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l-r: Will Meehan, Researcher III, Katy Marotto, Researcher III, Victoria Ordonez, Undergraduate in Cancer Biology, Eason Hildreth, D.V.M., Ph.D. Eason Hildreth, D.V.M., Ph.D.,  an assistant professor in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology (MCP), is an active researcher in the UAB Department of Pathology. Dr. Hildreth joined UAB in July 2019 from the Medical College of South Carolina and has since shown his dedication to the field and the Department. In 2021, he received a two-year Early Career Investigator grant from METAvivor Research and Support for his research on breast cancer and was also named a UAB Heersink Pittman Scholar. In an effort to showcase the impactful contributions of UAB Pathology researchers, Hildreth answers some questions about his areas of research and what led him to UAB.

What is your research focus?

We are interested in genetic programs in the tumor microenvironment that drive cancer progression. To date, this has largely hinged on genetically (using genetically-modified mice) and therapeutically (using microparticle drug delivery) targeting tumor-associated macrophages independent of where the tumor is located and targeting osteoclasts in bone metastasis in breast cancer. More recently, this has expanded to an interest in cancer-associated fibroblasts and renal cancer (another bone metastatic malignancy).

Written by Hannah Buckelew

On July 1, 2022, the Department of Pathology welcomes three new faculty members to the Division of Laboratory Medicine, directed by Vishnu Reddy, M.D.

Megan Amerson-Brown, Ph.D., CIC, MLS, joins the department as Assistant Professor from the Baylor College of Medicine, where she recently completed a Medical and Public Health Microbiology fellowship.

Amerson-Brown received her Ph.D. in Human Pathophysiology and Translational Medicine in 2019 from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences before working as an Infection Control Consultant in response to COVID-19 with Hospital Executive Interim Management and Consulting at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York. She has served as a Graduate Research Assistant at UTMB Galveston and as adjunct faculty, infection preventionist, and medical technologist in Microbiology at MD Anderson School of Health Professions and Cancer Center.

Amr ElhamamsyAmr Elhamamsy, a cancer biology theme student in the laboratory of Rajeev Samant, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular and Cellular Pathology, is the recipient of a 2022 O’Neal NextGen Scholar predoctoral award.

Written by Christina Crowe

The Department of Pathology is pleased to announce the establishment of the Stephen E. Brossette, M.D., Ph.D., Endowed Residency Program Support Fund, effective April 2022.

The fund includes an annual award, administrated by the department, with any additional funds used for professional development, travel, or other support for the residency program. Each year, the department will administer the PEARL Award to the pathology resident who demonstrates excellence in Patient care, Education, and Research within Laboratory medicine (or just ‘the Lab’). The candidate will be selected by vote among laboratory medicine (and affiliated divisions) as well as hospital laboratory supervisors, who interact with residents regularly. The criteria include demonstrating initiative, effective communication, collaboration and teamwork, patient care, research, and innovation/quality focus.

Written by Christina Crowe

On Saturday, June 18, the UAB Department of Pathology sponsored an inaugural departmental Education Retreat at Camp Fletcher in McCalla, Alabama. This casual, fun event welcomed trainees, faculty and staff to mingle and enjoy recreational activities in a low-key, outdoor setting.

Amid a heat wave, the weather cooperated, and participants enjoyed the pool as an escape from the sun. Under a covered pavilion, fans cooled those who chose to hang out and play games. The camp setting offered activities for everyone, including hiking, canoeing, and corn hole. A few individuals brought their own yard games, such as jumbo Jenga, kickball, and disc golf. Traditional and alternative options in a burger bar provided by Front Porch kept everyone fed and well hydrated in the summer weather.

Written by Christina Crowe

The Department of Pathology is excited to announce three endowment updates for our faculty:

The endowment held by Yabing Chen, Ph.D., Vice Chair for Faculty Development and Education—a professorship—has been elevated to and is fully endowed as a chair. Dr. Chen is now the Jay M. McDonald Endowed Chair in Laboratory Medicine. The department is grateful for the ongoing support of former chair Jay M. McDonald, M.D., Ph.D., and his wife, Sarah, with the generous funding of this endowment.

Shu Chen, Ph.D., Professor, Neuropathology, is named the inaugural holder of the Ona Faye-Petersen Endowed Professorship, established in 2021, supported by the department. Dr. Chen joined the department in December 2021 from Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Pathology.

Written by Hannah Buckelew

Michael Williams, M.D., M.S.c., Neuropathology Fellow in the UAB Department of Pathology, was featured in the American Society for Clinical Pathology's (ASCP) Critical Values magazine PRIDE in the Laboratory campaign on June 14, for his personal essay, titled, "Is there even a guidebook?"

To facilitate gene-level queries of data from more than 10,000 cancer patient transcriptome sequences and proteomics data from 2,000 patients, researchers have developed a user-friendly cancer data analysis web platform called UALCAN.by Jeff Hansen

A new study that analyzed protein levels in 2,002 primary tumors from 14 tissue-based cancer types identified 11 distinct molecular subtypes, providing systematic knowledge that greatly expands a searchable online database that has become a go-to platform for cancer data analysis by users worldwide.

Breast Disease, submitted by Sameer Al Diffalha, M.D.Sameer Al Diffalha, M.D., Associate Professor, Division of Anatomic Pathology, and Caroline Stanek, M.D., PGY1, were featured in The Pathologist magazine’s “The Art of Pathology” series for their artistic microscopic image submissions. 

The series is featured online and in print to immerse readers in the "...beauty behind the slides.”

Written by Christina Crowe

On Monday, May 23, leadership from across the UAB campus came together to celebrate the election of Casey Weaver, M.D., the Wyatt and Susan Haskell Endowed Chair for Medical Excellence for his recent election to the National Academy of Sciences.

At an event held at the UAB Hilton, Ray Watts, M.D., UAB President, joined Selwyn M. Vickers, M.D., FACS, dean of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, CEO of the UAB Health System and CEO of the UAB/Ascension St. Vincent’s Alliance and others to congratulate Dr. Weaver and recognize him for 30 years of research and clinical work at UAB. 

Written by Christina Crowe

Sooryanarayana Varambally, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular & Cellular Pathology, Director, Translational Oncologic Pathology Research, and his research team recently published an article in the journal Nature Communication featuring work they shared on their cancer data tool, UALCAN, "Proteogenomic characterization of 2002 human cancers reveals pan-cancer molecular subtypes and associated pathways." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30342-3

UALCAN stands for University of Alabama Cancer Database, and is designed as an easy-to-use, interactive web portal to perform to in-depth analyses of TCGA gene expression data. 

Following, Dr. Varambally explains the research highlighted in the article:

"In the current study published in Nature Communication, we systematically assessed pathway-level somatic alterations (by small mutation or copy number alteration) across tumors. In this study, along with our collaborator Dr. Chad Creighton from Baylor College of Medicine, lead author, we assembled a compendium dataset of mass-spectrometry-based proteomics data from 2002 primary tumors from 14 cancer types and 17 studies. We integrated proteomic data with other omics data to examine how somatic mutation affecting a given pathway shows up at the protein level. Further, the data were provided in UALCAN for cancer researchers and clinicians across the world."

Written by Christina Crowe

Marisa Marques, M.D., Professor and Medical Director, Transfusion Medicine, attended the American Society for Apheresis annual meeting in Philadelphia, PA, May 4-6, where she received the Francis S. Morrison, M.D., Memorial Lecture Award.

The Francis S. Morrison, M.D. Memorial Lecture is an annual keynote lecture created to keep alive and honor the memory of Francis S. Morrison, MD, a true pioneer in apheresis medicine and a leading apheresis professional. The first lecture was held at the ASFA Meeting in 2002. The award is bestowed upon a member of the Society who has made major contributions to the field of apheresis medicine and an apheresis professional who has made a lasting difference in the field, preferably at the national level.

The title of Marques' talk was, "How I Used The Tools That ASFA Gave Me To Give Back." UAB Pathology Blood Bank/Transfusion Medicine fellow, Dr. Sohaila Soltani (below, group photo, on right), attended the conference. Brooke Bartow, PGY1 (below, group photo, on left), presented a poster at the conference on, "The Evolution of an Apheresis Service: A Partnership with the Blood Bank to Serve the Underserved."

Written by Christina Crowe

The UAB Department of Pathology was thrilled to gather for an outgoing reception for our residents, fellows, and trainees on May 5. Department faculty, staff, fellows, and residents came together to celebrate at B&A Warehouse, near Railroad Park adjacent to downtown Birmingham, with dinner and an awards ceremony.

A welcome by Brandi McCleskey, M.D., Director of the Pathology Residency Program, was followed by announcements of this year’s Alpha Omega Alpha inductees: Denis Noubouossie, M.D., Ph.D., Michael Williams, M.D., Christine Pesoli, M.D., and Shuko Harada, M.D. AOA is a national honor medical society. Dr. McCleskey also recognized UAB Heersink School of Medicine graduating student, Hannah Cutshall, as the first Pathology Integrated Resident. This position is part of the unique Research and Clinical Experience for Pathology (RaCE4Path) program, which is a collaborative effort with the Physician Scientist Development Office.

McCleskey then acknowledged this year's outgoing chief resident for Education and Outreach, Oraine Snaith, M.D., and announced incoming chief in the same role, Geoffrey Herndon, D.O. Cristina Magi-Galluzzi, M.D., Ph.D., Division Director, Anatomic Pathology, presented a certificate to Raima Memon, M.D., outgoing AP chief resident, and announced incoming AP chief Sarah Anderson, D.O.. Vishnu Reddy, M.D., Division Director, Laboratory Medicine, presented a certificate to Denis Noubouossie, M.D., Ph.D., as Clinical Pathology outgoing chief, and recognized Sarah DePew, D.O., as incoming.

For just the third time in history, a University of Alabama at Birmingham faculty member has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

Casey Weaver, M.D., professor in the UAB Department of Pathology, learned of his election this week — one of the highest and rarest honors offered to scientists in the United States.

Written by Christina Crowe

UAB Pathology Resident Denis Nouboussie Fondjie, M.D., Ph.D., PGY3, previous chief resident, Clinical Pathology, learned recently that he scored among the highest in the nation of the Resident In-Service Examination, or RISE. Fondjie scored in the greater than 99th percentile on the Clinical Pathology component of the exam as compared to other PGY3s nationally taking the test. 

The RISE is required of all residents as an annual assessment of their medical knowledge and help them (and the program) track their progress throughout their training. This examination is a standardized way to assist trainees when preparing for their careers and future board examinations. Although it is not used to determine academic progression for individual residents, overall performance on this examination is helpful to the program when assessing the medical knowledge competency for each resident as well as the value of our curriculum. 

Fondjie will be sitting for his American Board of Pathology Clinical Pathology examination this spring, and starting a fellowship in Transfusion Medicine at University of North Carolina. Of note, Denis also had a submission accepted for this year's Academy of Clinical Laboratory Physicians and Scientists annual meeting that has also been awarded the Paul E. Strandjord Young Investigator Award as one of the top 20 scoring abstracts.

"Denis’s scores on this exam are truly impressive, and come as little surprise to those of us who have worked with him for the past three years at UAB Pathology," says Brandi McCleskey, M.D., Pathology Residency Training Program Director. "His professionalism, expertise, and dedication to clinical pathology are among the reasons he was selected to serve as chief resident. He has been a pleasure to have as a trainee and colleague, and we congratulate him on this achievement."

Written by Christina Crowe

A 2021 article written by a collaborative team of UAB researchers has been awarded the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology's 2022 Impact Award. "Racial and socioeconomic disparity associates with differences in cardiac DNA methylation among men with end-stage heart failure," authored by Mark Pepin, M.D., Ph.D., Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Experimental Cardiology at Heidelberg University; Bertha Hidalgo, Ph.D., M.P.H., Associate Professor, School of Public Health; Adam Wende, Ph.D., Associate Professor, UAB Pathology, and Selwyn Vickers, M.D., Office of the Dean and Senior Vice President for Medicine, UAB Heersink School of Medicine, received the honor.

The AJP-Heart and Circ Impact Award is based on the Altmetric Score for the article (241) and the total online article usage (2,800+ abstract/full text/PDF downloads). The article was picked up by eight news outlets, including UAB News, and tweeted over 250 times. In addition, the episode “Racial & Socioeconomic Determinants of the Cardiac Epigenome” of the The AJP-Heart and Circ Podcast about the work has been downloaded over 350 times. 

This is the fourth year for this award, which was announced at the American Physiological Society Cardiovascular Section Banquet at Experimental Biology 2022 in Philadelphia, PA.

Dean Vickers interviewed Wende about the study on his podcast, "The Checkup."

Other UAB collaborators on the article include, Chae-Myeong Ha, Luke A. Potter and Sayan Bakshi, Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology, UAB Department of Pathology; Joseph P. Barchue, Ayman Haj Asaad, Steven M. Pogwizd and Salpy V. Pamboukian, Division of Cardiovascular Disease, UAB Department of Medicine,

The study, of end-stage heart-failure patients, found that cytosine-p-guanine, or CpG, methylation of the DNA in the heart has a bimodal distribution among the patients, and that race — African American versus Caucasian — was the sole variable in patient records that explained the difference. A subsequent look at the census tracts where the patients lived showed that the African American subjects lived in neighborhoods with more racial diversity and poverty, suggesting that the underlying variable may be a socioeconomic difference.

Written by Christina Crowe

Genomic Diagnostics and Bioinformatics facultyinclude (left to right): Craig Mackinnon, M.D., Ph.D., Diana Morlote, M.D., Shuko Harada, M.D., director, Molecular Diagnostics Lab, and Yulong Fu, M.D., director, Medical Genomics Lab.

UAB Pathology and the Division of Genomic Diagnostics and Bioinformatics are pleased to announce a new, state-of-the-art Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Cancer Assay, now available in the UAB Clinical Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory.

The Oncomine Precision Assay (OPA) uses a streamlined workflow to analyze both DNA and RNA extracted from formalin fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) solid tumor tissues. Important features of OPA are the ability to test small tissue samples (e.g., biopsies), and very fast turnaround time (e.g. 3-5 days upon receipt in the molecular lab). OPA detects single nucleotide variants (SNVs), insertions and deletions (INDELs), copy number variations (CNVs), and gene fusions in actionable, cancer-related genes.

“UAB was one of the first academic medical centers to gain access to this instrument—the Ion Torrent Genexus—and implement it,” says Alexander “Craig” Mackinnon, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., Division Director. “It represents the latest technology for in-house, next generation sequencing using amplicon-based targeted sequencing.”

Written by Christina Crowe

A multi-institutional paper on COVID autopsies published in Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine was awarded the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathologists' L.Clark Jr. and Elaine F. Stout Award for best Anatomic Pathology paper in 2022.

UAB Pathology faculty authors include Paul Benson, M.D., Associate Professor; Stephanie Reilly, M.D., Associate Professor (retired), and Silvio Litovsky, M.D., Professor. Benson is director of the Autopsy Section, taking over for Litovsky in the role in 2020.
  

The paper, titled, "A Postmortem Portrait of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic: A Large Multi-institutional Autopsy Survey Study," was published in the May 2021 issue of Archives. 

Written by Hannah Weems

UAB is the state of Alabama’s largest employer, supporting one of every 31 jobs statewide, with an annual impact of more than $7 billion. UAB is also an R1 Institution, ranked 20^th nationally in NIH funding. In turn, UAB is also the largest electricity consumer in the state and generates more than 2,000 tons of landfill waste annually, according to UAB Sustainability. A portion of this waste comes from the necessary work of UAB’s nearly 2,000 laboratories, but researchers have the ability to reduce this impact by becoming certified in UAB’s Green Labs Program.

The goal of the Green Labs Program is to reduce the use of energy, water, material goods, and hazardous chemicals in UAB labs without compromising research integrity or safety. The program provides tips for better sustainability within labs and a recycling service to pick up nontoxic batteries, Styrofoam, paper, plastic, aluminum, and other reusable materials. Active since November 2016, it now has more than 130 participating labs across campus.

Five years ago in late 2016, George J. Netto, M.D., accepted the role of Robert and Ruth Anderson Endowed Chair, UAB Department of Pathology. This would be his first position at the chair level, having previously served as director of surgical pathology molecular diagnostics at Johns Hopkins Hospital for five years. 

Netto made a big leap from Baltimore to Birmingham to join the team at UAB. A native of Damascus, Syria, his path to pathology chair has been filled with many challenges and opportunities- even a global pandemic- that require ongoing adaptation and a steadfast vision for a constantly improving operation. 

Today Netto runs UAB Pathology with a team of more than 300 faculty, trainees, and staff members from his office in the West Pavilion of UAB Hospital. The department is one of the largest academic pathology departments in the country. 

It was word of mouth and reputation about UAB Pathology that first interested Netto in the open chair position, he recalls.