Congratulations to M&I Assistant Professor Ed Miao for winning this prestigious award established by the UNC Medical Foundation through the generosity of the Jefferson-Pilot Corporation. This annual award is given to junior faculty members at the School of Medicine in recognition of both past performance and future promise in research. M&I faculty who have received … Read more

This month marks M&I Professor Fred Sparling’s retirement after a 45-year career at UNC. He was the third Chair of M&I (1981-1989) and the fifth Chair of the Department of Medicine (1989-2000). After Fred became Director of the Southeastern Regional Center for Excellence for Biodefense (SERCEB), UNC emerged as the headquarters of a diverse biodefense … Read more

The summer months are a busy time for research conferences, and M&I has been well-represented in the programming of a wide variety of international meetings: Blossom Damania was invited to speak at the Second International Symposium on Viral Strategies of Immune Evasion (Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig, Germany). Beth Shank and Stephani Page (graduate … Read more

A new Nature Medicine article (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25064127) from Stan Lemon’s group shows how lipid peroxides downregulate the efficiency of HCV replication, limiting tissue damage and facilitating viral persistence. See the UNC News story at the link below. news.unchealthcare.org/news/2014/july/unc-researchers-discover-how-hepatitis-c-virus-persists-for-years

M&I faculty members Jeff Dangl and Beth Shank are featured in an article on how local biotech companies can benefit from UNC research aimed at understanding the plant microbiome and microbe-plant interactions. See the Endeavors Magazine story at the link below. The Business of Bugs

Congratulations to M&I Professors Stan Lemon and Jeff Dangl for earning the “Highly Cited Researchers” distinction from Thomson Reuters. The names on this list, determined from Web of Science publication and citation metrics, include scientists who have authored the greatest number of “highly cited papers” (the top 1% most cited for their subject field and … Read more

This next academic year will be the initiation of the new Translational Education at Carolina (TEC) curriculum for medical students, a fundamental change from the standard coursework stucture that has been in place for many years. Immunology will taught in an individual course, while microbiology/infectious disease teaching will be woven throughout a series of organ-based … Read more

In this new mBio article, systems biology meets viral pathogenesis as the Baric lab compares infections by highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (HPAI) A virus, 2009 pandemic H1N1, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), and Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV). They demonstrate the existence of unique and common viral strategies for controlling interferon-stimulated genes … Read more

A new PNAS article from Ralph Baric’s lab, in collaboration with Wayne Marasco’s group at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, describes the use of a human antibody-phage library to identify seven human neutralizing antibodies specific for the receptor-binding domain of the MERS-CoV Spike protein. See the UNC News article at the link below.   Immunological Study … Read more

M&I is one of 14 doctoral programs that are selected by students who have been admitted through one of two interdisciplinary portals: the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program (BBSP) and the MD-PhD program. On Friday, May 16, eleven PhD students and two MD-PhD joined M&I and embarked on the dissertation phase of their predoctoral training. … Read more