Pathways to Excellence URMC DEPARTMENT OF PATHOLOGY AND LABORATORY MEDICINE | WWW. PATHOLOGY. URMC. EDU | SPRING 2022
Zhenqiang Yao, Ph.D., has his own research lab that studies musculoskeletal disease and breast cancer. "I want to do work that will benefit patients all over the world, today and into the future," he said.
finding their place ‚ As they hone their skills, faculty share what inspires them to ‘go where no one has gone before.
This year, three of our full-time faculty were promoted to associate professor, which is the first big step in their advancement in the world of academia. It’s a milestone marking their early accomplishments, signaling that they have found their academic groove. As many know, finding your stride can take years of trial and error. In pathology especially, it’s a demanding balancing act for faculty who wear clinical and academic hats, no matter their level of seniority. What do they all have in common? Curiosity and an appetite for new discovery. Answering the big questions by going back to basics through research that makes way for better patient care. It’s a high calling, but just how do you find time to make new discoveries when there are only 24 hours in a day? Here, they share what makes them tick, in their own words. Continued on page 2
IN THIS ISSUE From the Chair.................................................................. 3
Research News.................................................................. 4
Education News................................................................ 3
Focus on Faculty................................................................ 6
FINDING THEIR PLACE HELENE MCMURRAY, PH.D. Background: She is a UR School of Medicine & Dentistry alumna, earning her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology and completing a postdoctoral fellowship in biomedical genetics there. She joined the Pathology faculty in 2017 and recently completed national and state board certification to serve as assistant director of the Tissue Typing/Histocompatibility Lab at Strong Memorial. She is also director of the pathology graduate program. Current research: Active research collaborations with colleagues at Wilmot Cancer Institute and the departments of Biomedical Genetics, and Biostatistics and Computational Biology, applying approaches in genomics, bioinformatics, biostatistics, and cell and molecular biology. How would you describe the process of climbing the academic ladder? It’s like gardening. You start off with a couple of pea plants and, if you’re lucky, by the end of your career you’ll end up with a whole garden—a body of work that’s your area of expertise. You have a background in different specialties. What do you like about this department, specifically? I really appreciate the opportunities that I have found in pathology. It is a different world from the basic science departments I’ve been in. The demands on your time and brain are constantly shifting but I’ve found it really engaging to go back and forth between different ways of thinking—sometimes with very urgent problems for our patients and sometimes abstract concepts related to gene regulation or cancer biology. It’s been really enjoyable and I’m proud that I’ve been able to be successful in all those places. What is challenging about balancing your research and clinical work? We have a treasure trove of clinical samples in my lab but using them for research is separate from our main clinical workflows. As scientists, we all have a lot of ideas that could be impactful but, at the end of the day, our patients need their testing done. I think simply finding time to work on all the interesting questions you identify is a challenge for people trying to work both clinically and scientifically. What inspires you to press on? If you like scientific exploration and discovery, there’s nothing else that’s really like that in the world. It’s a little bit like the people who quit their jobs and travel the world instead. I’m not a world traveler at heart but I like digging into the minutia of biology and trying to understand things that nobody has understood before. The "Star Trek" mentality of “boldly going where no one has gone before” is the mindset I have existed in since I was 16 years old and started working in my first scientific lab. One way or another, I will always want to ask questions about things no one understands and then try to figure out the answers. That leads to a lot of frustration some of the time, but if you’ve gone this far, you figure out how to overcome that and keep going.
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ZHENQIANG YAO, B.MED., PH.D. Background: He was a postdoctoral researcher recruited to the department by Dr. Brendan Boyce in 2003. Yao has established and grown his own research program at URMC since 2015 when he got his first R01 research project from the NIH, with a second R01 to be announced soon. Yao has also received research funding from the Department of Defense and New York State Department of Health. Current research: Yao’s lab investigates projects related to musculoskeletal disease (osteoporosis) and breast cancer. Yao’s team is investigating how immune cells, particularly T lymphocytes, interact with bone cells to cause bone loss with aging. They are also developing a new agent to treat osteoporosis, and recently developed a novel macrophage-based targeted therapy to prevent and eliminate breast cancer metastases, in hopes that it can be expanded to treat other cancers including lung, pancreatic and prostate. Why did you choose to step away from practicing medicine? Research is what pushes the boundaries of clinical practice. As a doctor you see many patients affected by osteoporosis and cancer. I realized that you could work your whole life and see the same problems without finding ways to make patient care better. I want to do work that will benefit patients, today and into the future. Was there a moment that you are proud of, or made you sure that you were in the right profession? Yes, there have been a few. When I was working in Dr. Boyce’s lab, I discovered a new osteoclast forming pathway limited by non-canonical NF-kB signaling. These findings helped earn my first NIH R01 in 2015. More recently, I proposed a new NIH project to investigate age-related osteoporosis and to test our newly patented agent to treat osteoporosis, which was top-ranked during the review process. Getting funding for cancer research is extremely competitive. I’m proud that my method to treat breast cancer was recently awarded by the Department of Defense, which funded just six percent of 500 applications. What keeps you going? Research can be difficult. You spend a lot of time writing grant applications in a way that should be easily understood by your peers. You also spend more time working to get funding and get published than you do at the bench. I have been doing research, not only as a scientist but also a clinical practitioner, to explain diseases using data I gather every day. I hope that my discoveries can be translated to the bedside to improve patient care, and that’s what keeps me going.
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FROM THE CHAIR
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Bruce Smoller, M.D.
pring weather can’t be too far away as I write this column. It is 70 degrees outside and we learned about our match results just an hour ago. We filled all six spots and everyone involved is extremely excited about the class of incoming residents. Similarly, our fellowship training positions are largely filled, again, with superb candidates. This year, for the first time, we will have a fellow to begin a Laboratory Management training program. We have partnered with the Simon School of Business to create this two-year training program. Upon completion, trainees will have earned a degree from the Simon School, as well as time serving as the Medical Director for one of our Affiliate Hospitals and significant training in day-to-day laboratory issues. We have had a banner year with our recruiting efforts. Approximately 10 new faculty members will be joining us this summer. We have successfully recruited talent from some of the great pathology programs around the country and I will be introducing them in subsequent columns as they arrive in Rochester. The large number of new faculty members is a result of some faculty turnover as part of the COVID-induced stresses of last year, along with a huge commitment on the part of our administration to support a significant increase in the size of our faculty to accommodate the incessantly expanding workload. In addition to new faculty, we are in increasingly urgent need for space. Towards this end, we continue in earnest with our planning for the next phase of the Bailey Road relocation. The initial architectural drawings look fantastic, with plans for greatly expanded, modern laboratory spaces and lots of offices with windows! I will close this quarterly column with congratulatory notes to Drs. Zhenqiang Yao, Bin Zhang and Helene McMurray, all of whom were recently promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and to Drs. Archibald Perkins and Bin Zhang, who just recently received notification of a Department of Defense grant to support their research! With the next issue, I will introduce our newest faculty members.
EDUCATION NEWS Spring in Rochester is always a beautiful and exciting time as King is the keynote speaker for the event this year. A we all seemingly emerge from our metaphorical cocoons of hematopathologist at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. King was selected winter. For the educational programs within our department by our departmental residents to serve as the keynote speaker it also brings exciting changes. For the Ph.D., Residency, and I am sure will give a great talk. CMT, and Fellowship programs we begin The Updates in Pathology Regional to welcome a new crop of trainees, saying Symposium will occur the very next day, farewell to people we have come to admire and on June 7. The symposium will be held in will miss immensely. For any of us involved the virtual format and accessible via Zoom in these training programs, there seems to be throughout the day. Many of our faculty will a palpable excitement as we get ready to say be giving scholarly presentations detailing "Welcome!" to the next class of trainees. updates in the diagnostic entities, knowledge, We also have two exciting events planned and practices in their area of specialty. We are for early June: Research Day and the Updates fortunate to be able to have Dr. Ritu Nayar, in Pathology Symposium. Research Day will former URMC Cytopathology fellow and be back in person this year on June 6, with current Professor and Vice Chair of Education our graduate students, residents and fellows and Faculty Development in the Department Jennifer Findeis-Hosey, M.D. presenting their academic work in poster of Pathology at the Northwestern University and oral presentation forms. The oral presentations will be Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, join us as the held in Class of ’62 Auditorium with posters displayed in symposium keynote speaker. I hope you will join us for these Flaum Atrium; stop by if you have the chance! Dr. Rebecca two great events! Learn more at www.pathology.urmc.edu.
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FINDING THEIR PLACE
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BIN ZHANG, PH.D. Background: Zhang came to URMC in 2015 after finishing his Ph.D. in molecular genetics and genomics, a genomics fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and a clinical cytogenetics fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. He became Director of the Cytogenetics Laboratory in 2017, marking the beginning of a new chapter in his career. Up until then, Zhang had focused more on translational research. Current research: Zhang splits his time between his research lab at Strong Memorial and overseeing the Cytogenetics Lab at Bailey Road. His research primarily focuses on the formation, plasticity, and epigenetic inheritance of centromere. He will also be collaborating with Archibald Perkins, M.D., Ph.D., on a new grant from the Department of Defense to study evolution of Monosomy 7 Myelodysplastic Syndrome. How has your clinical work changed the way you approach research? Now, as a cytogeneticist, I frequently solve clinical cases by integrating both medical evidence and biological mechanisms together. As a scientist with a clinical position, I am consistently exposed to the imminent challenges of the field as I investigate various unique cases. Compared to before I became a clinical cytogeneticist, this increased exposure definitely helps me form more basic research questions/hypotheses oriented towards potential medical applications. Research also keeps the clinical work more dynamic, as a solid understanding of underlying mechanisms helps
interpret clinical data in a systematic way and classify related clinical phenomena. For me, clinical work and basic science research are mutually beneficial. I often enjoy coming in on weekends to take care of bench work. It’s been six years since you took over a clinical lab. Was there ever an “aha” moment for you? I probably spent my first three years here searching for a relevant and interesting research topic. I had many discussions on ideas with colleagues and pursued some pilot experiments. Three years ago, I finally found a project/ scientific question I realized I wanted to pursue for the rest of my research career. I had never had that feeling before and it was a great moment for me and my research aspirations, even though it was just the beginning. Tell us more about your research area. The subject is centromere biology and its potential medical applications. I’m a cytogeneticist and we read chromosomes every day. The centromere is an important machinery for chromosome segregation, so it’s very relevant to our daily clinical work as well as human diseases like cancer and certain constitutional disorders. My background matches this field well. I have the skills to ask questions and I am very fortunate to have support from the department. What keeps you going? It’s not easy having a clinical responsibility while pursuing basic science research. However, I keep going because it is immensely fulfilling when I can solve genetic puzzles, link them to important biological questions or hypotheses, and even test them. I have passion for science because we can exercise what we know to make new discoveries. And eventually, these new discoveries will come back to help patient management. This, I consider very rewarding.
RESEARCH NEWS I don’t know whether it’s from resetting the clocks, the prediction of spring weather ahead, the lifting of COVID restrictions here at the Medical Center and in the community or perhaps the joy of hard work recently accomplished (see cover story) but whatever the reason, I have spent the last week of winter feeling a renewed sense of optimism. Maybe changing the hour when my dog wakes us up from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. was the psychological boost I needed? Maybe I’m feeling uplifted from getting to see colleagues and friends in person again. I vividly recall how I felt two years ago
Helene McMurray, Ph.D.
on these days between March 13 and 15 when COVID restrictions were first being implemented: fearful of the unknown, anxiously wondering what would happen and how long the danger would last. I remember a few weeks before the lockdowns hearing a talk from colleagues in Clinical Microbiology about SARS-CoV-2 and the dire situation that had developed overseas. The discussion among us afterwards was hushed and dubious— would we implement restrictions here? How would that even work? How would we keep people safe from this invisible threat? None of us could foresee the extent that our lives would Continued on page 5 4
RESEARCH NEWS be disrupted over the subsequent two years. It’s still a bit incredible to me now, even having lived through it. I am beyond pleased that we are in a better place today with the scientific advances that have dramatically improved our ability to safeguard people from COVID’s worst effects through vaccination, and to treat people who suffer serious illness when they become infected. These gains come through the hard work of so many scientists and physicians around the world who put COVID in their sights, and we owe them, we owe many of you, our deepest gratitude. I’m also glad for all that we’ve accomplished individually and collectively during these challenging times. In the Pathology Ph.D. program, our students continue to have scientific success during their years of training with 26 co-authored papers published in the last year, eight of which have our students as first authors. We also continue our fruitful pursuit of fellowship funding with Kimberly Burgos-Villar as our newest F31 recipient in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Small, bringing us to six trainees currently holding NIH F31 or F30 individual National Research Service Awards. Emma House, mentored by Dr. Matthew McGraw, was accepted onto the Lung Biology T32 Training Grant, joining three of her fellow students in being funded
FOCUS ON FACULTY One of the discovery's key players, Dr. Barbara Weber, joined the faculty at U. Penn. while Schiffhauer was a resident there. After enthusiastically pitching an idea for a project, she began working in Weber’s research lab. Schiffhauer was later granted a fellowship to stay and do research and surgical pathology after residency. She was still working in the Philadelphia area when the phone rang one day. It was URMC’s pathology chair, Steve Spitalnik, M.D., who had worked at U. Penn. during her residency. He knew about her Rochester roots and asked if she was interested in looking at a job in Rochester. The rest is history. Schiffhauer’s early years on the faculty were researchheavy and Janet Sparks, Ph.D., became a valuable mentor in this area. She became very interested in virtual microscopy and over time was instrumental in prompting the shift from using microscopic slides to digitized whole slides in medical school teaching. It was also around this time that she met her husband, David, and they had two daughters, Emily and Sarah. Schiffhauer completed a Dean’s Teaching Fellowship in 2008, an experience that she says solidified her passion for teaching. That year she became the director of pathology medical education for the School of Medicine and
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through institutional training grants in musculoskeletal or lung biology. Another sign that we keep moving forward is the five students who have earned their Ph.D. degrees so far this year with three additional defenses slated for the coming months. We have bid farewell to Drs. Andrea Amitrano, John Bachman, Olivia Marola, Ronghao Wang and Chia-Hao Wu. Four of these young people are moving into prestigious post-doctoral fellowships at universities in the U.S. Dr. Wang garnered a faculty position at Southwest Medical University School of Basic Sciences in China. Meanwhile, our student recruitment activities were well-received by our applicants (based on results of exit polling from recruitment weekend). We have made offers of admission to 14 prospective students and have already had two accept our offer! As a scientist and educator, I strive for the mindset exemplified by a favorite quote of mine, attributed to Walt Disney: “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt summarizes not only his own ethos, but that of every researcher who has ever wondered how something worked and then blazed a trail to figure out the answer.
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Dentistry. She has overseen several surgical pathology rotations for our residency program and directed the effort to move to subspecialty-based resident rotations. She was named associate director in 2014 and five years later became Residency Program Director. This, she says, is her dream job. Having an impact on incoming trainees, seeing them grow and find their passion gives her great satisfaction. This means much of her scholarly work is related to education—creating curriculum and experimenting with new learning methods. Whether it’s the education coordinators or her colleagues on the busy breast service, she finds a special camaraderie at URMC. “Our team has so many great people to work with, which makes coming to work every day enjoyable even on the hard days. I’m grateful for the community and the culturce we have here in the department,” she said. Outside of work, Schiffhauer plays classical guitar—a skill she picked up as an adult. Her daughters are pursuing the arts; Sarah is studying ballet at the University of Utah and Emily enjoys performing musical theater in the Webster school district. Her husband works senior programmer/ analyst for Seneca Foods Corporation. “Family and work-life balance are really important to me, along with having a great team to work with,” said Schiffhauer.
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Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine University of Rochester Medical Center 601 Elmwood Avenue, Box 626 Rochester, NY 14642
FOCUS ON FACULTY LINDA SCHIFFHAUER, M.D. Her professional journey has taught Linda Schiffhauer, M.D., the importance of being surrounded by people who encourage and support you. This theme is one that Schiffhauer, who is our residency program director and member of the breast pathology faculty, has continued to pay forward throughout her career. In more ways than one, Schiffhauer has come full circle. She was born in New York City and moved to Rochester when her father retired from the Navy and took a civilian job with Xerox. She graduated from East High School and got her undergraduate biochemistry degree from the University of Rochester. While she left town for medical school at Albany Medical College, followed by residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and an early start to her career at Main Line Pathology Associates, all roads led back to Rochester when she was offered a faculty position—which she excitedly took—in 1999. Sometimes, she’ll even run into old classmates from East High School who are now doctors, too, walking the halls at Strong Memorial.
“It’s kind of neat to come back to your hometown and see those people that you knew back when you were young,” said Schiffhauer, with a laugh. Like many undergraduates interested in going into science, she considered whether to pursue research or medicine. “I ultimately decided on medicine because I wanted my science passion to have a direct impact on helping people,” she said. In medical school she gravitated toward surgery as a specialty, which had hands-on patient care aspects she found enjoyable. It wasn’t until her final year, when she wanted to take a less demanding elective after her surgery internship, that she says she saw the light and decided to switch gears from surgery to pathology. Why the switch? It had a lot to do with the people. One of her greatest mentors was Dr. Foster Scott (father of our own AP faculty member, Glynis Scott) who would meet with Schiffhauer and another med student at the end of each day to review microscopic slides of cases he had given them to decipher/interpret the diagnosis. “I liked that you could look at slides like a puzzle to solve. It was very intellectual and stimulating,” she reflects. She narrowed in on breast as a specialty, which coincided with the cloning of the BRCA1 gene in 1994. Continued on Page 5 URMC DEPARTMENT OF PATHOLOGY AND LABORATORY MEDICINE 6
