Research

Like many inventions, the LOST-Wheel was born out of necessity and, jokes Bivona, out of spite. In his final years as a Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Sciences graduate student, Bivona worked on a grant-funded project in the laboratory of UVM Larner College of Medicine Professor of Medicine Matthew Poynter, Ph.D. The project, says Poynter, aims to determine the contribution of skeletal muscle contractile muscle cells (myocytes) to local and systemic inflammation and the potential benefits of exercise to diminish overexuberant or protracted inflammation. The work relies heavily on the study of mouse models after they exercise either on rodent treadmills (yes, they make treadmills for rodents) or on small circular machines commonly called mouse wheels.

Organized by Black physicians and scientists in the United States and abroad, the #BlackInCardio movement celebrates Black researchers, clinicians, and professionals in cardiovascular fields and raises awareness of cardiovascular diseases that disproportionately effect the Black community. From October 19 - October 25, the new organization will host its first annual #BlackInCardio week.

Cells grown in a petri dish behave differently than cells that reside in a human being or animal. In order to help bridge the divide between these two worlds and gain a better understanding of what causes disease, Patrick Mullen works in both, comparing results he sees in the lab of Christopher Francklyn, Ph.D., an expert in protein synthesis enzymes, with animal studies conducted in the lab of Alicia Ebert, Ph.D., a biology professor known for her work with zebrafish.

Sometimes new insight comes from simply crunching the numbers. In Robin Leopold’s case, lots of numbers. For his fourth-year scholarly project, the soon-to-be graduate of the UVM Larner College of Medicine decided to dig into the data regarding the number of women who receive annual mammograms despite a diagnosis of an advanced non-breast malignancy.

Think of the immune system as the shepherd, and bacteria as the sheep, says Dimitry Krementsov, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Immunobiology at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont.

UVM Vaccine Testing Center researcher E. Ross Colgate, M.P.H., spent two years working in Bangladesh trying to understand why a rotavirus vaccine that prevents the majority of cases in the U.S. works only 40 to 60 percent of the time in Bangladeshi infants. Finding an answer could save hundreds of thousands of lives given rotavirus’ status as the leading cause of diarrhea in young children worldwide, among whom diarrhea is the second leading cause of death.

How do you carefully remove all of the cells from a lung, and then repopulate that ‘scaffold’ with stem cells from a new host? As a summer research fellow in the lab of Professor of Medicine Daniel Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., medical student Chris Bernard ‘19 spent several months testing and re-testing processes and procedures, inching ever closer to an answer to that question.

ABC22/Fox44 aired a news segment promoting the M.S. Society of New England’s Sat., April 2 Vermont WALK M.S. Reporter Staci DaSilva interviewed multiple sclerosis researcher Dimitry Krementsov, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine, for the story. View a video clip of the interview here.

Innovation in healthcare begins and ends with the patient,” says University of Vermont medical student Alexander Marchese ’19, who adds that “although technologies are developed in the lab, they are often conceived in the clinic and can only be fully appreciated once they reach the patient.”

University of Vermont Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Sciences graduate student Jessica Sheehe has come to know all of the quirks of a protein called PKG: She’s responsible for expressing and purifying PKG in the lab and ensuring that the billions of insect cells tricked into producing this protein remain healthy.

Can acupuncture help patients manage their pain and other side effects, like nausea and vomiting, after surgery? Full Story >>

Patients in the intensive care unit who rely on mechanical ventilation for life support are often awake, but unable to verbalize their needs, posing a challenge for the physicians and nurses who care for them. And although health status might be the obvious choice for what’s on their minds, preliminary data has shown that that’s not always the case. Full Story >>