Department of Medicine

The National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review has announced that internationally renowned immunobiologist Mercedes Rincon, Ph.D., University of Vermont professor of medicine, has been appointed chairperson of the Cellular and Molecular Immunology-A Study Section, Center for Scientific Review, the portal for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications. She is serving a one-year term from July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017.

Jen Lavoie’s daughter began showing symptoms of Crohn’s disease at age nine, but most of her clinicians found nothing wrong with her, and one suggested the girl’s gastrointestinal discomfort was “all in her head,” a symptom of stress.

Kidney stones occur in one out of 11 people during a lifetime. The number of people forming stones has doubled in the past 15 years. A person who has had a kidney stone has a 50 percent chance of forming another stone over 5 to 10 years. The good news is that for many people, another kidney stone can be prevented or the number reduced by simple measures.

Researchers might make wonderful discoveries in the lab, but if those ideas never reach the clinical arena, they can’t help patients.

Are we genetically doomed when the double helix we all identify with DNA breaks? No, say a team of researchers led by University of Vermont (UVM) immunologists, who discovered a novel mechanism that provides life support to cells while DNA double-strand break repairs are in progress.