The New Jersey Center for Public Health Preparedness at UMDNJ School of Public Health is accepting applications for its 2008 Public Health Leadership Initiative for Emergency Response fellowship program that begins on November 26 27.
The program is designed for working public health professionals who seek to advance their leadership skills by working with challenging public health cases such as emerging pathogens, bioterrorism, natural disasters and health department design. There is no charge for the fellows accepted into this demanding program. More information is available on the Center's website, or by calling (732) 235 9600.
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Dr. Daniel Fine, professor and chair of the Department of Oral Biology at UMDNJ-New Jersey Dental School (NJDS) and director of the Center for Oral Infectious Disease there, received a $3.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research to study a disease known as localized aggressive periodontitis (LAP).
The study examines this oral infection, which affects some 70,000 children in underserved areas of the U.S., including Newark. LAP occurs 15 to 20 times more frequently in African American children, and 10 times more frequently in Hispanic children than it does in Caucasians. If left untreated, LAP can lead to loss of first permanent molars and incisors. Children who enroll in the study will be offered free dental care at NJDS for the duration of the study.
Dr. Patrizia Casaccia Bonnefil, an associate professor of neuroscience and member of The Cancer Institute of New Jersey at UMDNJ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and her team of researchers have identified new molecular signals responsible for brain development and repair. These mechanisms may be utilized in therapies aimed at reversing damage of oligodendrocytes occurring in premature babies, as well as in adult patients affected by multiple sclerosis, brain trauma and spinal cord injury.
Dr. Casaccia Bonnefil's laboratory recently discovered that disease states and old age modify the properties of neural progenitors (immature cells), rendering them unable to mature normally, thereby leaving nerve cells unprotected. The damaged nerve cells lead to the symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis, as well as other neurological disorders. Applying this discovery, her research is aimed at understanding how these cells can be stimulated to repair the damaged adult brain.
The team also has identified several molecular components that inhibit proper cell development by affecting epigenetic memory, which is an inheritable mechanism of gene expression (the process by which the inheritable information is transcribed and modified) that allows each cell to have a specific identity. These and other findings related to their research were published in The Journal of Neuroscience and in a recent issue of Neuron.
With more than 6,000 new cases of breast cancer estimated to be diagnosed in New Jersey this year, The Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ) is hoping that you'll start your day with a good deed when you pick up your morning coffee. CINJ will be the recipient of funds raised through the Pink Ribbon Bagel campaign at participating Panera Bread bakery-café locations in Northern and Central New Jersey.
CINJ is one of the many breast cancer-related entities nationwide that will receive proceeds from the sale of Panera's signature Pink Ribbon Bagel, which features cherry chips and real bits of Bing cherries and cranberries and is shaped in the form of a traditional breast cancer awareness ribbon.
Twenty-five cents of every Pink Ribbon Bagel sold during the month of October in the 34 Panera Bread locations, owned and operated by the Panera Bread Franchise entity, Fenwick Group, will come back to CINJ for breast cancer research and patient education programs.
