Larner College of Medicine Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and UVM Cancer Center member Elias Klemperer, Ph.D., alongside Co-PI Matthew Carpenter, Ph.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) have received a prestigious R01 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Sprague's study, “Association Between False-Positive Results and Return to Screening Mammography in the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium Cohort,” published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that false-positive mammogram results are discouraging many women from returning for important follow-up screenings. Researchers say the additional imaging or biopsies performed after a suspicious finding often cause significant anxiety.

On Sunday, September 9, the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine, in collaboration with the UVM Cancer Center, the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, UVM’s Prism organization, and the UVM Health Network, proudly participated in Burlington’s 41st annual Pride Parade.

Last month at Vermont State University’s Castleton and Lyndon campuses, 11 Larner medical student volunteers from the Class of 2027—Lajla Badnjević, Jeremiah Bates, Shannon Bennett, Alison Chivers, Aaron Dees, Lindsey Gleason, Ian Kent, Taylor Krause, Elizabeth Medve, Chloe Ruscilli, and Eli Zettler—served as Southern Vermont Area Health Education Center (AHEC) student mentors at the week-long summer Governor’s Institutes of Vermont (GIV) Health and Medicine Institute.

Local and health system-wide investments in care and treatment for patients across Vermont and northern New York who suffer from a collection of rare, progressive and deadly heart-and-lung related conditions have earned University of Vermont Medical Center’s Pulmonary Hypertension Program national accreditation as a Pulmonary Hypertension Care Center (PHCC) – a designation that highlights the program’s clinical excellence and will improve access to national clinical trials and support groups for patients across the rural region served by the hospital.

Art Papier, M.D.’88, was a first-year medical student when he attended a lecture by the late Lawrence Weed, M.D., which focused on the advantages of keeping detailed, shareable medical records to improve patient care. Papier was fascinated by Weed’s work. That fascination eventually led Papier to create a clinical decision tool that visually shows, describes, and categorizes thousands of diseases. The tool, VisualDx, today is used in clinics and medical schools throughout the nation and across the globe. It delivers time-sensitive, clinically relevant information for diagnosing and treating common and rare diseases and brings public health to the point of care.

Larner students work with real patients in the first year of medical school. In Doctoring in Vermont, a course that pairs students with physicians in the community, they provide direct patient care and practice history-taking and examination skills. First-year students also shadow nurses in the hospital, investigate social determinants of health, and do clinical work in community settings.

In a new publication in the Journal of Cachexia and Sarcopenia of Muscle, post-doc Deena Snoke, Ph.D., shares her research findings that lung cancer patients experience a 20 percent reduction in muscle fiber size after two months of conventional treatment despite no measurable changes in muscle at the whole-body or whole-tissue level.

In a recent paper, titled “Vasohibin Inhibition Improves Myocardial Relaxation in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction,” Matthew Caporizzo, Ph.D., assistant professor of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, along with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, have created a powerful small molecule vasohibin inhibitor (VASHi) to block MTN detyrosination in live animals. Detyrosination is the enzymatic removal of the tyrosine (an amino acid that is used by cells to build proteins) residue from the C-terminal end of tubulin (a protein that forms microtubules), which makes the microtubules sticky, impeding the heart cells from relaxing properly.

Health equity improves when the health sciences workforce reflects the diversity of the community and health care systems invest in marginalized communities. The Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at UVM, along with the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and the College of Education and Social Services, has recently been granted a substantial award by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—an R25 Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA)—to sponsor a new mentorship and science enrichment cohort program, New American Youth on the Rise (NAYR), aimed at guiding girls from immigrant backgrounds into college careers in health sciences.

Larner College of Medicine Assistant Professor of Medicine Sherrie Khadanga, M.D, has recently addressed ways to improve cardiac rehab (CR) methods in two different populations, addressing both age and socioeconomic status.

Shalina Nair, M.D., M.B.A., executive vice chair of clinical services and innovation at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and medical director for Population Health Outreach at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, has been appointed as the new chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at University of Vermont (UVM) and UVM Health Network.

The Center on Aging is pleased to announce that a collaborative research team has been awarded the 2024 Armin Grams Memorial Research Award. The project, Usability and Validity of In-Home Assessment of Mobility and Speech Production in Aging Rural Vermonters with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment, is co-led by investigators David Jangraw, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Denise Peters, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Rehabilitation and Movement Science. Other faculty team members include Victoria Priganc, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Rehabilitation and Movement Science, Occupational Therapy Program; Co-Directors of the Center for Biomedical Innovation Lecturer Samantha Fox, B.S., and Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering Michael J. Rosen, Ph.D.

Like subspecialists across the nation, providers at UVM Children’s Hospital Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics division and the Vermont Center for Children, Youth, and Families (VCCYF) saw a significant increase in referrals for autism assessment during the past decade, resulting in extremely long wait times. To address this need, the pediatric and psychiatry departments collaborated to restructure the autism assessment program, and the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program (VCHIP) launched a statewide-level initiative to improve rates of developmental screening and remove barriers to autism assessment and diagnosis.

Professor of Surgery Gary An, M.D., has been invested as the inaugural holder of the Department of Surgery’s Green and Gold Professorship of Trauma and Critical Care.

The Division of Geriatric Medicine celebrated the graduation of its first geriatrics fellow, Owen Maguire, M.D., and the culmination of the division’s academic goal to train geriatricians. The geriatrics fellowship at UVM is a new fellowship and a big step in the building of a pipeline to care for older adults in Vermont, which has the fourth-oldest population in the country.

The University of Vermont Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine was recently recognized for excellence in both primary care and research in the 2024 U.S. News and World Report Best Graduate Schools rankings.

Chris Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., has been appointed Medical Director for Cancer Clinical Programs. Dr. Holmes, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, is currently Deputy Division Chief for Hematology/Oncology at the University of Vermont Cancer Center.

This past summer, 20 students were awarded a $4,000 stipend to deepen their engagement, hone their skills, and drive towards new discoveries under the guidance of a UVM Cancer Center member. Among the group, two scholars—Greta Joos and Maggie Trout—were selected to receive the prestigious Juckett Summer Fellowship, which is awarded to the highest scoring applicants in part for their impactful cancer research and apparent student outcomes.

Nataniel H. Lester-Coll, M.D., was appointed Division Chief of Radiation Oncology at University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at UVM Health Network, effective July 15.