The University of North Texas Health Science Center named Robert McClain, PhD, director of technology development and commercialization.

Dr. McClain will oversee the strategic development, protection, marketing, and licensing of promising innovations arising from the university's research activities. In partnership with Tech Fort Worth Business Incubator, McClain will help establish new biotechnology companies and support existing ones. He will also educate the health science center's faculty on the benefits of technology protection and commercialization.

Before joining the health science center, McClain led a corporate team at the Nalco Company, a specialty chemical company. He worked closely with scientists, marketers, licensing executives, and attorneys to bring promising new discoveries forward into commercial development.

Dr. McClain will head the health science center's Office of Technology Development and Commercialization. The OTDC reviews and negotiates material transfer, non-disclosure and sponsored research agreements when they relate directly to UNTHSC inventions.

The office also handles all aspects of the invention development process, including the encouragement, assessment, protection and licensing of inventions; the post-licensing oversight of agreement compliance; distribution of royalties and fees; and record keeping for all aspects of UNTHSC intellectual property technology transfer.

Dr. McClain earned his doctorate in chemistry from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Cancer Hospital, Fudan University (CHFU) in Shanghai, China have received a $263,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to establish an international center investigating the benefits of some traditional Chinese medicine for cancer patients.

During the two-year pilot study, funded by the NCI's Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the International Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine will investigate three aspects of traditional Chinese medicine: herbal and natural treatments that target the disease and related symptoms; acupuncture for dealing with some side effects of cancer treatment; and the bio-behavioral effects of qigong and other mind/body-based interventions.

This is the first NCI grant to support the development of an international partnership to study the use of traditional Chinese medicine for cancer treatment. The multi-disciplinary team from M. D. Anderson and CHFU includes researchers in integrative medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, radiation oncology, anesthesiology, experimental therapeutics, cancer biology, surgery, palliative care and rehabilitation medicine, epidemiology, medical oncology and behavioral science.

M. D. Anderson and CHFU entered into a sister institution agreement in September 2003. These agreements with internationally recognized cancer centers establish a formal framework for cooperation with M. D. Anderson and represent a step forward in the global fight against cancer. As a part of the agreement, the institutions will collaborate on a range of clinical, educational and cancer research efforts.

In addition to collaborating on a study of traditional Chinese medicine, both institutions plan to work together in areas of translational and population research as well as the increasing educational exchange among faculty.

Interest in complementary and alternative therapies in the United States has increased dramatically in recent years. Mental exercises like relaxation and meditation, physical activities such as yoga and dance, or the use of herbal supplements and vitamins are more accepted in the mainstream today for maintaining good health. Before beginning any new regimen, cancer patients need to know how these therapies interact with or complement treatment prescribed by their doctors.

In traditional Chinese medicine, practitioners attempt to maintain health by restoring the balance of energy to the body and spirit - addressing symptoms instead of treating a particular disease or medical condition. It is a practice dating back more than 5,000 years, however many of these therapies have not been clinically tested with Western methods of clinical research. At the same time, some important chemotherapy agents used in conventional Western medicine have been derived from biological-based products used in traditional Chinese medicine. More work needs to be done to investigate and document these agents before researchers can understand the role they may play in fighting and treating cancer.

Stroke Team doctors at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston believe they may have discovered a new tool to use in the treatment of strokes, if results from a just-completed study are replicated in additional clinical trials.

Physicians in Houston and three other centers used a hand-held extracranial ultrasound device to target stroke-causing blood clots in 63 patients during the pilot study. The sound waves are believed to seek out the clot and deliver a heavy dose of the clot-busting drug tPA to and through it, relieving the obstruction to blood flow and helping the brain heal. All of the patients also received the clot-busting tPA, and their results were compared with 63 other patients who received tPA alone.

Andrei Alexandrov, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at the UT Medical School, initially began using the ultrasound device to track the efficacy of tPA, the only approved drug for treating blood clots in stroke victims. However, emergency room nurses began telling him that patients who had been monitored in this way were recovering very quickly, faster than those he had not monitored. Alexandrov began a pilot study to determine whether the ultrasound itself had therapeutic uses.

"One hundred and twenty-six patients enrolled in the study, with an average age of 70," Alexandrov said. "Thirty-eight percent of the patients on whom I used ultrasound sustained a complete clearance of their clots within two hours (compared to 12 percent of the patients receiving tPA alone), and over 70 percent experienced a complete or partial clearance."

Alexandrov fitted the patients with a frame similar to the protective framework inside a hard hat and then used a Food and Drug Administration-approved diagnostic frequency setting of two megahertz to single out blood clots in the brain while tPA was administered. "This frequency is fast but gentle, safe to use and efficacious. It creates micro-vibrations that work on the surface of the clot to open up a larger surface that the tPA can then bind to and penetrate," he said. Alexandrov added that early results, announced Feb. 8, are so promising that a new study specifically aimed at determining the most effective ultrasound frequency has already begun.

President George W. Bush has reappointed Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D., president of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, to be a member of the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science.

Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959 as a Presidential Award to be given to individuals "deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical or engineering sciences." In 1980 the award was expanded to include the social and behavioral sciences.

The president appoints 12 of the nation's most prominent leaders in the fields of research, science and engineering to evaluate award nominees. The National Medal of Science, which falls under the auspices of the National Science Foundation, has been awarded to about 400 meritorious scientists and engineers.

Dr. Cigarroa, a nationally renowned pediatric and transplant surgeon, earned a bachelor's degree from Yale in 1979 and received his medical degree with highest honors from the UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 1983. He has completed 12 years of postgraduate training. He was chief resident at Harvard's teaching hospital, Massachusetts General in Boston, and completed a fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Dr. Carl Stockton, dean of the UTB/TSC School of Education, will receive the Health Education Professional of the Year Award in Administration from The American Association for Health Education (AAHE). A long-time member of the organization, Stockton said it is an honor to receive the award from his peers.

Stockton will attend the national AAHE convention in New Orleans March 29-April 3rd to receive the award.

Stockton joined the university in January. Prior to joining UTB/TSC, he served as Chair of the Department of Health and Applied Human Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He was instrumental in the development and enhancement of many programs at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington ranging from physical education teaching and community health education to therapeutic recreation

Stockton earned a Bachelor of Science in Health Education with minors in biology and chemistry and a Master of Arts in Health Education from the University of Florida in Gainesville. He received a Doctor of Philosophy in Health Education from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, majoring in Public Health with a minor in School Health Education.

A team from the Dental School and School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of only four groups worldwide to win the 2004 Innovation in Oral Care Award, which will be conferred this week by the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) and GlaxoSmithKline.

Spencer W. Redding, D.D.S., M.Ed., professor of general dentistry and director of the clinical research facility in the Dental School, and his colleagues will share $360,000 with researchers in Israel, Oregon and California. The awards, funded by GlaxoSmithKline and administered by the IADR, will be formally presented during the IADR's 82nd General Session March 10-13 in Honolulu.

An internationally recognized panel of experts reviewed more than 60 applications before selecting the honorees. The awards, $90,000 to each group, are intended to inspire new directions in oral care research and provide opportunities for investigators to study the development of novel compounds, biomaterials or devices that will improve quality of life.

The Health Science Center group seeks to develop a surface coating to prevent a problem called denture stomatitis. This inflammation occurs in up to two-thirds of patients who wear dentures, especially in older individuals.

Redding, the project's principal investigator, has published research on a fungal microorganism called Candida, which is thought to be a major cause of denture stomatitis. "Denture wearers get this problem on the surface where the denture contacts the tissue," he said. "That's an area where Candida can grow." Denture stomatitis particularly affects the roof of the mouth under the upper denture.

Jose Lopez-Ribot, Pharm.D., Ph.D., a co-investigator in the project and associate professor of medicine in the Health Science Center School of Medicine, specializes in the study of Candida biofilms. "When someone wears a denture and they have Candida underneath it, the organism doesn't exist by itself but is in a biofilm that is more resistant to treatment," Dr. Redding commented. He and Dr. Lopez-Ribot are part of a strong group of Health Science Center researchers who focus on medical mycology, the study of fungi.

Project co-investigator H. Ralph Rawls, Ph.D., professor of restorative dentistry, studies biomaterials used in dentistry. The coating to be tested for denture stomatitis prevention is a novel combination of polymers (or long-chain molecules). "It is a fast-drying, paper-thin coating that has tiny pores," Dr. Rawls said. "It lets vapor in and out but not water. Because of the pores, we can incorporate other ingredients to be released, such as antifungal agents."

The polymer actually has been tested for other applications, but it was Dr. Redding, an expert in hospital dentistry and fungal infections in the oral cavity, who suggested putting it on dentures. Preliminary trials in Candida cultures have shown that the coating prevents cell attachment that would be necessary to propagate the Candida.

The fourth grant investigator is Gregg Siegel of San Antonio-based Biomedical Development Corp. The Health Science Center researchers plan to modify the proprietary coating made by the company.

Rice bioengineer Michael Liebschner has been named the grand prize winner in the "Create The Future" Design Contest sponsored by NASA Tech Briefs magazine, Emhart Teknologies and SolidWorks Corp.

Liebschner, assistant professor of bioengineering, won the contest for designing the OsteoSonic™, a non-invasive damage detection system that will help doctors better diagnose bone fractures and bone loss that results from osteoporosis. As the grand prize winner, Liebschner wins either $20,000 cash or a Toyota Prius hybrid automobile.

Liebschner received the grand prize trophy at a Feb. 23 gala in Chicago. The OsteoSonic™ and other winning inventions will be featured in a special supplemental issue of NASA Tech Brief's in April. The contest attracted more than 1,100 entries from engineering professionals, students, and the general public from more than 30 countries.

Liebschner's device uses acoustic waves to measure the structural integrity of bone. This offers advantages over existing radiological diagnostics that are used to measure bone density because it measures the actual structural integrity of the bone rather than a two-dimensional cross section of the bone density. Testing of the system is currently underway at Rice.

In partnership with Liebschner, John Osborne, an MBA student at Rice's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, is in the process of establishing a startup company to develop the OsteoSonic™. Production of a prototype is expected within a year, and mass production is expected within two to five years.
NASA Tech Briefs, the largest U.S.-circulation engineering magazine, is a monthly publication featuring exclusive reports of innovations developed by NASA and its industry partners/contractors.

Authored by the engineers or scientists who did the work, the briefs span a wide array of fields, including electronics, physical sciences, materials, computer software, mechanics, machinery/automation, manufacturing/fabrication, mathematics/information sciences, and life sciences.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a major mechanism to explain normal and abnormal smooth muscle growth, a finding that could help in the development of novel therapeutics for disorders like hypertension and asthma.

Their work appears in the current issue of Nature.

Smooth muscle cells are essential for the formation and function of the cardiovascular system, as well as many internal organs such as the stomach, intestine, bladder and uterus. Abnormalities in their growth can cause a wide range of human disorders, including atherosclerosis, hypertension, asthma and leiomyosarcoma (a fatal smooth-muscle cancer). The molecular mechanisms that control smooth muscle cell growth and differentiation, however, have been poorly understood.

"It has long been known that many diseases result from abnormal growth of smooth muscle cells," said Dr. Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology and senior author of the study. "The new findings are quite exciting because they reveal a previously unknown mechanism that controls the growth and differentiation of smooth muscle cells. Knowing this mechanism, we can think about ways of regulating it to control smooth muscle growth during disease."

Dr. Olson recently discovered a master regulator of smooth muscle development, a protein called myocardin. This regulator turns on smooth muscle genes by interacting with serum response factor (SRF), a widely expressed protein that binds DNA.

In the Nature study, Olson and his colleagues showed that the ability of myocardin to turn on smooth muscle genes is counteracted by another protein, Elk-1, which prevents myocardin from binding to SRF. When Elk-1 displaces the myocardin from SRF, it triggers smooth muscle cell proliferation, an effect associated with cardiovascular disease.

With these findings, scientists now have important new insights into the cellular mechanisms that control the growth and differentiation of smooth muscle cells. The findings also offer many interesting opportunities for therapeutic intervention, said Olson, director of the Nancy B. and Jake L. Hamon Center for Basic Research in Cancer and the Nearburg Family Center for Basic Research in Pediatric Oncology.

Other UT Southwestern contributors to the Nature study were Zhigao Wang, student research assistant in molecular biology, and John McAnally, research associate in molecular biology. Researchers from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Tuebingen University in Germany also contributed.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the German research foundation Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Texas Woman's University (TWU) will phase out its mass communications program, beginning this summer. The decision was made after assessing the financial resources needed to maintain a quality program.

TWU will offer four intensive semesters of mass communications courses so as many students as possible can complete their degrees. Following that, courses will be offered on an as needed basis so any remaining students can complete the program. Faculty also will help students who wish to transfer to other schools identify universities with similar programs.

Forty-two full-time and 11 part-time students are in the mass communications program. Thirty of the full-time students and seven of the part-time students are juniors or seniors.

The mass communications program has one assistant visiting professor and one lecturer on faculty and uses an average of one or two adjunct faculty per semester.

The Lasso, TWU's student newspaper, will continue to publish at least for the next year.

The University of North Texas (UNT) Student Health and Wellness Center will be honored with the first Best Practices in College Health Award by the American College Health Association. The award will be presented June 10 at the ACHA national conference.

The UNT center was recognized for its International Health Care web page, which is an aid in helping international students access health care in the United States. The web site provides students with basic information about the general characteristics of the U.S. health care system in order for international students to make educated health-related decisions.

The award recognizes innovative and exemplary practices in counseling services, clinical services, administrative and consumer services and health education and promotion. To be eligible for nomination the program must be implemented at an ACHA member institution or have an ACHA member directly involved in the program.

The Student Health and Wellness Center delivers medical services to the student body of UNT. The center provides cost-effective and responsible medical care within the established guidelines of medical ethics.