HJAR Jul/Aug 2019

34 JUL / AUG 2019  I  Healthcare Journal of ARKANSAS   Healthcare Briefs Ronald Robertson, MD, NamedChair of Surgery at UAMS Ronald Robertson, MD, has been appointed chairman of the Department of Surgery in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkan- sas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). Robertson will assume the role in May upon the retirement of Frederick “Rick” Bentley, MD, who has served as chair of the Department of Surgery since 2015. “Dr. Robertson is a fine colleague, superb trauma surgeon, and a proven leader who has dedicated his career to UAMS and improving sur- gical and trauma care in Arkansas,” said Christo- pher T. Westfall, MD, dean of the College of Med- icine and executive vice chancellor at UAMS. “Dr. Robertson’s many prior leadership roles, dedica- tion to our institution and those we serve, and remarkable collegiality will all help him to be an exceptional chair of surgery.” A UAMS faculty member since 1996, Robertson has served as chief of the Division of Trauma, Crit- ical Care, and Acute Care Surgery since 2013. He became vice chair for clinical affairs in the Depart- ment of Surgery in 2018. Robertson was a driving force in the establish- ment of Arkansas’ Trauma System in 2010. As trauma medical director at UAMS since 2013, he leads the only American College of Surgeons-ver- ified Adult Level 1 Trauma Center in the state. The center performs in the top 10 percent of Level 1 Trauma Centers nationwide. Robertson received a medical degree from the College of Medicine in 1989. He remained at UAMS for a general surgery residency, earning the Robert M. Bransford, MD, Award as Outstand- ing Chief Resident in General Surgery in 1994. Robertson continued training at UAMS with a fel- lowship in trauma, critical care, and burn surgery before joining the faculty as an assistant profes- sor. He was promoted to associate professor in 2001, and to professor in 2008. Early leadership posts included director of the Burn Unit at Arkan- sas Children’s Hospital from 1995 to 2005. NYITCOMat A-State Hosts Donor Appreciation Ceremony The New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State Class of 2022 hosted a donor appreciation ceremony to honor the individuals who donated their bodies for the students’ medical education. The event took place in the Wilson Hall auditorium on April 26. Students performed music and shared reflec- tions to show their appreciation for these indi- viduals who are an integral part of the students’ education. NYITCOM faculty also spoke at the ceremony. “The student doctors view the donors as their first patients, and Friday’s ceremony gives our medical students a chance to acknowledge what a meaningful contribution these individuals have made,” said Dosha Cummins, PharmD, vice chair of basic sciences at NYITCOM at A-State. “It’s a lasting gift that every medical student will remem- ber for the rest of their professional careers.” UAMS Researcher Granted $1.86Million to Study Poxviruswith Implications for Infectious Disease, Cancer The poxvirus — with its applications for the investigation of disease development, cross- species infection-caused diseases, vaccine devel- opment, and cancer virotherapy — is the focus of research by Jia Liu, PhD, who has received a $1.86 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue this innovative work at the Uni- versity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). The grant is from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and will support Liu’s work for five years. Liu is an assistant profes- sor in the Department of Microbiology and Immu- nology in the UAMS College of Medicine. She will be studying the poxvirus on the molecular level and how the disease develops. Poxviruses belong to a virus family that includes smallpox. A specific poxvirus that can only infect rabbits, called myxoma virus (MYXV), became par- ticularly interesting to scientists since the 1950s because the virus was used in Australia and Europe as a biological weapon against a spe- cies of rabbits called European rabbits. The rab- bits were overly abundant and destroying crops. Because MYXV was new to the European rabbits, they had no resistance against its infection. Initially, the virus worked, cutting the rab- bit population by 99 percent. However, within a decade, the rabbits had adapted to develop resistance to the MYXV infection and their num- bers were on the rise again. Meanwhile, the virus was also changing. The incident gave scientists a real-world chance to watch a deadly pathogen (the virus) and its host (the rabbits) adapt in an arms-race fight for the upper hand. “It’s a dramatic example of virus-host interac- tions and similar events can be happening in our bodies constantly,” Liu said. “We are surrounded by microbes all the time. So why don’t we get sick constantly? It has to do with the host’s nat- ural immune response, which forms a formida- ble barrier against pathogens. However, there are critical gaps in our knowledge about how it protects us from things like viral infections. More importantly, once we learn how our immune sys- tem works, we can train them to eliminate malig- nancies like cancer.” With this specific grant, Liu will study the gene function of (sterile ? motif domain-containing protein 9, or SAMD9), which was discovered as recently as 2006 to be important for human health. It is now realized that SAMD9 protein is both critical in immune responses against a broad Ronald Robertson, MD Jia Liu, PhD