UP FRONT
The Society Pages
Brenda Fitzgerald Named New Director of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, the Georgia Public Health
Commissioner, has been appointed director of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by U.S. Secretary
of Health and Human Services Tom Price, MD. She will
replace acting director Anne Schuchat, MD, who has been
serving since January 2017, when Tom Frieden, MD, MPH,
stepped down.
Brenda Fitzgerald, MD
Dr. Fitzgerald will also act as administrator of the Agency
for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
She earned her medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine in
Atlanta, Georgia, and held an assistant clinical professorship at Emory Medical
Center after completing post-graduate training at the Grady Memorial Hospital.
Nicole F. Steinmetz Receives Grant
to Study Nanotechnology to Detect
Deep Vein Thrombosis
Nicole F. Steinmetz, PhD,
director of the Center for Bio-
Nanotechnology and the George J.
Picha Professor in Biomaterials at
Case Western Reserve University
School of Medicine in Cleveland,
Ohio, received a grant from the
Nicole F. Steinmetz,
PhD
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
to develop nanotechnology that
could improve early diagnosis and drug delivery for
patients with deep vein thrombosis.
The $2.6 million grant will fund Dr. Steinmetz
and her team’s efforts to engineer a molecule that
can be injected into the bloodstream during mag-
netic resonance imaging. The molecule would help
doctors identify blood clots and could also disrupt
clots and deliver medications.
Source: Case Western Reserve University press release, June 29, 2017.
NIH Awards Grant to Three
Researchers to Study Cancer Cell
Metastases
The NIH presented a grant to John Slater, PhD,
assistant professor of biomedical engineering at
the University of Delaware; David Mayerich, PhD,
assistant professor of electrical and computer engi-
neering at the University of Houston in Texas; and
Sylvie Lorthois, PhD, director of research at the
French National Center for Scientific Research in
Toulouse, to develop a tissue-engineered platform
to investigate how cancer cells metastasize.
Dr. Slater’s lab focuses on the development of
life-like platforms for disease modeling and drug
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ASH Clinical News
As a Major in the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Fitzgerald served at Wurtsmith Air Force
Base in Michigan and at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC.
She ran for Congress twice in the 1990s and served as a health-care policy
adviser to former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich
and former Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-GA). In 2011, she began her term as the
commissioner for the Georgia Department of Public Health.
Announcing the appointment, Sec. Price commented, “She has a deep
appreciation and understanding of medicine, public health, policy, and
leadership – all qualities that will prove vital as she leads the CDC in its work
to protect America’s health 24/7.”
Sources: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press release, July 7, 2017; The Washington Post, July 7, 2017.
development. His team recently created an image-
guided, laser-based fabrication technique that
enables the construction of functional vascular
networks in hydrogels. Dr. Mayerich and his team will
generate three-dimensional image stacks of organ-
specific vasculature using high-resolution, whole-
organ imaging. Dr. Lorthois will provide expertise in
multimetric quantification of vascular architecture
and computational modeling of transport in vascular
networks. Together, these efforts will help researchers
gain insight into the mechanisms that govern cells’
organ-specific metastasis.
Source: University of Delaware press release, June 27, 2017.
Nader Pourmand Wins
NIH’s “Follow That Cell”
Challenge
Nader Pourmand, PhD, professor
of biomolecular engineering in the
Jack Baskin School of Engineering at
Nader Pourmand, PhD
the University of California, Santa
Cruz, wo