Dr. David Cho's intersection with MCP Graduate Student Leads to a New Career Path

The first annual Department of Pathology Art Competition has wrapped up with 13 fantastic pieces voted upon by the Wellness Committee! 

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

A Story of Recognized Achievement and Advocacy

Congratulations to Koral Campbell, Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate student on being awarded the Rogel Cancer Center’s TrEC Scholarships Graduate Student Scholarship 2024. Koral’s winning application on The Role of High Fat Diet in Clonal Hematopoiesis and Leukemogenesis earned her a $25,000 award to offset her tuition and fees for 2024. In addition, as a Rogel trainee, she will have priority access to training opportunities and additional scholarships.

Molecular and Cellular Pathology Graduate Student Michael Pitter successfully defended his PhD thesis on March 15, 2024, and officially became Michael Pitter, PhD, MS. Pitter completed his thesis research in the laboratory of Dr. Weiping Zou, the Charles B. de Nancrede Professor, Professor of Pathology and Surgery. Pitter’s thesis, “The Role of Peptidyl Arginine Deiminases in Regulating Anti-tumor Responses in Immune Cells” reports on his research which demonstrated that PAD2 and PAD4 enzymatic activity supported tumor growth and when inhibited, may serve as a novel target in the treatment of cancer. He also discovered that PAD4 citrullinated STAT1, controlling STAT1 transcriptional activity, and consequently, MHC-II expression and function in macrophages. This work featured multiple novel findings in macrophage biology which may be exploited for the treatment of cancer and was published in Cell Reports.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Michael Pitter on the successful completion of his PhD!

Dr. Asma Nusrat, F. Peyton Rous Professor and Director of Experimental Pathology, was awarded the 2024 Rous-Whipple award at the American Society for Investigative Pathology Annual Meeting on Saturday, April 20, 2024 in Baltimore, MD.

The ASIP Rous-Whipple Award is presented to a senior scientist with a distinguished career in research who has advanced the understanding of disease and has continued productivity at the time of the award, including impactful science [...]

The MCP team is proud to share the news that MCP student Gabrielle "Gabbi" Rozumek is the recipient of the 2024 Phyllis M. Wise Biomedical Sciences Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Service.

Gabbi is very passionate about and dedicated to serving her community. Since 2016, she has touched so many lives by serving in numerous and various capacities. A few of her efforts include:

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from across Michigan Medicine are focused on cutting-edge research to understand and address food allergies as members of the Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center. Nicholas Lukacs, PhD, the Godfrey Dorr Stobbe Professor of Pathology and Scientific Director of the Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center, and James R. Baker Jr., Ruth Dow Doan Professor of Biologic Nanotechnology and Director of the MHWFAC, were instrumental in founding the food allergy center in 2015 and in recruiting an exceptional team of researchers to the Center. One of their goals since the inception of the MHWFAC was to see it become recognized as one of the world’s elite research centers in its field. Recently, this goal was achieved when the National Institutes of Health awarded them one of just 10 seven-year CoFAR Cooperative Agreement Grants, recognizing the center’s exceptional ground-breaking research.

The American Association for Cancer Research recently released their 2024 Women in Cancer Research Scholar Awards and Rita A. Avelar, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in the DiFeo Laboratory, was one of just twelve women scholars awarded. This award is presented to early-career, meritorious female scientists at the AACR Annual Meeting, which will be held April 5-10, 2024, at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California.

Congratulations to Celina Kleer, MD, the Harold A. Oberman Collegiate Professor of Pathology and Director of Breast Pathology Research, on her election to the prestigious Association of American Physicians (AAP). The AAP is an honorary society dedicated to the advancement of scientific and practical medicine and admits only 70 new members to its rank each year. Election is highly selective and as described on their website, is “an honor extended to physicians with outstanding credentials in basic or translational biomedical research.” Kleer will be formally inducted into the AAP at their Annual Meeting in Chicago next month.

Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate student, Derek Dang, successfully defended his thesis, “Beyond the Warburg Effect: A study of metabolic alterations in malignancies of the posterior fossa” on January 19, 2024, becoming Dr. Derek Dang. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Derek Dang on his achievements.

If you are interested in learning more about the MCP Graduate Program, click here or email Dr. Jeff Rual at jrual@med.umich.edu.

Dr. Kamran Mirza, Assistant Chair for Education

In the world of research and grant funding, it is easy to lose sight of the effort required for foundations to provide funding to researchers and the underlying motivation for that funding. This is not the case, however, for Molecular and Cellular Pathology Graduate Student Joanna Lum. Lum was recently awarded the ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation Fellowship Award, providing her with $200,000 over 3 years to study Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, the deadliest form of pediatric brain cancer. DIPG is a brainstem glioma most commonly affecting children ages 5-9 years old. More than 90% of these children will die within 1.5 years. The DIPG foundation was created by two families who lost their sons to DIPG.

Congratulations to Dr. Sahiti Marella on successfully defending her PhD dissertation entitled “Regulatory Networks that Govern the Esophageal Epithelial Proliferative Response in Eosinophilic Esophagitis Endotypes."

Students who train in our Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate program find a broad range of opportunities before them as they graduate.  Whether they wish to remain in academia, go to industry or pursue another path, their options are plentiful. Derek Dang, who will be defending his dissertation soon, decided to pursue a path that is taking him to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was accepted into the prestigious Laboratory Leadership Service (LLS) Fellowship.

Congratulations to Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate student, Madeline Sykes, on being selected for a 2023 Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant. These grants are awarded to students based on the quality of their research proposals and are used toward funding experiments for their thesis work.

Multiple Department of Pathology faculty members have recently been recognized for their achievements and nominated to leadership roles for their excellence within their respective fields. These members continue to demonstrate the depth of our department's knowledge and research.

The Department of Pathology invites you to join us as we congratulate our Molecular and Cellular Pathology Graduate Student, Michael Pitter, on being selected for the 2023 American Association of Immunologists Trainee Abstract Award. As the award recipient, Michael was invited to deliver an oral presentation at IMMUNOLOGY2023 in Washington DC.

The Department of Pathology welcomed 7 new graduate students, 7 new residents, 10 new ACGME fellows, 10 new non-ACGME fellows/Clinical Instructors and 11 new faculty at its annual Welcome Reception on Wednesday, October 4, 2023.

Partly sunny skies and temperatures in the low-to-mid 80’s made for perfect conditions for Michigan Medicine Pathology’s Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate students and their families, faculty, and staff to enjoy a day out at Gallup Park in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, July 25^th.

The Department of Pathology is pleased to announce that Molecular and Cellular Pathology (MCP) Graduate Student Derek Dang has been awarded the 2023 Phyllis M. Wise Biomedical Sciences Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Service. This award is granted to graduate students who exhibit a passionate commitment to service in their communities, nationally or internationally.

Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan, S. P. Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology and Professor of Urology at Michigan Medicine Department of Pathology and Director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, was recently recognized for his outstanding achievements by the American Association of Cancer Research. He was presented with the AACR James S. Ewing-Thelma B. Dunn Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pathology in Cancer Research award at the 2023 AACR Annual Meeting. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan for this well-deserved prestigious honor!

A week-long, all-expenses-paid trip to Ann Arbor, Michigan in late Spring may sound too good to be true, but for 30 fortunate undergraduate students from around the United States and its territories, this becomes a reality when they are accepted into the annual Developing Future Biologists (DFB) short course.

Saturday, March 11^th dawned as a typical early Spring day in Michigan, but the day was anything but routine! The North Campus Research Complex (NCRC) at the University of Michigan was teeming with high school students and their parents or guardians, eager to learn more about careers in cancer research. Students learned from career panels as well as through mock tumor boards, DNA extraction activities, and tours of research laboratories [...]

The Department of Pathology offers the Molecular and Cellular Pathology Graduate Program (MCP) for students who are interested in translational research – the step between basic science research and clinical care, the “bench-to-bedside” transition. Sahiti Marella is a graduate student in the MCP who was recently awarded her first F31 grant. This is an NIH-funded predoctoral grant that provides awardees with a monthly stipend to support tuition and fees, and funds for training-related costs while they conduct their PhD research project, for up to five-years of funding.

Hsiang-Yu (David) Hu, a Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate student in the lab of Dr. Andrew Muntean recently published his first first-authored article in Leukemia.

At Michigan Medicine, many of our faculty serve across multiple departments, which opens up opportunities for students to also experience not just Pathology, but also other disciplines. The Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics is one of the departments with which several of our Pathology faculty and students collaborate. In honor of the UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the DCMB featured one of our joint students as shared below.

Congratulations are due to Dr. Asma Nusrat, F. Peyton Rous Professor of Experimental Pathology and Director of Experimental Pathology, and Dr. Charles Parkos, Carl V. Weller Professor and Chair of Pathology, on being named 2022 American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows. The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. The 2022 class was comprised of 505 scientists, engineers and innovators from around the world and across all disciplines.  Being selected as an AAAS Fellow is one of the most distinguished honors within the scientific community. The newly elected Fellows are being recognized for their scientific and socially notable achievements spanning their careers.

The University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center researchers received one of the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s four inaugural Class of 2022 TACTICAL (Therapy ACceleration To Intercept Cancer Lethality) Award. This $30 million program will support cross-disciplinary pioneering research toward the goal of developing 21st Century therapies for the most life-threatening form of prostate cancer [...]

Featuring keynote speaker, Dr. James Olson, alumnus Dr. Aaron Burberry and the MCP faculty and students

Walk through a 30-year career with Dr. Gabriel Nunez--highlighting his key discoveries, perspectives on work/life balance, and those he mentored.

A Perspective with Jessica McAnulty, MCP Student

Effective July 1, 2022, Dr. Sriram Venneti, Professor of Pathology, was appointed as Scientific Research Director and Dr. Carl Koschmann, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, was appointed as Clinical Research Director for the Chad Carr Pediatric Brain Tumor Center (CC-PBTC).

We recognize Dr. Jolanta Grembecka on being named the inaugural Richard and Susan Rogel Professor of Cancer Therapeutics. An induction ceremony will be held later this year. Please join us in congratulating her on this honor!

With over 80 participants from the Department, the event was a big success.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Abhijit Parolia on being selected for the 2022 Harold Weintraub Graduate Student Award. The award, established by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is given yearly and recognizes outstanding achievement during graduate studies in the biological sciences [...]

Congratulations to Chelsea Phillips, a graduate student in the Neurosciences graduate program, mentored by Dr. Anuska Andjelkovic-Zochowski, for two honors received on her work [...]  

Congratulations to Molecular and Cellular Pathology Graduate Student Siva Kumar Natarajan on being awarded the Mistletoe Research Fellowship (MRF).  Established in 2018, the Momental Foundation awards 20 MRF positions to exceptional postdoctoral fellows and advanced PhD candidates from the United States, Japan, and Singapore.

On Friday June 18, the Department of Pathology hosted its second-annual Equality Walk in observance of the Juneteenth holiday.

Andi Cani, PhD, successfully defended his thesis entitled “Precision Medicine Approaches to Hormone-Driven Cancer” on December 5, 2019. [...]

The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition (F99/K00) Award supports outstanding PhD and other Research Doctoral candidates who complete their dissertation research training (F99 phase) and transition in a timely manner to mentored, cancer-focused postdoctoral career development research positions (K00 phase). [...]

Conference highlighting innovation and excellence in training and research does not disappoint.

Carrie-Anne Malinczak, PhD successfully defended her thesis entitled “Long-Term Immune System Alterations Following Early-Life RSV Infection” on October 21, 2019. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a ubiquitous human pathogen, infects nearly all children by age two. Severe RSV bronchiolitis in infancy is strongly correlated with the development of recurrent wheezing later in childhood [...]

A collaboration out of the Molecular and Cellular Pathology graduate program could lead to new treatment strategies.

Molecular and Cellular Pathology PhD graduate student, Andi Cani, MS and Postdoctoral Fellow Yashar Niknafs, PhD, were among the twelve recipients of the inaugural U-M Precision Health Scholars Award.  This award provides grants supporting precision-health research to applicants whose work reflects the far-reaching potential of precision health at [...]

Talha Anwar is in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) and the Molecular and Cellular Pathology Program at U-M. He defended his PhD thesis, Regulation of EZH2 in triple-negative breast cancer, on Friday April 6, 2018 [...]

Dr. Ting successfully defended her PhD thesis, Notch ligand Delta-like 4 (DII4) induced epigenetic mechanisms in regulatory T cell function during pulmonary viral infection, on February 21, 2018. [...]