Thurl Harris
At the 2012 Pharmacology Research Retreat, Thurl Harris was presented with the 2012 Isakson Award, recognizing his excellence in mentoring Pharmacology Ph.D. student James Eaton. The funds will be used to enhance James' training in our program. This award is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Pharmacology alumnus David Goodman (class of 1993), CEO of Pharmascience Inc., and is named in honor of Dr. Goodman's mentor, Peter Isakson (Vice President, Abbott Laboratories).

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Rhianna Laker
Also at the Retreat, the 2012 Robert Haynes Award was presented to three trainees for the best predoctoral and postdoctoral presentations. Predoctoral winners were Jessica Geisler (Chien Li's lab) presenting on "Vesicular nucleotide transporter mediated ATP release regulates insulin secretion" and Sarah Breevoort (Ira Schulman's lab) presenting on "Liver X Receptors and atherosclerosis." The postdoctoral winner was Rhianna Laker (Zhen Yan's lab) for her presentation on "pMito-Timer: A novel reporter gene for mitochondrial quality in health and disease."

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Perry Kennedy
Perry Kennedy, Ph.D. alumnus from Kevin Lynch's lab, took home the 2011 Ted Rall Award for best Pharmacology Publication. His paper, "Characterization of a Sphingosine 1-Phosphate Receptor Antagonist Prodrug" was published in The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (Vol. 338, 879-889, 2011).

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Congratulations to fourth year Human Biology major Danielle Murashige of the Harris laboratory for being named a 2012-2013 Whitaker International Scholar. The Whitaker program recognizes emerging leaders in U.S. biomedical engineering and provides them with the opportunity to go overseas to undertake a self-designed project that will enhance their own careers within the field. Danielle has received funds to work for one year in the laboratory of Dr. David James at the Garvan Institute in Sydney, Australia where she will use computer modeling to simulate insulin-stimulated glucose uptake.

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Joanna Sandilos
Work published byJoanna Sandilos in the Bayliss lab, “Pannexin 1, an ATP release channel, is activated by caspase cleavage of its pore-associated C terminal autoinhibitory region” in the Journal of Biological chemistry (Sandilos et al., J. Biol. Chem. 287: 11303-11311), was selected for a first author profile and as JBC "Paper of the Week." The paper was also recently selected as a "must read" by Faculty of 1000. Congratulations, Joanna!

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The 2011 Robert Haynes Award was presented to four trainees at the 2011 Pharmacology Reserach Retreat. Joanna Sandilos (Bayliss lab) and Katie Barletta (Linden/Mehrad labs) took home the award for best predoctoral talk, while Stephen Abbott (Guyenet lab) and Rachel Griffiths (Leitinger lab) won the award for best postdoctoral talk.

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Faraaz Chekeni and Jeff Sturek shared the Ted W. Rall Award for the most outstanding papers by Pharmacology Graduate students in 2010; the award was presented at the departmental retreat in August.  The work by Faraaz in the Ravichandran laboratory identified Pannexin 1 as a caspase-activated channel that mediates nucleotide release from dying cells, a process which is critical for macrophage recruitment and clearance of dead cells; his paper appeared in Nature 467: 863-867, 2010 and was highlighted in numerous commentaries.  Jeff’s research in the Hedrick laboratory showed that ABCG1, an integral membrane cholesterol transport protein, acts to retain cholesterol in secretory granules of pancreatic β cells and that its function is necessary for insulin release.  The discovery of this surprising intracellular function of ABCG1 was lauded by the American Heart Association as a “Major Scientific Advance of 2010” and appeared in J Clin Invest 120: 2575-2589, 2010.  Congratulations to Faraaz and Jeff!

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David Goodman, Ph.D., Pharmacology (1993) and CEO of Pharmascience, Inc., David Goodman
continued his generous contributions to theDepartment of Pharmacology, providing an additional $50,000 to enhance graduate education and to establish a faculty mentoring award in honor of his own Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Peter Isakson (Vice President, Abbott Laboratories).  The inaugural Isakson Award was presented this year to Chien Li, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, and his student, Jessica Geisler.  The award was used to support a mini-sabbatical for Jessica to visit UT Southwestern, where she learned exciting new techniques for her studies of pancreatic β cell function and insulin secretion.  A nice write-up about Dr. Goodman and his gift was included in the November issue of UVA Pulse magazine.

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