The 2021 Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund Young Investigator Award recipients were announced last month by the private foundation.  Josephine Taverna, MD, and Lizhen Chen, PhD, were each awarded a $450,000 three-year career grant award and Angelina Vaseva, PhD, received a pilot award. The investigators credit the support they each received from their mentors, and the expertise provided by the personnel at the institutional core labs, supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Ken Hargreaves, DDS, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Endodontics and principal investigator of the NIH/NINDS National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke R01, is proud of the collaboration of 15 scientists leading to the discovery of  a link between a high-fat diet and chronic pain published in the June issue of Nature Metabolism.  The multi-year study was led by first co-authors Jacob T. Boyd, MD, PhD, recent graduate of the Long School of Medicine, and Peter M. LoCoco, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Hargreaves’ lab.

Family and community medicine professor emeritus Claudia S. Miller, MD, and Raymond F. Palmer, PhD, professor, co-authored a paper suggesting a link between exposures to common chemicals and so-called unexplained illnesses. The new paper’s findings are expected to be used by public health scientists, physicians and policymakers seeking to limit harmful exposures and prevent future disease.

After four years in development, the forced inspiratory suction and swallow tool (FISST), which was patented and licensed last year, will be available at H-E-B this fall.

The results on the efficacy of the science-based intervention for hiccups was reported in the research letter published in JAMA Network Open. Since then, inventor Ali Seifi, MD, FNCS, FCCM, associate professor of neurosurgery in the Long School of Medicine, has been widely interviewed by national and regional media. Listen to Dr. Seifi’s Texas Standard interview detailing the global study and why he set out to bring a post-op solution to brain surgery patients.