UAMS Leads in Research, Patient Care, Education in 2014

By Ben Boulden

Dec. 22, 2014 | UAMS saw some new faces in leadership positions in research in 2014 alongside a year of dynamic, positive change with several new expansions in patient care.

World-renowned multiple myeloma researcher and clinician Gareth Morgan, M.D., Ph.D., in April was named director of the UAMS Myeloma Institute. He began work there on a full-time basis in July. Morgan succeeded Bart Barlogie, M.D., Ph.D., the institute’s founder who chose to step down as director but remains at the institute to focus on clinical care and research.

Morgan previously served as a clinician and researcher with the Myeloma UK Research Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

In August, the Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) named him an Arkansas Research Scholar and awarded him a $500,000 three-year research grant.

“Gareth Morgan is an internationally recognized and respected scientist and clinician who works in the field of the molecular genetics and treatment of blood cell cancers — in particular, myeloma,” said UAMS Chancellor Dan Rahn, M.D. “The work he will do carries substantial promise of not only supplementing the research directions already being pursued within the institute, but in developing treatments with minimal toxicity.”

Before that, in February, Rahn named Laura James, M.D., as director of the Translational Research Institute. Curtis Lowery, M.D., stepped aside as director to focus on his duties as chair of the UAMS College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and director of the UAMS Center for Distance Health.

In December, the ARA named her and four other scientists to be the inaugural ARA Fellows, each receiving a$75,000 three-year grant.

UAMS also announced several ground breaking expansions into new telemedicine programs and collaborations with other health care providers.

Patient Care

Along with the Arkansas Trauma Communications Center and the Arkansas Department of Health, UAMS opened the year with the nation’s first telemedicine program for hand trauma. In November, UAMS started providing consultations via telemedicine to high-risk pregnant mothers and physicians at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology who treat them at OSU Medical Center. Also in November, the UAMS Emergency Department began providing emergency medical support via a telemedicine connection to Chicot Memorial Medical Center in Lake Village. The pilot project has been named ER-DOCS.

An existing telemedicine program achieved an important milestone in 2014. AR SAVES (Arkansas Stroke Assistance through Virtual Emergency Support) treated its 500th stroke patient, Dusting Martinez, through its statewide network.

The Breast Center at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute announced in July the addition of 3-D mammography technology to its full array of services. The UAMS Breast Center is the only facility in central Arkansas to offer this advanced breast cancer screening tool.

In a new collaboration called Baptist Health/UAMS Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, UAMS physicians in March started seeing patients and performing surgery at Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock.

A new multidisciplinary clinic to serve Arkansas’ adult sickle cell patients  opened on the main campus as part of a statewide comprehensive program to address the disease. It will include an advanced practice nurse, a registered nurse and a social worker. Patients will be seen annually and will receive any primary or specialty care they may need.

UAMS established yet another first in the state in 2014 when in September it opened an adult Spina Bifida Clinic, the first multidisciplinary clinic available to adult patients in Arkansas.

Continuing its commitment to expand primary care and specialty services to meet the needs of its patients, UAMS opened the UAMS Neighborhood Clinic in west Little Rock at 1811 Rahling Road. It offers primary care to all members of a family from pediatric to geriatric patients.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in September awarded a $2.99 million grant to address health disparities in the Hispanic and Marshallese communities in Benton and Washington counties. It will fund efforts to drive down chronic disease problems and costs in the region by increasing opportunities for chronic disease prevention and risk reduction while also increasing access to environments with healthy food options, among other objectives.

On its northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville, UAMS celebrated the opening of a comprehensive rehabilitation clinic, improving access to physical, occupational and speech rehabilitation services.

Academic

The rehabilitation clinic was part of a public and private collaboration announced in April to help fund a physical therapy academic program and related programs at the UAMS Northwest campus in Fayetteville.

Also at UAMS Northwest, Gov. Mike Beebe in August joined officials from the university and the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs to announce a plan to provide improved care to residents of the Arkansas State Veterans Home on the regional campus . The plan allows interprofessional teams of UAMS students to participate and observe care delivered to the veterans. UAMS resident physicians are involved in providing care.

On the main campus in Little Rock, the university in July unveiled a new name for its oral health clinic — the Delta Dental of Arkansas Foundation Oral Health Clinic — in celebration of the foundation’s gift to help build the facility for hosting dental education while expanding access to dental care. The foundation announced in January 2013 a pledge of $2 million toward the clinic that had just opened on the UAMS campus. The clinic, a part of the Center for Dental Education in the UAMS College of Health Professions, will host a postgraduate dental residency program that is scheduled to welcome its first dental residents in July 2015.

In the fall, the UAMS College of Health Professions initiated the first certificate program in the state for audiology and speech pathology graduate students seeking advanced skills to help children with hearing loss. The Graduate Certificate in Auditory-Based Intervention is offered by the college’s Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology,

Research

UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute (ACHRI) in September announced a collaboration as part of a group of research institutions that made a breakthrough in understanding the cause of a rare, hard-to-treat allergic disorder, eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE).

Drug trials led by UAMS researcher Frits Van Rhee, M.D., Ph.D., the nation’s leading expert on multicentric Castleman’s disease, concluded and the drug received approval in April by the Food and Drug Administration. Van Rhee conducted the years-long study of siltuximab (trade name Sylvant) in conjunction with Horsham, Pennsylvania-based Janssen Biotech Inc.

A breast cancer vaccine successfully made it through phase one of clinical trial in the spring, using a small group of participants who received five injections of the vaccine during a 23-week span. Thomas Kieber-Emmons, professor of pathology in the College of Medicine and holder of the Josetta Wilkins Chair of Breast Cancer Research at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, developed the vaccine. Laura Hutchins, M.D., professor in the college’s Division of Hematology/Oncology, was his collaborator in the study.

Several UAMS or UAMS-led research projects won grant funding: $4.4 million to investigate the health effects of space radiation on cardiovascular health; $2.1 million to study how to improve diabetes self-management in the Marshallese community of northwest Arkansas; $1.8 million to use innovative genetics techniques to manipulate the herpes virus and its genes to test a protein known for suppressing cancer; $1.5 million to investigate a diagnostic concept for cancer and other diseases with new stimuli-responsive nanoparticles circulating in blood; and $1.45 million to study the link between trauma and drug addiction in women.