Larner College of Medicine Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and UVM Cancer Center member Elias Klemperer, Ph.D., alongside Co-PI Matthew Carpenter, Ph.D. from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) have received a prestigious R01 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

Sprague's study, “Association Between False-Positive Results and Return to Screening Mammography in the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium Cohort,” published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that false-positive mammogram results are discouraging many women from returning for important follow-up screenings. Researchers say the additional imaging or biopsies performed after a suspicious finding often cause significant anxiety.

On Sunday, September 9, the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine, in collaboration with the UVM Cancer Center, the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, UVM’s Prism organization, and the UVM Health Network, proudly participated in Burlington’s 41st annual Pride Parade.

Art Papier, M.D.’88, was a first-year medical student when he attended a lecture by the late Lawrence Weed, M.D., which focused on the advantages of keeping detailed, shareable medical records to improve patient care. Papier was fascinated by Weed’s work. That fascination eventually led Papier to create a clinical decision tool that visually shows, describes, and categorizes thousands of diseases. The tool, VisualDx, today is used in clinics and medical schools throughout the nation and across the globe. It delivers time-sensitive, clinically relevant information for diagnosing and treating common and rare diseases and brings public health to the point of care.

Larner students work with real patients in the first year of medical school. In Doctoring in Vermont, a course that pairs students with physicians in the community, they provide direct patient care and practice history-taking and examination skills. First-year students also shadow nurses in the hospital, investigate social determinants of health, and do clinical work in community settings.

In a recent paper, titled “Vasohibin Inhibition Improves Myocardial Relaxation in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction,” Matthew Caporizzo, Ph.D., assistant professor of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, along with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, have created a powerful small molecule vasohibin inhibitor (VASHi) to block MTN detyrosination in live animals. Detyrosination is the enzymatic removal of the tyrosine (an amino acid that is used by cells to build proteins) residue from the C-terminal end of tubulin (a protein that forms microtubules), which makes the microtubules sticky, impeding the heart cells from relaxing properly.

Health equity improves when the health sciences workforce reflects the diversity of the community and health care systems invest in marginalized communities. The Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at UVM, along with the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and the College of Education and Social Services, has recently been granted a substantial award by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—an R25 Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA)—to sponsor a new mentorship and science enrichment cohort program, New American Youth on the Rise (NAYR), aimed at guiding girls from immigrant backgrounds into college careers in health sciences.