In this issue of The TRIbune, we look back at the significant collaborative effort to conduct a statewide antibody test for SARS-CoV-2. The study began with a phone call to Josh Kennedy, M.D., from the Arkansas Department of Health and quickly evolved into a major project.

Results of the seroprevalence study were published this week in the public database medRxiv (med archive).

We also name our newest Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Postdoctoral Training Program scholars as well as the 2021 TRI Career Development Scholars Program recipients. 

Our TRI Study of the Month features Johnathan Goree, M.D.

Read The TRIbune.

LITTLE ROCK — Beverly Johnson-Wells, MLS, recently returned to her hometown of Helena-West Helena to serve as associate director of research for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Rural Research Network (RRN) and UAMS Regional Programs.

Johnson-Wells will play a key part in expanding research into rural areas of Arkansas. Her role includes making community connections and developing procedures to help researchers conduct their studies in rural communities. She will also help implement new studies and monitor ongoing research at the eight Regional Campuses overseen by UAMS Regional Programs.

Johnson-Wells joined UAMS from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where she held research administration and management positions in clinical research and community outreach.

Johnson-Wells received her Bachelor of Business Administration in management at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, and a Master of Liberal Studies degree in environmental sustainability and global studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She is now in the final year of a doctoral program in organizational leadership at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. 

The RRN is supported by a partnership that includes the UAMS Translational Research Institute, Regional Programs, UAMS Office of Community Health and Research and UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

The Translational Research Institute is supported by a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health.

LITTLE ROCK — UAMS researchers and their community partners across Arkansas are studying the causes behind COVID-19’s impact and developing plans to help increase vaccination rates.

Supporting the one-year project is a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Community Engagement Alliance (CEAL) Against COVID-19 Disparities. UAMS was one of 11 teams selected as part of the national alliance.

Last year, Arkansas was identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a national hot spot for COVID-19 challenges. The percentage of cases, hospitalizations and deaths were so severe that CDC and NIH officials visited Northwest Arkansas to investigate.

Pebbles Fagan, Ph.D., MPH, one of three principal investigators on the study, said aggressive steps are needed. Fagan is professor and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco at the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.

Also co-leading the study are:

• Laura James, M.D., director of the UAMS Translational Research Institute, associate vice chancellor for Clinical and Translational Research, and a professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics
• Pearl McElfish, Ph.D., MBA, director of the UAMS Office of Community Health and Research and associate director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. She is the outgoing vice chancellor for the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus. She also leads the Special Populations Core for the Translational Research Institute.

The UAMS CEAL Team project is titled, “COVID-19 PREVENT (Partnership for Rapid Engagement to Enhance Vaccine uptake for Everyone: Neighbors Working Together) Project.”

Critical to the project’s success will be leveraging a network of UAMS community partners representing more than 150 health clinics, community groups and faith-based organizations, McElfish said.

“UAMS has built broad grassroots community partnerships, and we’ll use that to develop and deploy effective strategies to help people better understand the virus and vaccines,” she said. “We’ll also develop methods for improving both trust and access to vaccines.” 

“The entire CEAL team is very happy that we have longstanding relationships with many partners who are ready to ramp up existing efforts so that we can reduce COVID-19 related illnesses, disability and deaths,” Fagan said.

Researchers will use a survey of Arkansans to aid the development of their intervention strategies.

Other UAMS researchers involved in the project are:

• Keneshia Bryant-Moore, Ph.D., FNP-BC, associate professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health
• Carol E. Cornell, Ph.D., professor and chair, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, College of Public Health
• Geoffrey Curran, Ph.D., professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Pharmacy; director, Center for Implementation Research
• Margarete Kulik, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, College of Public Health
• T. Elaine Prewitt, Dr.P.H., associate professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health
• Sheldon Riklon, M.D., associate professor, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine
• James Selig, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Biostatistics, College of Medicine
• Kate Stewart, M.D., professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health; director, Office of Community-Based Public Health; director, Community Engagement, Translational Research Institute
• Mark Williams, Ph.D., professor and dean, College of Public Health

TRI’s Career Development Scholars Program has selected four early-career researchers to receive two years of funded support and mentored translational research training. 

The program, which selects scholars through a competitive application process, provides 75% salary support and up to $25,000 per year for research, tuition, travel and education.

The KL2 Career Development Scholars (funded by TRI’s Clinical and Translational Science Award) are:

Maryam Y. Garza, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.M.Ci., Instructor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics
Project Title: Innovative Solutions to Streamline Data Collection, Exchange, and Utilization in Translational Research

Tremaine Williams, Ed.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics
Project Title: Quantifying Clinical Team Social Network Influences on Care of Medically Complex Patients Using an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

Adam Wolfe, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology- Project Title: “Targeting Homologous Repair to Overcome Genotoxic Therapy Resistance in Pancreatic Cancer”

The Institutional Career Development Scholar (funded by the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute) is:

Yong-Chen “William” Lu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology
Project Title: A pilot study of developing T cell-based cancer immunotherapies

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Postdoctoral Training Program has named six postdoctoral scholars for its class of 2023. The scholars, selected in a competitive application process, will begin two years of mentored entrepreneurship training July 1.

The program, which includes stipends up to $57,000 per year, is designed to help promising scientists more quickly move their discoveries into everyday practice by teaching them commercialization and team science skills.

The HSIE Postdoctoral Scholars – all from the UAMS College of Medicine – their research project plans and mentors are:

Laura Ewing, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. Her project will focus on identifying predictors of the development, progression or recurrence of different types of ovarian cancer.
Mentor: Michael Birrer, M.D., Ph.D.

Kindann Fawcett, Ph.D., Department of Pediatric Neurology at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH). Her project will focus on development of a tool to assess risk and best practices in regards to nutrition and its role in the standard care provided for patients at ACH and UAMS. Secondly, she will focus on the creation of a digital media and virtual, interactive learning platform for nutrition and exercise curriculum to educate the youth of Arkansas.
Mentor: Aravindhan Veerapandiyan, M.D.

Tiffany Miles, Ph.D., Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences.
Her project will focus on hormonal deficiencies related to obesity and then establishing a platform to educate Arkansans on the impact of maternal nutrition in offspring development.
Mentor: Angus MacNicol, Ph.D.

Thomas Nienaber, M.D., Department of Pediatrics – Division of Neonatology. His project will address improving the neonatal mechanical ventilation by optimizing the endotracheal tube.
Mentor: Kevin Sexton, M.D.

Megan Reed, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her project will focus on the use of comparative transcriptomics pipeline to generate and validate patient-specific treatment options for glioblastoma tumors.
Mentors: Alan Tackett, Ph.D., and Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D.

Julia Tobacyk, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Her project will focus on the development of new treatments for opioid use disorder in pregnancy.
Mentor: Lisa Brents, Ph.D.

The program, which includes stipends up to $57,000 per year, is designed to help promising scientists more quickly move their discoveries into everyday practice by teaching them commercialization and team science skills.

It is supported by the NRSA Training Core (TL1) component of the UAMS Clinical and Translational Science Award, grant TL1 TR003109.

“Our program goal is to accelerate biomedical discoveries to improve health and health outcomes,” said Nancy Rusch, Ph.D., who co-directs the program for the UAMS Translational Research Institute. “I am very enthusiastic about this group of scholars. They all have exceptional talent and they are pursuing projects than can make a real difference.”

The HSIE Postdoctoral Training Program has traditionally provided support annually for eight postdoctoral fellows (four in each year of the two-year program).  However, this year the program was able to admit a clinical fellow in addition to five postdoctoral fellows. The expansion relied on postdoctoral stipends provided by the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute, and the Department of Pediatrics – Division of Neonatology. The program curriculum represents a partnership between the UAMS Translational Research Institute and the Entrepreneurship Graduate Program in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

In addition to Rusch, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and executive associate dean for research in the College of Medicine, the program’s leadership team includes co-director Kevin Sexton, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Surgery, and Nancy Gray, Ph.D., president of BioVentures and professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Pamela Kahler is program manager. 

The first group of HSIE Scholars named in July 2019, who will be graduating from the program this spring are: Melody Greer, Ph.D. (mentor, Fred Prior, Ph.D.), Samir Jenkins, Ph.D. (mentor, Robert Griffin, Ph.D.), Astha Malhotra, Ph.D. (mentors, Amanda Stolarz, Pharm.D., Ph.D.; and Jawahar Mehta, M.D., Ph.D.), and Aaron Storey, Ph.D. (mentor, Rick Edmondson, Ph.D.).  The second group of HSIE Scholars named in July 2020 are: Emilie Darrigues, Ph.D. (mentor, Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D.), Shana Owens, Ph.D. (mentor, Craig Forrest, Ph.D.), John Sherrill, M.P.H., Ph.D. (mentor, David Bumpass, M.D.), and Zachary Waldrip, Ph.D. (mentor, Marie Burdine, Ph.D.)

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant will allow UAMS researcher Nirmala Parajuli, DVM, Ph.D., to study a novel way to improve the long-term outcomes of patients who receive kidneys from deceased donors.

Parajuli, an assistant professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, will use the five-year $2.46 million grant to study a drug therapy that could reduce damage to donated kidneys during cold storage.

Transplants from deceased donors account for about 70% of all kidney transplants, and long-term outcomes are generally poor.

“There are about 100,000 patients waiting for kidney transplants, and many of them will die while they are waiting,” Parajuli said. “My goal is to reduce the kidney injury caused by cold storage and increase the pool of healthy kidneys available to the people who need them.”

In her preclinical research, she is testing drugs mixed in the solution used to store kidneys from rats and donated human kidneys that were rejected for transplantation.

The drugs, Parajuli hopes, will block the molecular pathways that play a role in kidney injury during storage, which ultimately will increase long-term kidney survival.

As a UAMS Research Academy Scholar, Parajuli received training and other support to develop her grant submission. The academy’s Mentored Grant-Writing program is supported by the UAMS Division of Research and Innovation, the Translational Research Institute, and the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

The Translational Research Institute is supported by a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

The April-May TRIbune tells the story of the response to COVID-19 by TRI and our UAMS researchers. UAMS clinicians stepped forward and the TRI team rallied to support 92 COVID-19-related research projects. 

This issue also highlights the life-saving role played by the Implementation Science Scholars program in helping Kapil Arya, M.D., quickly set up a statewide newborn screening process for spinal muscular atrophy.

You’ll also read about utilization of the UAMS Rural Research Network to help a new COVID-19 study led by Wendy Nembhard, Ph.D., M.P.H., and the TRI-supported COVID-19 ACTIV-4 ACUTE trial, led by Srikanth Vallurupalli, M.D.  Read The TRIbune.

Oliver Hurst owes his life to a luckily timed move across the country. His father and mother, who was then three months pregnant with Oliver, arrived in Vilonia from California in March 2020.

At the time, UAMS’ Kapil Arya, M.D., was developing strategies as a UAMS Translational Research Institute Implementation Science Scholar to establish statewide newborn screenings for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare disease that can disable a newborn within months.

The only effective treatment for SMA is a single-dose $2.1 million gene editing therapy – the most expensive one-time treatment in the world, Arya said. It must be provided within a few weeks of birth to counter the most severe form of SMA, which can be fatal in the first few years of life. Less severe forms can cause a lifetime of disability.

Arya, an associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neurology, is part of the 2020 Implementation Science Scholar class, which is conducted by the UAMS Center for Implementation Research. He saw the program as an opportunity to learn skills that would help him implement the statewide SMA screening.

“Implementation science is the science of teaching you how to do a particular thing in the best way possible,” said Arya, who treats patients at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. “I knew the goals we wanted to achieve with the newborn screening, and implementation science taught me how to achieve those goals.”

The Arkansas SMA screening law was enacted in 2019, but a complex system was still necessary to make the screening routine across the state. Arya helped facilitate the purchase and validation of sophisticated testing equipment, developed training programs and created materials to reach all corners of the state. He also worked with insurers to secure coverage of the treatment cost, and persuaded them to accelerate their approval timeline by several months.

By the time Oliver was born at Conway Regional Medical Center in August, the screenings were being conducted statewide.

The scholars program may have given him the skills to implement the screening, but Arya’s tireless commitment also played a role, said Sara Landes, Ph.D., his primary mentor as a core faculty member at the Center for Implementation Research.

“To go from legislation to full implementation so fast sounds made-up – it just doesn’t usually work that way,” said Landes, an associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry. “He has engaged with stakeholders at all levels – patients, providers, health systems, payers and policymakers. It’s really impressive.”

With about 1 in 10,000 newborns diagnosed with SMA, Arkansas will have an estimated three to four cases each year.

Oliver happened to be one of them in 2020. His mother, Elaine Hurst, said she and her husband Darrell were “wrecked” by the news but hopeful the proposed treatment would work.

Oliver received the single dose infusion of Zolgensma, which uses a common virus to carry the gene-editing tools that should cure him of SMA. 

So far so good, Hurst said, and she is thankful for her family’s good fortune. California, they learned later, did not have the SMA screening when Oliver was born.  

“Moving to Arkansas saved Ollie’s life,” she said.

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant will allow UAMS researcher Isabelle Racine Miousse, Ph.D., to ramp up her study of a nutrient that may have a role in the effectiveness of immunotherapy for cancer patients.

Miousse will receive $220,000 per year for up to five years as one of four project leaders at the Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center, a new NIH-funded Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The university announced April 6 that the center will receive $10.8 million over five years.

The funding will support Miousse’s preclinical cancer studies involving methionine, an amino acid important for human growth and derived primarily from consuming meat.

Miousse, an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, will test whether reducing dietary methionine can improve results of immunotherapy drugs used to treat melanoma patients.

“This has never been tried in combination with immunotherapy drugs,” Miousse said, noting that immunotherapy alone works remarkably well, but only for 50% of melanoma patients. “So far the results of this research are very encouraging, and I am hopeful that this next phase of study will take us into clinical trials.”

Unlike most cancer treatments, she notes, this one has beneficial side effects.

“Reducing methionine in the diet promotes the metabolism of fats and sugars in animal models,” Miousse said. “Methionine restriction could fight cancer and improve general health at the same time.”

Miousse’s work has been supported by the UAMS Translational Research Institute’s two-year KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award for promising early career researchers. The KL2 provides salary support, research seed funding of $50,000 and translational research training. The institute is supported by a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.