School Notes: School of Medicine
January/February 2011

Two Yale researchers honored for ‘exceptional creativity’

Tamas Horvath, chair and professor of comparative medicine, and Haifan Lin, director of the Yale Stem Cell Center, have received 2010 Pioneer Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Pioneer Awards have been given annually since 2004 to scientists “of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering—and possibly transforming—approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research.” With the new grant, Lin will study how piRNAs, a class of small RNAs discovered in his lab, guide epigenetic factors to specific points within the genome. He ultimately hopes to compile information on epigenetic effects of small RNAs in the first “functional epigenome map.” Horvath, co-director of the School of Medicine’s recently launched Program in Integrative Cell Signaling and Neurobiology of Metabolism, is an expert on the effects of metabolism on higher brain functions. Horvath has proposed that a small set of cells in the brain’s hypothalamus known as AgRP neurons are master regulators of energy utilization in all the body’s tissues. With his Pioneer Award, he will study how AgRP regulation of the cellular energy metabolism of various tissues affects the health and longevity of those tissues, and thus the life span of the entire organism. Perturbations in AgRP function could contribute to many late-onset chronic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, and cancer. Each researcher will receive a $2.5 million grant as well as additional laboratory support over five years.

New program in biomedical ethics

The School of Medicine is launching a new Program for Biomedical Ethics, which will be directed by Mark R. Mercurio, associate professor of pediatrics. Biomedical ethics is a subject of great interest to students and of increasing importance to medicine, as technological advances and other influences on health care add complexity to the decision-making of physicians and their colleagues. The new program will coordinate and augment educational and other scholarly work in biomedical ethics at the medical school and create international visibility for work in biomedical ethics at Yale through publications, working groups, and other initiatives. The program will provide support to medical students pursuing research in biomedical ethics for their thesis work, and will also assist students in graduate school and postdoctoral training programs. Mercurio, an associate director of Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, received his MD from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1982 and trained at Yale as a resident and fellow. An accomplished neonatologist, he received his master’s degree in philosophy from Brown University in 2004 and has for many years taught medical ethics to Yale residents, fellows, and medical students.