Page 37 - RU Robert Wood Johnson Medicine • Summer 2020

Research News By Kate O’Neill Research Grants
The National Institutes of Health awarded grants of $1 million or more to the following members of the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School faculty:
• Estela Jacinto, PhD, professor of biochemistry and mo- lecular biology, a four-year, $1,303,640 R01 grant to inves- tigate “mTORC2 Signaling in Metabolism and Cell Fate.”
• Maria Chiara Manzini, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience and cell biology, transferred four years and $1,665,958 of a five-year R01 grant to investigate “Defining the Molecular Mechanisms of Sex Differ- ences in Cognitive Function.” In addition, Dr. Manzini received a five-year, $1,654,349 R01 grant from the Na- tional Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to investigate the identification of genetic and molec- ular pathways in rare congenital disorders affecting the brain and muscle.
• Pingyue Pan, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neuro- science and cell biology, a five-year, $1,733,900 R01 grant to investigate “The Role of SYNJ1 in Dysregulat- ing the Basal Ganglia Function.”
• Zhiping Pang, MD, PhD, associate professor of neu- roscience and cell biology, a three-year, $2,187,116 RF1 grant to investigate “Developing Genetically Encoded Detectors for Neuropeptide Release Based on Class B G-Protein Coupled Peptide Receptors.”
Published Research
The following is a representative sample of articles by Rutgers Robert Wood Medical School re- searchers, published in leading biomedical journals:
• Urmimala Basu, a graduate student in the biochem- istry and molecular biology graduate program, was first author of “The C-Terminal Tail of the Yeast Mitochondrial Transcription Factor Mtf1 Coordinates Template Strand Alignment, DNA Scrunching and Timely Transition into Elongation,” published in Nucleic Acids Research 2020:48(5):2604–2620. Epub January 26, 2020. Smita S. Patel, PhD, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, was the senior corresponding author.
• Nancy Woychik, PhD, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, a five-year, $3,081,773 R01 grant to investigate “Transcriptome and Proteome Remodeling by Mycobacterium Tuberculosis MazF Toxins.”
Grants of $1 million or more from other sources include:
• Kathy Dodsworth-Rugani, PhD, executive director, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Telehealth-Community Health, a one-year, $1.2 million grant from the Nicholson Foundation for a continuation of the telehealth initiative.
• Michael J. Dunn, PhD, professor of orthopedic surgery, a three-year, $4,420,187 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate “Preclinical Development of a Novel Medical Device for Total Meniscus Reconstruc- tion.”
• Eugene Martin, PhD, professor of pathology and lab- oratory medicine and director, New Jersey HIV Rapid STD Test Support Program, a one-year, $2,216,000 grant from the New Jersey Department of Health for a 2020 HIV Prevention Program.
(Compiled with the assistance of the
Research Support Team at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.)
• Martin J. Blaser, MD, professor of medicine and mi- crobiology and director, Center for Advanced Biotech- nology and Medicine, was the author of “Fecal Microbiota Transplantation for Dysbiosis-Predictable Risks,” published in the New England Journal of Med- icine 2019:381(21):2064–2066. Epub October 31, 2019.
• Prateek Gulhati, MD, PhD, assistant professor of med- icine and member, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jer- sey, was first author of “Threshold Change in CEA as a Predictor of Non-Progression to First-Line Systemic Therapy in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Patients with Elevated CEA,” published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute 2020. Epub March 20, 2020.
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