Yale School of Medicine to celebrate students’ original research

Every spring at the Yale School of Medicine, afternoon classes are cancelled, and community members head to The Anlyan Center (TAC) to celebrate Student Research Day.

In keeping with tradition, this year’s program — taking place Tuesday, May 8 — will feature a record number (92) of poster presentations by members of the graduating class showcasing the results of their original research; presentations by student prize-winners about their projects; and the annual Farr Lecture, to be presented this year by Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, dean of the faculty of medicine at Harvard University.

Since 1839, Yale School of Medicine has required its graduates to complete a dissertation based on original research — making it one of the few medical schools in the country to do so. The M.D. thesis is designed to develop critical judgment, habits of self-education, and application of the scientific method to medicine, notes Dr. John N. Forrest Jr., professor of internal medicine and director of the Office of Student Research. The thesis also gives students the opportunity to work closely with faculty who are distinguished scientists, clinicians, and scholars, he notes.

Student Research Day will open with a Scientific Poster Session from noon-2 p.m. in the lobby of TAC, 300 Cedar St. Six students who have won prizes for their dissertations will present their research 2-4 p.m. in the TAC auditorium. This year’s presenters, their degree program, and their projects are:

• Daniel Duncan, M.D/M.H.S. (surgery): “Endothelial-mesenchymal transition driven by TGF-B is a significant mediator of stenosis in tissue engineered vascular grafts.”

• Badri Modi, M.D. (dermatology): “Langerhans cells facilitate mutagenesis and squamous cell carcinoma.”

• Marko Boskovski, M.D./M.H.S. (pediatrics): “The novel congenital heart disease gene, Galnt11, modifies Notch to alter left-right patterning.”

• Don Hoang, M.D./M.H.S. (surgery): “Leptin: a novel hormone of the parathyroid gland.”

• John Thomas, M.D. (internal medicine): “Foretelling the future of prognostication: a historically inspired domain-based approach for the elderly.”

• Corey Frucht, M.D./Ph.D. (neurology and neurobiology): “The role of microRNA181a in avian auditory hair cell regeneration.”

Farr Lecture

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Farr Lecture, which honors the late Dr. Lee E. Farr, a 1932 graduate of the School of Medicine.

The featured speaker, Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, is an endocrinologist and an authority on the molecular causes of obesity and diabetes. His lecture — “Resistance to metabolic hormones in the pathogenesis of obesity and diabetes: insulin, leptin and FGF21” — will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the auditorium of TAC.

Flier became the 21st dean of the faculty of medicine at Harvard in 2007. He is also the Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Previously he had served as faculty dean for academic programs at the medical school and chief academic officer for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard teaching affiliate.

One of the country’s leading investigators in the areas of obesity and diabetes, Flier has uncovered major insights into the molecular mechanism of insulin action, the molecular mechanisms of insulin resistance in human disease, and the molecular pathophysiology of obesity. He was one of the first to demonstrate that diet-induced obesity in rodents is associated with increased leptin expression, and that short-term starvation is associated with decreased leptin expression and blood levels. His proposal that leptin serves as a switch from the fed to the starved state has fundamentally shaped the discourse of the field.

Flier has authored over 200 scholarly papers and reviews, and serves on the boards of several journals. He is currently on the board of consulting editors of Science Magazine. An elected member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Flier has garnered numerous honors in his career, including the Banting Medal from the American Diabetes Association, its highest scientific honor.