UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | SPRING 2016 PITTMED WHAT THIS FISH TELLS US ABOUT YOUR BRAIN OVER THE TRANSOM THEY WERE THERE EDITOR’S NOTE RECENT MAGAZINE HONORS Perhaps you remember this photo of pediatric For 16-plus years, the name Macy Levine, MD ’43, Carnegie Science Center neurosurgeon A. Leland Albright from our has appeared on our masthead. Now the retired 2016 Science Communicator, Winter 2016 story “Where Others Don’t Go.” internist is retiring from his role with us. We Honorable Mention, Robyn K. Coggins Only after publication did we learn who the were blessed for all these years to have had his photographer was: longtime reader—and Pitt help with our obituaries section. He cared about CORRESPONDENCE Med contributor—Jim Judkis. what happened to his classmates and that their We gladly receive letters (which we may edit The photo was taken stories were told. for length, style, and clarity). in 1992. In it, Judkis’s This seems a good time to speak of transitions, Pitt Med son, Will, pictured with with the Match results in this issue. In Pitt Med’s 400 Craig Hall Albright, is undergoing editorial world, we’ve been boasting about our University of Pittsburgh a checkup months after own crop of up-and-comers: Our fall intern, Brady Pittsburgh, PA 15260 having a brain tumor Langmann, is at Esquire this semester; this summer Phone: 412-624-4152 Fax: 412-624-1021 removed by hyperfrac- he’ ll help out at CBS Evening News in New York. E-mail: [email protected] JUDKIS tionated radiation—a Spring intern Jessica Boddy will be at Science. pittmed.health.pitt.edu JIM therapy rarely used on And another from our ranks, Brett Murphy (A&S patients as young as Will, but one that Albright , ’13), after interning at CNET will be a Google For address corrections, or to change your recommended for him. To Judkis, the photograph News Lab Fellow with Investigative Reporters and print/online subscription preferences: represents a “sweet memory” and “a lot of happi- Editors—he is graduating from Berkeley’s J-school. Pitt Med Address Correction ness” following Will’s difficult, cancer-ridden tod- (We can’t help but mention one of his professors ATTN: Ashley Knoch dler years. It’s also a great depiction of Albright’s was Pitt Med magazine’s own Rebecca Skloot, M-200K Scaife Hall surgical hands, which Judkis marveled at. He MFA ’08, who has just announced that her best- University of Pittsburgh remembers Albright acting playfully the day selling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is Pittsburgh, PA 15261 the photo was taken—he made a paper airplane being made into a movie in which Oprah Winfrey Phone: 412-648-9059 for Will and flew it into the examination room. will star and executive produce.) E-mail: [email protected] Will, now in his mid-20s and healthy, “normally Speaking of Berkeley, Robin Mejia, veteran wouldn’t have any inclination to read Pitt Med contributor to the magazine, is walking out of there magazine,” says his father, “but he said, ‘I’m this spring with a PhD in biostatistics in hand. gonna read this’ when he saw the photo.” (She is, by the way, relocating to Pittsburgh . as is this editor, who has been telecommuting across 2,635 miles for 16 years.) —Erica Lloyd CARVING OUT TIME To everything there is a season. But lately, doesn’t it seem like you’ve got way too many things going on in the spring? There’s your kids’ graduations, grandkids’ graduations. Well, your alma mater is right there with you, crunch-timing for every new crop of MDs, turning their tassels with all the pomp and circumstance they deserve. So this year, Medical Alumni Weekend is moving to the fall. We hope you’ll find it easier to turn, turn, turn out for a little more relaxed time of year. So save the date! Medical Alumni Weekend September 23–25, 2016 For information: Ashley Knoch 412-648-9059 [email protected] PITTMED UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE MAGAZINE, SPRING 2016 VOL. 18, ISSUE 2 DE PARTME N T S OF NOTE 3 Randomization and big data sitting in a tree. Mama mimicry. CLOSE-UP 7 7 House-naming party. INVESTIGATIONS 8 Rebooting the immune system. Port in the storm for pneumonia. The immunological drama after trauma. ATTENDING 32 When patients become doctors. MATCH RESULTS 34 And they’re off! ALUMNI NEWS 36 12 Ebola and optimism. FE ATU R E S 34 Van Marter helps little breathers. Doctors Worth Loving 12 LAST CALL 40 An eye-opening new program pairs medical students with patients. Starzl-studded event. The relationship lasts for their entire med school career. BY ROBYN K. COGGINS FOR REAL! 40 1/2 Beauty marks. Fishing for Clarity 18 The big catch for understanding neurodegeneration seems to be a tiny organelle, i.e., the mitochondrion —and Pitt scientists are illuminating its missteps. In see-through zebra fish, they can spot what’s going wrong in real time, as no one has before. COVER STORY BY JILL NEIMARK 40 1/2 CONTRIBU TORS The No-Nonsense Pathologist 24 [Cover] Our cover model is a 6-day-old zebra fish. This portrait was snagged during a weeklong inter- national microscopy course at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, in Maine, co-led by Pitt cell In the ’60s, Emmanuel Farber’s studies in chemical carcinogenesis landed biologist SIMON WATKINS . Watkins created the image with MICHAEL DAVIS , of Nikon, and him on the committee that would pen perhaps the most important public SANDRA RIEGER , a Mount Desert faculty member. Watkins notes that some midnight oil was burned on the project; the image is a montaged 3D reconstruction, captured with an “exotic and highly health document of the century. The fiery Pitt pathology chair called “Bull!” specialized multiphoton microscope,” he says. “It’s actually part of a movie, in which the obvious paral- on Big Tobacco (and a lot more). lel between a zebra fish and a star destroyer is highlighted.” Yes, he is referring to Star Wars. You’ve gotta see the trailer: bit.ly/darthfish. BY ELAINE VITONE JILL NEIMAR K ’s [“Fishing for Clarity”] stories have appeared in Psychology Today, Scientific American, Science, and Discover. She enjoys science writing because it allows her to “find out fundamen - tal things about how the world works.” While researching her feature, Neimark found Pitt’s use of zebra 30 fish to visualize mitochondria “a truly disruptive technology.” Neimark also writes adult and children’s Thank You for Not Smoking fiction, including Book of the Month selection Bloodsong and Teachers’ Choice Award-winning When Nixon appointee Jesse Steinfeld took office as U.S. surgeon general, I Want Your Moo: A Story for Children about Self-Esteem. Neimark is based in Atlanta. ashtrays were scattered throughout his federal office suite. The Pitt A&S graduate cleaned house. He advocated for nonsmokers’ rights, warned COVER R against the impact of television violence on children, and more. Trawling for answers to neurodegeneration with zebra fish. (Cover: Simon Watkins, Michael Davis, Sandra Rieger. © 2016.) FOLLOW-UP BY THOMAS H. MAUGH II DEAN’S MESSAGE watch the ripples change their size PITTMED But never leave the stream Of warm impermanence and PUBLISHER So the days float through my eyes Arthur S. Levine, MD But the days still seem the same EDITOR IN CHIEF I —David Bowie, “Changes” Erica Lloyd ART DIRECTOR A decade ago, a group of geneticists from Elena Gialamas Cerri around the world embarked on the largest-ever SENIOR EDITOR search for the genetic basis of schizophrenia. FRANZOS Elaine Vitone They found associations in more than a hun- JOSHUA ASSOCIATE EDITOR dred disparate chromosomal areas. Surprisingly, the association that was far and away Robyn K. Coggins the most damning to these patients was a locus on chromosome 6 that’s home to most CONTRIBUTING EDITOR of the known genes that govern, of all things, the immune system. Chuck Staresinic This winter, Aswin Sekar, a bright graduate student in the lab of Harvard geneti- INTERNS cist Steven McCarroll, spent a weekend holed away on his couch in Boston, combing Imaz Athar Jessica Boddy through data; he compared patients with schizophrenia against controls in a sample of 64,000 people from 22 countries and found a correlation between risk for schizophre- PRODUCTION MANAGER Chuck Dinsmore nia and a variant of a gene called C4, which lives on chromosome 6. A protein that it encodes was known to mark cellular debris for disposal by the immune system and CIRCULATION MANAGER Ashley Knoch then discard it. This same protein, it turns out, has evolved in us to serve in another integral cleanup job—in the brain. EDITORIAL ADVISORS Adults have 40 percent fewer brain connections than newborns do. From infancy Lisa Barsom, PhD ’97 through adolescence, an elaborate pruning of synaptic connections takes place. The Jeremy Berg, PhD Michelle Broido, PhD connections that prove most useful stay with us—a classic case of use it or lose it. A Nancy Davidson, MD mouse model showed that a protein encoded by C4 is what marks the synapses for Paula Davis, MA pruning. The Sekar data suggest that people with schizophrenia are more likely to have Joan Harvey, MD David Kupfer, MD C4 expressed more often, and that probably results in runaway pruning. Although Joshua Levenson, MD ’11 not yet proven, it has been suggested that the regions of the brain that are excessively David Lewis, MD pruned may correspond to regions thought to be involved in schizophrenia. Margaret C.