Six students in the Larner College of Medicine’s class of 2027 presented their research on November 7 at the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation Grand Rounds. Cassandra Chin, Ivan Davis, Oona Davies, Aaron Dees, Nick Jowkar, and Marie Lim showcased work they participated in last summer with Bruce Beynnon, Ph.D., professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation and director of research in the McClure Musculoskeletal Research Center at UVM.
The projects explored the risk factors that predispose people to knee trauma and investigated how a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) leads to osteoarthritis of the knee. The students submitted their work for publication in orthopedic research journals and conference presentations; to date, the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) has accepted Dees’s and Lim’s abstracts for presentation at the ORS 2025 annual conference.
On December 11, 2024, University of Vermont graduate students took part in the UVM Graduate Hooding Ceremony, an annual event held for UVM students who graduated in August or October or who are pending January graduates. Larner and affiliated programs include graduates in clinical and translational science, pharmacology, public health, and medical science master’s programs, as well as the cross-college interdisciplinary neuroscience and cellular, molecular, and biomedical sciences Ph.D. programs. Among these six programs, 53 students were honored for graduating in August and October or pending graduation in January of 2025.
Larner collaborates on inter-disciplinary cross-departmental programs with the UVM Graduate College, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and Professional and Continuing Education.
The Larner College of Medicine Teaching Academy has welcomed eight new members and recognized three notable level advancements in its fall 2024 cohort. These individuals were selected for their dedication to medical education and their contributions to teaching excellence.
This year’s cohort includes:
Michelle Cangiano, M.D. (Family Medicine) - Advanced to Expert Teacher
Alan Chant, Ph.D. (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) - Inducted as Member
Benjamin Depo, M.D. (Internal Medicine) - Inducted as Member
Thomas Griffin, Ph.D. (Division of Public Health, Medicine) - Inducted as Member
Peter Jackson, M.D. (Psychiatry) - Inducted as Member
Shamima Khan, M.B.A., Ph.D. (Medicine) - Advanced to Expert Teacher
Pooria Khoshnoodi, M.D. (Pathology and Laboratory Medicine) - Inducted as Associate Member
Laura Mulvey, M.D. (Emergency Medicine) - Inducted as Member
Deirdre O’Reilly, M.D. (Pediatrics) - Advanced to Distinguished Educator
Adrienne Pahl, M.D. (Pediatrics) - Inducted as Member
Victoria Zhou, M.D. (Emergency Medicine) - Inducted as Associate Member
The inductees will be formally recognized at the annual Teaching Academy Induction and Award Ceremony on Friday, January 17, 2025, 12–1 p.m. in the Grand Maple Ballroom at the Dudley H. Davis Center at the University of Vermont.
Last week, the Larner community took a creative break to spread holiday cheer during the annual Larner Medical Student Council’s holiday card–making event. The service project, led by first-year community service chair Sidney Gregorek ’28, will place more than 54 winter greeting cards in the hands of low-income seniors, along with a grocery gift card and food access guide sponsored by HANDS (Helping and Nurturing Diverse Seniors).
The diverse imagination of the community drawn in colored pencils, markers, and crayons resulted in various themes, such as cozy clothing (mittens, winter hats), mountains, beverages (designer mugs of cocoa/coffee), gingerbread and snowperson doctors, and feline-faced reflections in an ornament.
HANDS is a charity that provides food and resources for people age 50+ who struggle with food insecurity in Chittenden County, Vermont.
As part of the “Season’s Eatings” project, during the holiday season HANDS asks volunteers to write warm notes in greeting cards, and then a $20 grocery card and food access resource guide is tucked inside and sent to area seniors in need of some holiday cheer. This year, the organization is hoping to reach 1,600 older Vermonters throughout Chittenden County.
Nimrat Chatterjee, Ph.D., M.Sc., assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the Larner College of Medicine, has been elected co-chair of the Membership and Professional Development Committee at the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society (EMGS). The society’s mission is to understand and mitigate the impacts of environmental exposures on the genome to protect human health through diverse and inclusive leadership in research, professional development, and collaboration.
The EMGS was founded in 1969 to provide a forum for the establishment and support of scientists in the field of environmental mutagenesis. Although the initial focus was on germ-cell mutagenesis, the interests of the society soon expanded to encompass all areas of mutagenesis, including mutational mechanisms, development of test methods, molecular epidemiology, biomarkers, and risk assessment.
Second-year Larner medical students Harsimran Multani, Jake Reigle, and Eunice Suberu worked on an AHEC summer research project exploring knowledge and experience with the Immigrant Health Insurance Plan (IHIP), which was enacted by the Vermont Legislature in 2022. Students sought input from key stakeholders through interviews and a statewide survey distributed to primary care providers, social workers, community partners, and Department of Vermont Health Access “Assisters,” who are trained to provide health insurance enrollment assistance and education.
Survey results indicated a high level of unfamiliarity with IHIP, with 88 percent of the medical provider respondents saying they are not familiar. Alicia Roderigue from the Office of the Health Care Advocate at Vermont Legal Aid assisted with this and several other AHEC student projects involving the intersection of health care and immigration law.
In addition to presenting at the Vermont Medical Society meeting, Multani, Reigle, and Suberu shared project findings with Department of Vermont Health Access leadership, and Suberu presented their poster at the Student National Medical Association regional conference in Boston on October 5, 2024.
Chronic pain significantly impacts rural populations in the United States, where access to effective pain management is often limited. A recent literature review in Healthcare, titled “Overcoming Barriers: A Comprehensive Review of Chronic Pain Management and Accessibility Challenges in Rural America,” by MS1 Maxwell Baker, highlights that rural residents experience a higher prevalence of chronic pain and more severe pain levels compared to urban counterparts.
Baker, a first-year medical student with a passion for health equity, noted that chronic pain affects 30.9 percent of rural residents—higher than the 19.6 percent in urban areas—and is linked to such factors as an aging population, physically demanding jobs, and geographic isolation, limiting care accessibility.. Rural health care systems face unique barriers, including a lack of pain specialists, limited access to non-pharmacologic treatments, and inadequate insurance coverage.
His work also found that chronic pain in rural communities is more commonly managed by primary care providers and is associated with less effective care, higher reliance on opioids and clinician burnout. Innovative approaches, like telehealth and integrated care models, show promise in addressing these disparities.
Baker’s paper underscores the urgent need for targeted interventions, enhanced provider education, and increased utilization of telehealth to improve outcomes for rural patients.
A paper titled “Movement of the endoplasmic reticulum is driven by multiple classes of vesicles marked by Rab-GTPases,” authored by John Salogiannis, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular physiology and biophysics, and members of his lab team—Allison (Morrissey) Langley, lab technician and Ph.D. candidate in cellular, molecular, and biomedical sciences; Sarah Abeling-Wang, lab research technician; and Erinn Wagner, UVM undergraduate biology major—was recently published in Molecular Biology of the Cell.
Salogiannis’s team discovered a new mechanism for endoplasmic reticulum (ER) movement, called “hitchhiking,” where ER tubules are pulled along microtubules by motile vesicles. This process, previously observed with Rab5- and Rab7-marked endosomes, has now been found to involve Rab6-marked post-Golgi vesicles. Unlike traditional ER movement methods like sliding or tip attachment complexes (TAC), this hitchhiking does not depend on interactions with endolysosomes.
UVM’s study highlights the importance of Rab6-vesicle motility for ER dynamics. Depleting Rab6 reduces ER movement, while relocating these vesicles causes ER to accumulate at the cell periphery. Only certain vesicle types, such as Rab1- and TGN46-marked vesicles, play a role in ER hitchhiking, while others do not. These findings shed light on an important new mode of ER transport, expanding our understanding of organelle dynamics.
In October, the University of Vermont Cancer Center (UVMCC) was awarded a 100+ Women Who Care grant to go toward its patient support fund. The $4,000 donation covers expenses to families impacted by cancer, such as transportation to appointments, nutritious groceries, medical equipment not covered by insurance, and hotel stays when family members must accompany patients for treatment. Nancy Gell, Ph.D., M.P.H., associate professor of rehabilitation and movement science at UVM’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences, made the nomination, and UVMCC social worker Amy Bertrand, M.S.W., presented information to the donors on the financial toxicity of cancer.
100+ Women Who Care-Chittenden County is a giving circle of women committed to advancing positive change in Vermont’s most populous county. They pool their resources to make significant quarterly gifts to nonprofits that have a strong presence in the region, serve diverse populations, and address significant needs.