August 2014

CRITICAL VALUES -

Pathology in the Hot Zone 1

Highly Cited Researchers 1

NEW FACULTY -

Ross Fasano, MD 2

CASE REPORTS -

Charlie Hill, MD, PhD

Alexis Carter, MD 2

Whit Sewell, MD

Jim Little, MD

Dan Brat, MD

Mike Rossi, PhD

Stewart Neill, MD

2

WEB LINKS -

Pathologists in the News 3

Resident/Fellow Picnic 3

INTRADEPARTMENTAL

CONSULT -

John Cochran, MD

Kevin Harrell, MD

Sadaf Ilyas, MD

4

PHOTO COLLAGE -

Residents / Fellows—2014 5

IN THIS ISSUE

CALENDAR EVENTS

September 8th, 5pm, SOM Lobby

Going Away Celebration

Chuck Parkos, MD, PhD September 15th, Noon

Huamin Wang, MD, PhD

Guest Lecturer September 27th, 9am

Winship 5K October 20th, Noon

Henry Tazelaar, MD

Pathology Faculty Grand Rounds

To contribute to the next newsletter, send an email to Donna Martin (dmart06@emory.edu).

Comment: We are all proud that Emory has the facilities, expertise, and compassion to care for these

patients, and we’re tremendously proud of the Emory professionals who were involved in their suc-

cessful care.

When two patients with Ebola infection were admit-

ted to a specialized, high-containment treatment

facility at Emory University Hospital for nearly

three weeks in August, Emory pathologists and

clinical lab staff were there to contribute to their

care. The two American aid workers had contract-

ed the virus while on a humanitarian mission to

West Africa amid the largest recorded Ebola out-

break in history. They were airlifted to Emory, one

of only four U.S. institutions with a fully self-

contained isolation unit and a team of specialist

doctors and nurses that has trained for more than

a decade to safely treat dangerous infectious dis-

eases of this kind. In support of that effort, a

small cadre of volunteers from Pathology and

Emory Medical Labs (EML) worked to install, vali-

date, and operate a battery of instruments inside

the isolation unit that provided vital metabolic, coagulation, microbiologic and other diagnostic testing for

these patients, completely separate from the rest of the hospital and from the outside world. Associate

Professors Charlie Hill, M.D., Ph.D., and Eileen Burd, Ph.D., Clinical Chemistry Fellow Emily Ryan,

Ph.D., and Professor Jim Ritchie, Ph.D., together with point-of-care professionals from EML, spearheaded

the creation and operation of this unique laboratory. Assistant Professor, clinical microbiologist, and infec-

tious disease physician Colleen Kraft, M.D., along with our coagulation specialists Sandy Duncan, M.D.,

and Annie Winkler, M.D., were among those who provided their expertise to the care of these two pa-

tients, the first ever treated for Ebola infection within the U.S.

Pathology in the Hot Zone (see Comment)

La Crème de la Crème

If you go looking for the world's highest-impact

scientists, you’re sure to find Emory

Pathologists. That's what happened when Thomson

Reuter assembled its list of "Highly Cited Research-

ers" (http://highlycited.com) this year. It identified

3,215 leaders in 21 fields, ranging from space sci-

ence to mathematics, who wrote the greatest num-

ber of highly cited papers during the past decade

(2002-2012), and so ranked in the top 1% for ex-

traordinary, sustained scholarly impact. Among the

seven Emory faculty who made the list, two are in

our Department: Professor and GRA Eminent

Scholar Eric Hunter, Ph.D., whose work on retro-

viral transmission puts him in the pantheon for the

category of microbiology, and Candler Professor

Bali Pulendran, Ph.D., in the field of immunology,

for his groundbreaking work on how immune re-

sponses are initiated and controlled.

Bali Pulendran, PhD, Eric Hunter, PhD

In the Zone (L to R): Drs. Colleen Kraft, Charlie Hill, Eileen Burd, and Emily Ryan

L to R: Mike Rossi, PhD, Jim Little, MD, Dan Brat, MD, PhD Whit Sewell, MD

Stewart Neill, MD

August 2014

NEW FACULTY— Ross Fasano, MD

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Charlie Hill, MD, PhD

Two more Emory faculty have been elected to lead major national

organizations in our specialty: Assistant Professor Alexis Carter,

M.D., our Director of Pathology Informatics, is serving this year as

President of the Association for Pathology Informatics (API), the

world’s only professional society dedicated to this vital subspecial-

ty. Dr. Carter is the first Emory faculty member to preside over

the API in its nearly 15-year history. And Associate Professor

Charlie Hill, M.D., Ph.D., has begun a cycle of leadership posi-

tions as the President-Elect (2014), President (2015), and Past-

President (2016) of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP).

In so doing, Dr. Hill becomes the third Emory pathologist to lead

the AMP, following Professors Angie Caliendo, M.D., Ph.D., (in

2004) and Karen Mann, M.D., Ph.D., (in 2010).

Some of the best pathologists come to us after spending time in another clinical spe-cialty. That’s the case with our newest recruit in transfu-sion medicine, Assistant Pro-fessor Ross Fasano, M.D., who joins Emory Pathology this month after four years on the Pediatrics faculty at Chil-dren’s National Medical Center (CNMC) and the George Wash-ington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Illinois and Urbana-Champaign who earned his medical degree at Ohio State in 2003, Dr. Fasa-no completed his three-year residency in Pediatrics at Rush University in Chicago (where he was honored as the Out-standing Senior Pediatric Resi-dent in 2006), followed by a clinical fellowship in Pediatric

Hematology/Oncology at CNMC and George Washington before joining the faculty there in 2010. Along the way, he discovered a love for transfusion medicine that led him also to pursue a fellowship in that subspecialty at the National Institutes of Health during his final two years of training. That unique background left him triply Board-certified and well prepared to serve as Associate Director of Transfu-sion Medicine and Director of the Chronic Transfusion Program at his prior institution, where he also cared for children with cancers and in-herited blood disorders as a pediatric hematologist/oncologist. Dr. Fasano will continue all those activities when he joins us on September 15 as part of our world-class pediatric transfusion group within the Center for Transfusion and Cellular Therapies, dividing his time be-tween Grady Hospital and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Please join in welcoming Dr. Fasano into our Department.

?

Case Reports

Summer is the season for teaching

awards, as the academic year comes

to an end and graduates think back

about those who had the greatest

positive impact on their training.

This year’s Pathology residents be-

stowed well-deserved honors on As-

sistant Professors Jim Little, M.D.,

(our Director of Surgical Pathology at

Midtown) and Mike Rossi, Ph.D., (a

specialist in molecular genetic testing

and cytogenetics) who took home

the Golden Apple awards for out-

standing teaching in Anatomic and

Clinical Pathology, respectively, and

they chose Professor, Vice Chair, and

Residency Co-Director Dan Brat,

M.D., Ph.D., as this year’s Annalee Boyette awardee for his out-

standing contributions to the residency. The 2014 graduating

medical students chose our erstwhile resident, ex-Chief Resident,

and current Neuropathology Fellow Stewart Neill, M.D., to receive the coveted Golden Pager award, recognizing him as the house-staff

member who contributed the most to their training, and making him the first Pathology trainee in memory ever to receive that award.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be summertime if Professor Whit Sewell, M.D., our legendary Director of Undergraduate Education, hadn’t

reaped high accolades from those same graduating medical students, who named him both as their Best Teacher in preclinical course-

work and as an Honorary Member of their class.

Ross Fasano, MD

Alexis Carter, MD

Case Reports

As they set off to Haiti this

summer as volunteers for

Project Medishare, ten

Emory medical students bid

a grateful "Mesi!" to Profes-

sor Tony Gal, M.D., for

teaching them Haitian Cre-

ole (Kreyòl ayisyen). Spo-

ken by more than 10 million

Haitians, their creole is a

melange of Portugese,

Spanish, West African lan-

guages and French. In ad-

dition to his duties as a pul-

monary pathologist, Dr Gal

regularly offers an elective

in medical French to the

Emory medical students.

Pathologists

in the News

Carlos Moreno Reuters

CDC mishaps show live flu viruses are nothing to play with

· http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/07/28/want-to-avoid-a-

pandemic-heres-a-good-way-to-start/ Eric Hunter Science

Why HIV Spreads Less Easily in Heterosexual Couples

· http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/07/10/330217262/

why-hiv-spreads-less-easily-in-heterosexual-couples Coleen Kraft 90.1 FT WABE

Ebola Patients Cured, Released from Atlanta Hospital

· http://wabe.org/post/ebola-patients-cured-released-atlanta-hospital

Resident Shaming Pathology Internal Website

Emory Pathology Resident Shaming

· http://path.emory.edu/Conf/Special_ResidentShaming_2014.cfm

Jeannette Guarner, Carlos del Rio Emory Pathology eLearning Portal (EPeP)

Ebola Interactive Learning Module

· http://path.emory.edu/EPeP/Viruses.cfm

· Login: Username: path PW: path —> ‘45 year-old man…’

Interesting Links

August 2014

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·

Do you know these future pathologists? For clues, go to: http://path.emory.edu/Images/Picnic-2014/

Helping Haiti

Tony Gal, MD

REMINDER:

The Farewell Reception for Dr. Chuck Parkos is September 8th at

5pm in the School of Medicine Lobby.

Don’t forget to RSVP here:

http://www.evite.com/l/xC7XpE74Wx

It won’t be a solo practice for long: On

December 1, Emory-trained pathologist

Kevin Harrell, M.D., will welcome

aboard Sadaf Ilyas, M.D., as his col-

league in the Pathology service at Emory

Johns Creek Hospital (EJCH). The addi-

tion of Dr Ilyas marks the steady growth

of our affiliated practice at EJCH, which

Dr Harrell has staffed almost single-

handedly since soon after the 110-bed

hospital opened in 2007 to serve the

growing northeastern exurbs of Atlanta.

He was ideally prepared to take on this

new practice, having trained in Anatomic

and Clinical Pathology, including a year

as Chief Resident, in our residency at

Emory, followed by two years in a local

private group practice at Southern Re-

gional Medical Center, where he honed

his generalist skills. He brought those

skills with him to EJCH as the sole found-

ing member of the Pathology Section of

Emory Specialty Associates (ESA), a

wholly-owned, non-faculty affiliate of The

Emory Clinic that combines the business

model of a private practice with the con-

tracts, billing services, and other re-

sources of Emory Healthcare. Dr Harrell

deserves great credit for the success of

ESA Pathology (including the perfect

score the EJCH clinical lab received on its

recent CAP inspection), which benefits

from his excellent diagnostic and man-

agement skills as well as his strong rap-

port with the clinicians, technical staff,

and administrators at EJCH. He (and we)

have also gotten tremendous help from

John Cochran, M.D., a local pathologist

and 1999 graduate of our AP/CP residen-

cy who serves as chief consultant to ESA

Pathology, and whose business acumen

and deep knowledge of the Atlanta mar-

ketplace have proven invaluable along

INTRADEPARTMENTAL CONSULT: Our Thriving Pathology Service at Emory Johns Creek Hospital

August 2014

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Left to Right: John Cochran, MD; Kevin Harrell, MD; Sadaf Ilyas, MD

the way. The clinical excellence and financial strength of ESA Pa-

thology make it possible to add Dr Ilyas, who recently completed

our Surgical Pathology Fellowship, onto the team on a half-time

basis this year. Congratulations and thanks to all three of these

colleagues. (A special shout-out to Dr Cochran, too, for his re-

cent appointment as Clinical Director of the Laboratory Accredita-

tion Program of The Joint Commission.)

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April2014