an X-ray machine.

Like many Coloradans, Warner, who spent much of his childhood in Denver, answers to yet another calling: The outdoors.

He and some buddies have skied hut to hut in Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy and Canada. They’ve trained at Mount Rainier and climbed Denali and Aconcagua — North and South America’s highest peaks, respectively.

Living at 9,600 feet gives Warner an edge at altitude, he said.

Recently, he completed the Double Triple Bypass, a cycling event in which he rode 220 miles and climbed 22,000 feet in two days.

He’s also a seven-time finisher of the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse, a midnight ski race from Crested Butte to Aspen. In 2015, he and teammate Jack Wolfe became the oldest team — combined age: 123 — to complete the race.

In his mid-60s, he skied the Cristo Couloir, which tumbles down the southern flanks of Quandary Peak, a fourteener. He also skied down Torreys Peak, descending a route no more than 50 yards wide in spots, with rocks lining both sides.

That might sound like a daredevil stunt; Warner insists he’s careful.

“I don’t want to make a mistake,” he said, adding that he doesn’t want his former search-and-rescue colleagues to have to collect his body.

When not pushing limits on skis, peaks or bikes, Warner channels his energy into community service. It’s “helped me professionally,” he said, “and helped me be a better person.”

Read a longer version of this story in Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine online.

Photo courtesy John Warner

John Warner has climbed mountains, raced mountain bikes and served as a mayor, search-and-rescue volunteer, orchestra backer and dentist.

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Courtnie Paschall's New Flight Plan

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 14:00:00 +0000

Courtnie Paschall's New Flight Plan Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/01/2015 - 07:00

Clint Talbott

Course Correction

Courtnie Paschall (Neuro, ElEngr’15)

For Courtnie Paschall (Neuro, ElEngr’15), working on a drug trial for patients with schizophrenia while applying to 20 MD-PhD programs counts as light duty.

By the time she touched down at CU-Boulder in 2013 to study neuroscience and electrical engineering, she had proved she could handle stress: She’d graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy (’08), where she studied physics and Mandarin Chinese, attained the rank of Navy lieutenant and trained for years in a T-34C “Turbomentor” airplane and a modified Bell 206 helicopter.

She’d not only learned to fly both fixed-wing aircraft and rotorcraft, but to perform stunts also — figure-eights, Immelmann turns and barrel rolls.

Then she charted a new course: Today Paschall is a research assistant at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and headed for a career in medicine and neuroscience research.

“The next decade in neuroscience is going to revolutionize the way we approach our health,” she says.

Paschall — who in May graduated from CU summa cum laude and was named Outstanding Graduate for the College of Arts and Sciences — had long thought the military would be her life: Her parents are both Marines. Her dad is still on active duty.

She was two weeks from “winging” — a graduation ceremony in which military pilots celebrate the end of flight school and sign an eight-year service contract —when the Navy decided to pare its forces.

Paschall had the option to sign up or move on.

Given her deep military ties, it was a “terrifying” crossroads, she says — and like most crossroads, also an opportunity.

“The blood rushed from my face,” she says. “I had to walk outside and take a deep breath and just make sure that I was really willing to commit to an unknown future and give up everything this path meant.”

Paschall was 23.

“The military was all I’d ever known,” she says, “and I wanted to do something else.”

That something else was neuroscience, which led her to CU-Boulder. She enrolled as a junior with an unusually refined sense of purpose.

In her honors thesis, Paschall probed the morphological effects of marijuana on three subcortical brain structures shown to be affected by drug use in human adults.

Marie Banich, professor of psychology and neuroscience and Paschall’s thesis advisor, described her as “exceptionally bright and motivated” — and also fast, finishing her honors thesis in nine months, half the time of an average honors student.

Now the pilot has filed an MD-PhD flight plan.

Says Paschall, “I am deeply fascinated by human cognition — how we think, what causes cognitive dysfunction, and how can we intervene to restore normal processes.”

Photography by Trevr Merchant

For Courtnie Paschall (Neuro, ElEngr’15), working on a drug trial for patients with schizophrenia while applying to 20 MD-PhD programs counts as light duty.

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Resuscitating a Dormant Dream: Toshiko Luckow

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Resuscitating a Dormant Dream: Toshiko Luckow Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2013 - 00:00

Gail Reitenbach

Toshiko Luckow’s (MTeleComm’87, MD’10) motto for life came from a professor.

“You can do everything you want to do — you just can’t do it all at once,” she recalls him saying. “So, voilà! That has been my motto.”

When she graduated in 2010, Toshiko was one of the oldest students to earn a medical degree in the history of the University of Colorado. At 53, an age when most professionals are beginning their last decade in the workforce, she began her family medicine residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin, St. Joseph Hospital in Milwaukee.

Toshiko, who was raised in Japan, came to the United States at age 15 as a foreign exchange student. Her English vocabulary consisted of the words “yes,” “no” and “thank you.”

After college Toshiko pursued a career in education, attending CU-Boulder for a teaching certificate in English as a Second Language. She also earned a master’s degree in telecommunications.

When she and her husband, who also is fluent in Japanese, moved to Tokyo, she landed a job downtown at AT&T working as a systems engineer. The couple moved back to the U.S. just as the telecom industry was contracting and launched a successful Japanese technical translation business in Boulder.

“I can confidently say that I have always taken actions that are true to my dreams, and they have led me to challenging and successful careers, volunteer activities and my family,” she says. “At the same time, though, I have always had a feeling that something was not quite complete.”

When she turned 40, she finally acknowledged her deeply rooted desire to become a medical doctor. Both her father and grandfather were doctors, but the cultural norms in Japan when she was a child didn’t encourage girls to become doctors. The dream lay dormant for decades.

Although she will have significant debt from medical school, that doesn’t deter her.

“I will have to work for a long time, or I’ll have to drop dead and have the loan forgiven,” she says.

Odds are, she’s got a long career ahead of her. Toshiko’s father, an internist with a doctorate, just retired last year at age 84.

Toshiko’s commitment to her dreams already has inspired others. Last year, her 54-year-old husband, Mike Luckow (DistSt’84), whom she met at CU-Boulder, became the oldest student to begin medical school at CU. When Toshiko finishes her residency in Wisconsin, she hopes to return to Colorado.

When Toshiko Luckow graduated in 2010, she was one of the oldest students to earn a medical degree in the history of the University of Colorado.

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The Man Fighting Measles One Breath at a Time

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:18:17 +0000

The Man Fighting Measles One Breath at a Time Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/01/2011 - 10:18

Jennie Lay

Professor Bob Sievers started out studying moon dust as part of NASA’s Apollo lunar analysis program. Today he’s turning vaccines into tiny dust-like particles to save millions of lives and decimate deadly diseases.

Measles is sitting firmly in Sievers’ vision, with the potential to add vaccinations for human papillomavirus (HPV) and influenza to his arsenal in the foreseeable future. The CU-Boulder chemistry and biochemistry professor and his team have devised a new vaccine formulation that makes it possible for patients to inhale vaccine microparticles instead of being injected.

They’ve also created the PuffHaler™, a cheap, disposable and easily transportable device to administer single-dose vaccines by forming an aerosol to inhale. It’s a technological one-two punch that could knock out needles to vaccinate for measles and other diseases.

Facing a resurgence of measles

The World Health Organization reports vaccination has prevented an estimated 4.3 million measles deaths in less than a decade. Worldwide, measles deaths fell by 78 percent between 2000 and 2008 (from an estimated 733,000 annually to 164,000), and most regions have achieved United Nations goals of reducing measles mortality by 90 percent as of 2010.

But Southeast Asia and increasingly Africa are falling short. India accounts for nearly two-thirds of global measles deaths in children and infants, and 10 percent of India’s preschool-aged deaths are measles-related. WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan notes “signs of stalling momentum” and warns of a resurgence of this highly contagious disease if vaccination efforts are not sustained.

When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the Grand Challenges in Global Health six years ago, a significant source of funding emerged to tackle major obstacles in children’s and women’s health care worldwide. Administering needle-free drugs and eliminating the need for refrigeration were two key missions of the challenge that helped fund Sievers’ $20 million inhalable vaccine research effort.

Pending government approvals, the inhalable vaccine is slated for Phase I clinical trials later this year with the Serum Institute in India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines.

Bob Sievers, with help from his 11-year-old grandson Benjamin Louis Sievers, demonstrates how vaccines can be delivered by inhaling from a bag. A CU-Boulder chemistry and biochemistry professor and CEO of Aktiv-Dry, Sievers also is an inventor and sculptor who was elected twice by the people of Colorado to serve as regent.

“He’s done a remarkable job advancing into the clinical phase,” says Michael Gottlieb, associate director of science and deputy director of the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative for the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, which has directly managed 20 of these grants, including Sievers’. “It has tremendous implications . . . It’s remarkable to get this far in a relatively short period of time. Many of the grants were more upstream research.”

After clinical trials, Gottlieb says the next hurdle will be influencing government and international aid organization policy decisions and their commitment to get an inhalable vaccine on the ground.

“In a poor country you try to recycle everything, just as we once did here,” Sievers says. “Unfortunately, that includes needles.”

Eliminating needles has the potential to diminish everything from hepatitis and AIDS to cultural, educational and environmental barriers to vaccination.

To abandon needles, Sievers’ team created tiny particles mixed with sugars and amino acids that are both stable and capable of being dispensed through a small puff of air that is inhaled into the lungs from an antistatic plastic bag. Low cost was also imperative: A dose costs no more than 17 cents, which goes toward the vaccine itself, and the delivery device only costs 10 cents. Most of the system is disposable.

“This also is a logistics advance,” Sievers says. “It’s an accident of history that we use rather primitive methods — puncturing flesh — to administer vaccines.”

Time and temperature

The key was being able to create particles that were five microns in diameter or smaller — about the size of a human red blood cell, or about one-tenth the thickness of a fine strand of human hair.

Currently, vaccines are shipped as “cakes,” small pellets that travel around the developing world in ice chests and have to be mixed with purified water. Then they must be used within six hours. That’s six hours for bacteria to grow as the needle goes in and out of the solution amid hot, humid weather.

Sievers’ plan has many advantages. The likelihood of contamination is drastically reduced with single-dose packaging, as is the wastage — vaccines destroyed because of the probability of spoiling. Last year, 400 million doses of measles vaccine were sold in 127 countries. Forty percent of it was wasted because not enough people showed up during a day to use up all the doses mixed in the morning.

“Temperature and time are your enemies. Moisture, too,” Sievers says.

The inhalable vaccine is dried under clean conditions, so there are fewer chances for bacterial growth, and there is a lower risk for infection because there is no piercing of the skin.

Now the findings of Sievers and an international team of about 25 scientists, engineers and physicians whom he led as a principal investigator were published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the Jan. 31, 2011, issue. The team’s paper, co-authored by Sievers, CU lab manager Stephen Cape (MChemEngr’97, PhD’00), scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others, describes the first successful inhalable dry powder vaccine for protection against measles in Rhesus macaques.

“I work in a very applied and interdisciplinary area,” Sievers says. “This paper is a beautiful example of that.”

It's an accident of history that we use primitive methods — puncturing flesh — to administer vaccines."

A measles-free world

Sievers says his scientific interests over the years have been guided by a commitment to pursue socially relevant projects leading to a better environment. Moon dust led to aerosol studies where he looked at atmospheric chemistry and the effects of inhaling pollutants.

When he started noticing the pharmaceutical industry showing up at meetings alongside atmospheric scientists, he crossed into the medical field. With CU’s blessing, Sievers has since founded a private spinoff company called Aktiv-Dry LLC to develop needle-free vaccine delivery systems and new formulations of stable vaccines, antivirals and antibiotics.

All of this was a natural progression for Sievers who served as a CU regent from 1990 to 2002, during which time he helped acquire the closed Fitzsimons Army Base for CU’s new medical school. He also directed the CU Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) for 13 years. CIRES researchers focus on innovation and collaboration in studying all aspects of the Earth and how natural and human-made disturbances impact a changing planet. With the Sievers team moving into new research areas, CIRES added a global health program to its scope of studies.

It’s a legacy not lost on co-author Cape who has worked with Sievers since 2002. Cape personally reformulated the vaccine that was tested on the Rhesus macaques, but he hadn’t originally envisioned his career taking a global health trajectory.

“I really enjoy the mission — that focus on meeting the needs of those who aren’t able to help them themselves,” Cape says, noting the advantages of working with someone who is a scientist, a successful entrepreneur and a solid friend. Ever the Renaissance man, Sievers’ art even looms outside Cape’s lab window — a giant red obelisk marble sculpture on the Norlin Quad.

“He’s definitely someone with big picture ideas,” Cape says, emphasizing the gratification of tedious day-to-day tasks overridden by a larger mission. “Even without the profit margin, saving hundreds of thousands of children’s lives is inspiring.”

One great hope is that eventually people might be able to administer this vaccine to babies younger than nine months because many are infected and die before they are vaccinated.

They are not writing on a blank slate. In 1989, during a measles outbreak in Mexico, the government took emergency measures to vaccinate nearly three million children using a wet mist made with an air compressor available at local hardware stores. It was a crisis, and no one kept meticulous records, but there hasn’t been another major measles epidemic in Mexico since then. It’s anecdotal, but it gives Sievers hope.

“This could save lives. We lose, just due to measles, several hundred people a day,” Sievers says. “Our dream is a measles-free world, and that could happen if the vaccine coverage is sufficient.”

That would require vaccinating about 90 percent of a population for “herd immunity” or nearly 100 percent for eradication. But with the ease of the new inhalable measles vaccine system he says he would expect coverage to become a lot better.

“You don’t have to be good enough to give a shot,” Sievers says. “Anybody could give this — just breathe from a bag.”

Jennie Lay (MJour’05) is a freelance journalist based in Steamboat Springs.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

Professor Bob Sievers has invented an inhalable measles vaccine that could save thousands of lives.

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