[domweek] DOM Week, October 13-17, 2025

[Department of Medicine weekly newsletter via domweek]

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DOM Week
October 10, 2025
News, information, and events of interest from the Department of Medicine

(if you have items for DOM Week, please email amyf at uw.edu<mailto:amyf at uw.edu>)


Awards
ACP Laureate Award
[Gail Pokorney]Dr. Gail Pokorney, clinical associate professor and program director, Alaska IM Residency, is the 2025 recipient of the Laureate Award from the American College of Physicians Alaska Chapter.

The Laureate Award honors those Fellows or Masters of the College who have demonstrated by their example and conduct an abiding commitment to excellence in medical care, education, or research, and in service to their community, their Chapter, and the American College of Physicians.


DEIB news
UW rheumatologists join Blackfeet Nation Arthritis Conference
[Grant Hughes, Jim Jarvis]Drs. Grant Hughes, associate professor, and Jim Jarvis, professor (Rheumatology) were among community and academic participants at the Blackfeet Nation's first Arthritis and Rheumatic Diseases Conference, discussing the impact of rheumatic diseases in Indigenous communities.

Indigenous communities have some of the highest prevalence rates of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in North America. For example, RA is up to five times more common in the Blackfeet Nation compared to the general US population.

The Blackfeet Indian Reservation sits just east of Glacier National Park and is home to the 17,321-member Blackfeet Nation, one of the 10 largest Indigenous Nations in the United States. Blackfeet Community College (BCC) is located on the Blackfeet Reservation and is a part of a network of tribal colleges across the western states.

BCC and partner organizations initiated the conference to address the challenges of arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and other rheumatic diseases in Indigenous communities.

Learn more on our news site<https://bit.ly/4h6HIte>.


Faculty news
[Radhika Narla]Dr. Radhika Narla, associate professor (Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition) has been appointed to serve a one-year term as a member of the American College of Physicians Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program (ACP MKSAP) Core Committee for Endocrinology and Metabolism. ACP MKSAP is a comprehensive learning management system for general internal medicine physicians and internal medicine subspecialists.


Staff news
Staff spotlight: Rachel MacDonald
[A person and a dog posing for a selfie  AI-generated content may be incorrect.]Our latest staff spotlight is on Rachel MacDonald, human resources manager in the Division of Cardiology.

Learn more about her on our news site<https://bit.ly/4na7xKo>.


Clinical news
Harborview's Downtown Programs hosts pop up clinic in Hoa Mai Park
[Seattle Fire Department truck in background and group of fire department employees and Harborview Downtown program employees standing in front.]In partnership with the Seattle Fire Department (SFD) and partner agencies, Harborview's Downtown Programs hosted a four-day pop up clinic at Hoa Mai Park in Seattle's Little Saigon neighborhood on September 9-12, 2025.

Downtown Programs encompass the network of clinical services available through UW Medicine in downtown Seattle, including the Pioneer Square Clinic, Hobson Place Clinic, and Third Avenue Center. Downtown Programs clinics routinely treat patients from the neighboring community as well as people experiencing homelessness in the area.

"Being able start someone on life-saving medication like buprenorphine without the need for an initial period of withdrawal is particularly important for people experiencing homelessness," said Dr. Jared Klein, associate professor (General Internal Medicine) and medical director of Downtown Programs and the Pioneer Square Clinic.

Read the full story on our news site<https://bit.ly/4oc3rCg>.


Research news
Advancing cell therapies for diabetes
[Vincenzo Cirulli]The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) has awarded an $8.6 million RC2 grant to a multidisciplinary team of researchers at the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM) led by Dr. Vincenzo Cirulli, associate professor (Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition) in collaboration with Drs. Hannele Ruohola-Baker, Laura Crisa, Shiri Levy, Julie Mathieu, and Karol Bomsztyk.

This transformative award will launch an ambitious interdisciplinary program to overcome one of the biggest challenges in stem cell-based therapies for diabetes: achieving the reliable and reproducible generation of fully functional pancreatic islets from multiple stem cell lines.

Funding will support an effort to address the critical shortage of donor tissue for diabetes cell replacement therapies by generating fully functional pancreatic islets from multiple stem cell lines. Current protocols for deriving functional islet tissue remain relatively inefficient when applied to different stem cell lines, often yielding heterogeneous mixtures of mature and immature cells.

Read more on the ISCRM website<https://bit.ly/430oi3c>.

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Polycystic Kidney Disease In Vitro Center
[Benjamin Freedman]Dr. Benjamin Freedman, associate professor (Nephrology) is PI on a grant to establish a Core Center dedicated to the development of polycystic kidney disease organoids and related in-a-dish technologies. Researchers have discovered that human mini-kidney structures grown in a petri dish can exhibit symptoms of polycystic kidney disease ('PKD in a dish'), but currently this technology is difficult for many investigators to access and differs in certain respects from PKD in a living person.

Establishing a core center dedicated to the development of PKD organoids and related in-a-dish technologies will greatly enable the community to use the technology to make research breakthroughs in our understanding of how PKD actually works and how it might be treated in a curative fashion.

The center will be the first of its kind on the West Coast in 30 years of NIH programmatic funding.

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Safeway to feature Cancer Vaccine Institute in check stand fundraiser
[Nora Disis]Throughout the month of October, Safeway and Albertsons throughout Washington, Northern Idaho and Alaska will highlight the Cancer Vaccine Institute<https://www.uwcvi.org/> (CVI) at UW Medicine in their check stand fundraiser. All proceeds from this check stand campaign will benefit CVI's breakthrough research.

Led by Dr. Mary (Nora) Disis, professor (Hematology and Oncology), CVI is the largest academic research group dedicated to the development of cancer vaccines and has seen promising results in human clinical trials using vaccines to treat and prevent cancer and its recurrence.

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Testing for hereditary cancers can be a lifesaver
[Heather Cheng]Research shows germline genetic testing - testing for a cancer risk gene you may have inherited - can save lives. Not just the patient's, but their family members, as well. But not everyone realizes they have cancer in the family and those who do know of their family's cancer history may not want to know if they themselves carry a risk for the disease.

"If we can identify patients with inherited cancer risk variants through genetic testing, they'll have more treatment options," said Dr. Heather Cheng, professor (Hematology and Oncology), recently named Fred Hutch's Clinical Director of Cancer Genetics.

Read the full story from Hutch News<https://bit.ly/4pNQfF7>.


Recent publications
Dr. Noelle Benzekri, assistant professor (Allergy and Infectious Diseases) is lead author of "Partnering with traditional healers to increase HIV testing in Senegal, West Africa<https://bit.ly/471rHAb>" in AIDS. DOM co-author is Geoffrey Gottlieb.

Dr. Heather Cheng, professor (Hematology and Oncology) is co-author of "Niraparib and abiraterone acetate plus prednisone for HRR-deficient metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer: a randomized phase 3 trial<https://go.nature.com/4nCNy81>" in Nature Medicine.

Dr. Douglas Goldstein, assistant professor of clinical practice (General Internal Medicine) is lead author of "A Case for Early High-Dose Thiamine-Moving From Reaction to Prevention<https://bit.ly/42tAMAb>" in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Dr. Geoffrey Hill, professor (Hematology and Oncology) is senior author of "Eomesodermin+ CD4+ T cells are critical for curative immunotherapy outcomes<https://bit.ly/4obidJm>" in Immunity. DOM co-authors are Emily Liang, Alexandre Hirayama, and Jordan Gauthier.

Dr. Helen Jack, assistant professor (General Internal Medicine) is co-author of "State-of-the-Art Review: The Intersection of Infectious Diseases and Carceral Medicine<https://bit.ly/4og1wNa>" in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Sylvia LaCourse, associate professor (Allergy and Infectious Diseases) is co-author of "Tuberculosis Preventive Treatment for Pregnant People With HIV in South Africa: A Modeling Analysis of Clinical Benefits and Risks<https://bit.ly/3Wucq5T>" in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Ryan Lynch, associate professor, is lead author and Dr. Ajay Gopal, professor (Hematology and Oncology) is senior author of "Long-term follow-up of dose-dense brentuximab vedotin, ifosfamide, carboplatin and etoposide in second-line treatment of relapsed/refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma<https://bit.ly/46VtQi5>" in the British Journal of Haematology.  DOM co-authors are Ryan Cassaday, Stephen Smith, Andrew Cowan, Edus Warren, Mazyar Shadman, Brian Till, Chaitra Ujjani, Karolyn Morris, and Heather Rasmussen.

Dr. Masumi Ueda Oshima, associate professor, is lead author, and Dr. Brenda Sandmaier, professor (Hematology and Oncology) is senior author of "Sirolimus and Cyclosporine With Post-Transplant Cyclophosphamide or Mycophenolate Mofetil as Graft-Versus-Host Disease Prophylaxis in Unrelated Donor Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation<https://bit.ly/4mXlBqm>" in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. DOM co-authors are Phuong Vo, Michael Boeckh, Marco Mielcarek, Effie Petersdorf, and Rainer Storb.

Drs. Asa Tapley, clinical assistant professor (General Internal Medicine), Lawrence Corey, professor, and M. Juliana McElrath, professor (Allergy and Infectious Diseases) are co-authors of "Neutralizing and binding antibodies are a correlate of risk of COVID-19 in the CoVPN 3008 study in people with HIV<https://bit.ly/3KNnSa5>" in Nature Communications.

Dr. Anna Wald, professor and head (Allergy and Infectious Diseases) is co-author of "Refractory and Resistant Herpes Simplex Virus Mucocutaneous Infections in Immunocompromised Patients: Literature Review and Proposed Definitions for Use in Clinical Trials<https://bit.ly/48UEo20>" in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Dr. William Weppner, associate professor (General Internal Medicine) is lead author of "A Longitudinal Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Inhaler Devices in a National Health System<https://bit.ly/3IXlHAa>" in JAMA.


In the news
Dr. Christopher Damman, clinical associate professor (Gastroenterology) is quoted in "Is it possible to lose weight on an 'Ozempic' diet?<https://bbc.in/3IWpUUV>" from BBC Health.

Dr. Rajnish Mehrotra, professor and head (Nephrology) was interviewed for "Building a Unified Future: The ASN Journal Portfolio 2 Years In<https://bit.ly/3KJ9aRB>" in Kidney News Online.


Events of interest
Medicine Grand Rounds
The 2025 recipients of our Equity Academic Scholar Awards (Drs. Justin Bullock, assistant professor, Nephrology; Tijana Milinic, acting assistant professor, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine; and Khai Tram, acting instructor, Allergy and Infectious Diseases) will be presenting Medicine Grand Rounds<https://medicine.uw.edu/grand-rounds/2025/easa> on Oct. 17, 12-1pm in D209 (Turner Auditorium) or via zoom<https://washington.zoom.us/j/812197730>



Indigenous People's Day
Monday, Oct. 13 is Indigenous People's Day. More information and local celebrations are listed on our website<https://bit.ly/4q65xp4>.


Weekly Calendar, October 13-17, 2025
Our events calendar is posted on our website<https://medicine.uw.edu/news/trumba-calendar>.


Coming up
New faculty welcome and orientation
New faculty who have joined the Department of Medicine since October 1, 2024, are welcomed and encouraged to attend a new faculty welcome and orientation workshop.
Topics include career development perspectives and resources, clinical programs introduction, and opportunities and resources for educators. Breakout sessions will be available based on career interests. Oct. 31, 8:30-12pm, UWMC-Montlake Campus, South Campus Center 301. Please RSVP<https://bit.ly/4g8AS5V> and contact Dr. Cynthia Ko<mailto:cwko at uw.edu>, associate chair for faculty affairs, if you have any questions.

________________________________

Medicine Grand Rounds
Upcoming 2025 Grand Rounds:
Fialkow Scholar Award presentation (Jennifer Ross), Nov. 7
Kirby Lecture (Yonatan Grad, Harvard), Dec. 5
Title TBD (Reena Mehra), Dec. 19

________________________________

Amy Fields, Editor
amyf at uw.edu<mailto:amyf at uw.edu>


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