On June 9, 2017, the Department of Medicine’s annual Research Day event resulted in a remarkable experience for 230 attendees, 80 poster presenters, 3 plenary speakers, and 10 faculty delivering oral presentations. This was the tenth annual Research Day event for the department. 

Focusing on a theme of “Inspiration,” lectures centered on topics such as microbiome research that are shaping entire disciplines. The day began with a Grand Rounds lecture by Cindy D. Davis, PhD, Director of Grants and Extramural Activities in the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health. 

A research nutritionist by training, Dr. Davis earned her PhD in nutrition with a minor in human cancer biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her Grand Rounds talk focused on how diet shapes the gut microbiome in humans, which thereby has an effect on many conditions including inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. Urging a "metagenomic" view of the dinner plate, Dr. Davis quipped, "Gut microbes are your friend - feed them well!"

The plenary talk was delivered by Jo Handelsman, PhD, director of the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery. Continuing the theme of microbiome research, Dr. Handelsman described the National Microbiome Initiative that began when she served as Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama administration. She also announced that the Institute for Discovery has been granted funding to launch a Wisconsin Microbiome Hub, which will create expertise in bioniformatics for microbiome analyses. 

A closing keynote talk by Patrick McBride, MD, MPH, professor, Cardiovascular Medicine, focused on his career in translational research. In his lecture, which was his last formal talk in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health after joining the faculty in 1984, Dr. McBride gave a broad overview of preventive health research during his career at the Department of Medicine. Dr. McBride retired in July, 2017 with conferral of emeritus status.

Interest in Research Day stretched beyond the Health Sciences Learning Center, as live coverage of the proceedings on the Department of Medicine Twitter account using the hashtag #DOMResearchDay2017 resulted in over 15,000 impressions. 

Eleven researchers were selected for Best Poster awards, including five projects in the Basic Research category and six projects in the Clinical/Translation Research category. For a full list of awardees and their poster titles, click here.

Other faculty members delivering oral presentations throughout the day included: 

• Ruth O’Regan, MD: Novel androgen receptor inhibitors in triple negative breast cancer    
• Dudley Lamming, PhD: Short-term methionine deprivation improves metabolic biomarkers of obesity
• Karen Hansen, MD, MS: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Multicenter 26-Week Study on the Effects of Dexlansoprazole and Esomeprazole on Bone Homeostasis in Healthy Postmenopausal Women
• Luigi Puglielli, MD, PhD: Systemic Overexpression of AT-1/SLC33A1 Causes a Progeria-like Phenotype
• Lixin Rui, PhD: Oncogenic JAK1-STAT3 Signaling in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma   
• Amy Kind, MD, PhD: Neighborhood Socioeconomic Contextual Disadvantage, Baseline Cognition and Alzheimer’s Disease Biomarkers in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention (WRAP) Study
• Nasia Safdar, MD, PhD: Systems engineering factors affecting implementation of daily chlorhexidine treatments in non-ICU units
• Tim Kamp, MD, PhD: Directed Differentiation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells to Functional Cardiac Fibroblasts via Second Heart Field Progenitors    
• Jennifer Weiss, MD, MS: Primary care provider practices that are concordant and discordant with colorectal cancer screening rates
• Deane Mosher, MD: Plasma P-selectin Correlates Inversely with Steroid Responsiveness in Asthma 

Resources:

• 2017 Department of Medicine Research Day - Photo gallery
• 2017 Department of Medicine - Poster videos
• 2017 Poster Awards
• "Perspectives: Patrick McBride Reflects on 30-Year Career," UW School of Medicine and Public Health, June 19, 2017