US AND INTERNATIONAL
CLINICAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP
Past Fellows - Accomplishments
Dr. Paul B. Watkins is the Program Leader and oversees all aspects of the CRF program. Dr. Watkins received his M.D. degree from Cornell Medical School in 1979. He completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center in 1982, and then completed a fellowship in Gastroenterology at the Medical College of Virginia. He was recruited as an Assistant Professor to the Department of Medicine at the University of Michigan in 1986. He rose to the rank of Professor of Medicine in 1997, and became Professor of Pharmacology the following year. He also was the Director of the General Clinical Research Center at the University of Michigan from 1992 until his departure in July 1999. At this time, he became the Verne S. Caviness Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Professor of Pharmacotherapy, and Director of the General Clinical Research Center at UNC.
Dr. Watkins research activities have centered on the molecular basis for interindividual differences in pharmacokinetics of medications and other xenobiotics. He has been particularly interested in a cytochrome P450, termed CYP3A4, and a xenobiotic transport protein, termed P-glycoprotein. The major source of funding for his research has been an R01 grant, that has been continuously funded (without breaks) since 1986. In 1999, this grant was converted to an NIH MERIT Award, allowing Dr. Watkins the opportunity of support through 2008 without undergoing peer-review. Dr. Watkins has received several awards for his research, including the Therapeutic Frontier’s Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy in 1998. More detailed information including recent publications are in the NIH Biosketch included in this application. Dr. Watkins also has a substantial track record in the area of training. He has served as the mentor for gastroenterology fellows, post-doctoral students, and pharmacology graduate students. In addition, while at the University of Michigan, he was a member of the Advisory Committee for the required Senior Medical Resident Research Project. He also served as the primary mentor for several senior residents’ research projects, and one of these residents won the 1997 Award for Best Research Project. Dr. Watkins has been a popular lecturer and educator to medical students, and received the 2nd Year Medical Students “Top 10 Lecturers” Award while at the University of Michigan. Since arriving at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Watkins has been active in the K30 Program in Clinical Investigation and in Dr. Weber’s summer clinical research course.
Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee membership comprises both UNC leadership and directors of the General Clinical Research Centers at Duke University and Wake Forest Baptist University Medical College. Each member has been selected because of their demonstrated interest in and expertise relevant to the goals of this initiative including recruitment of the best possible medical students as CRF fellows.
Dr. Eugene P. Orringer received his MD from the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. After finishing training in both Internal Medicine and Hematology, he joined the UNC faculty. He served as the Program Director of UNC's General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) for a ten year period that began in 1989. Finally, in January, 1999, he was named to his present position as Executive Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs in the School of Medicine. Since joining the faculty, Dr. Orringer’s research activities have focused upon the membrane transport properties of the normal human erythrocyte and on its disordered physiology in a variety of pathological states, especially the sickle hemoglobinopathies. Dr. Orringer received a Research Career Development Award from the NHLBI in 1982, and continues to hold peer-reviewed grant support. In addition to his own research activities, Dr. Orringer has been consistently involved in the training of young scientists and development of career paths in clinical research. He is a participant in numerous NIH-funded post-doctoral training programs and has assisted a total of 11 junior faculty members to obtain NIH Clinical Associate Physician (CAP) awards. Dr. Orringer assumed the Directorship of the UNC MD-PhD Program, which at that time was quite modest, with a total enrollment of only 12 students. Dr. Orringer helped build the program into a nationally-recognized entity, with an MSTP award that will enable enrollment in the Program to reach 60 students by 2003. Dr. Orringer is a member of the core faculty in the UNC Clinical Research Curriculum (K-30) program and the Principal Investigator of the new NIH Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Career Development Program. Finally, Dr. Orringer provides the liaison to the Meharry and Cook County Pediatric Fellow recruitment efforts (see letters of support).
Dr. Myron S. Cohen received his MD from Rush Medical Center, completed his residency in Internal Medicine at University of Michigan, and his fellowship in Infectious Disease at Yale University. He joined the faculty at UNC in 1980 and is now Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology. In addition to serving as Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, he is Co-Director with Dr. Sparling of the UNC-NIH Collaborative STD Center, and Co-Director of the UNC-NIH Fogarty Center. Dr. Cohen is Director of the UNC-Family Health International Technical Support Program, the NIH-STD Clinical Trials Unit, the UNC Center for Infectious Disease and the Pathogenesis Training Grant. Dr. Cohen’s NIH-funded research is focused on the pathobiology of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, with emphasis on its interaction with host defenses. Since gonococci are strictly limited to a human host cell, animal models have not proven to be satisfactory. For this reason, Dr. Cohen's laboratory has established a human challenge model for gonorrhea. Using this model, Dr. Cohen and his colleagues have conducted GCRC-based studies of the phenotypic variation of gonococci in vivo. He has also employed isogenic mutant organisms to define the factors that determine gonococcal virulence. Trainees in Dr. Cohen’s laboratory are broadly exposed to many research skills, including humoral and cellular immunology, molecular biology, and the methods and ethics of human research. As mentioned earlier in the application, Dr. Cohen’s group has been responsible for mentoring numerous trainees and fellows including a current CAP Awardee, Dr. David Wohl.
Dr. Georgette Dent is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UNC and the School of Medicine’s Associate Dean for Student Affairs where she oversees all aspects of medical student progress through the curriculum, supervises preparation of Dean’s letters for students, and facilitates matching students with residency programs. Her office also administers student leaves for special research programs, the student research society, research honors, and Annual Student Research Day. This will greatly facilitate the UNC CRF’s use of these resources as well as ensure that the UNC CRF is fully aware of potential Fellow candidates from within UNC. Dr. Dent’s expertise in interpreting and evaluating medical student transcripts from UNC and other institutions will be particularly helpful to the Advisory Committee as will her broad-based knowledge about the types of information needed by the affiliated medical schools to incorporate the CRF experience into Dean’s letters for the Fellows as they apply for residencies. Finally, Dr. Dent will act as liaison to Student Affairs Deans at medical schools affiliated with the UNC CRF.
Dr. Paul Stewart is Associate Professor of Biostatistics, and has served as the biostatistician for the UNC GCRC for the last 5 years. He has expertise in the design and interpretation of a wide range of clinical studies, and he has been especially devoted to assisting and training young investigators.
Dr. Wesley Burks and Dr. Charles E. McCall have agreed to serve on the UNC CRF Advisory Committee. As GCRC Directors of their respective medical institutions they will be able to help recruit CRF Fellows from both Duke University and Wake Forest, help evaluate the appropriateness of protocols proposed by the UNC research teams for medical students, and act as liaison to their institutions for Fellows in the year after they finish their intensive research mentoring. This liaison role would include assisting Fellows to continue their research during the remaining year(s) of medical school and providing ongoing feedback to the UNC CRF. Finally, as non-UNC faculty Drs. Burks and McCall will bring an element of external validation to the annual review process.