As the new academic year is set to begin, the innovative work of four University of Vermont research teams - including two groups from the College of Medicine - is moving closer to the marketplace in the wake of a Shark Tank-like competition called SPARK-VT held earlier this summer.

A heart attack continues to harm cardiac muscle even after the immediate problem – a blocked artery – is fixed, but University of Vermont researchers have developed a new biologic drug that can preserve blood vessels critical to the body’s blood-pumping system.

The University of Vermont College of Medicine welcomed its largest first-year class in history on August 8, 2016 for Orientation 2016, a week-long course that launches their medical school career. The Class of 2020’s 120 members were selected from roughly 6,000 applicants and 619 interviewees.

University of Vermont Cellular, Molecular and Biomedical Sciences graduate student Jessica Sheehe has come to know all of the quirks of a protein called PKG: She’s responsible for expressing and purifying PKG in the lab and ensuring that the billions of insect cells tricked into producing this protein remain healthy.

You’ve been working for a long time – years and years – to get to this point. It’s easy to get lost in the tangle of medical school applications and expectations, and trying to figure out an answer to the question, “What do they want?” But before you go any further, take a moment – breathe – and think about something else for a few minutes.

Traveling roughly 90 miles to the White River Junction, Vt.-based Veterans’ Administration Medical Center from the Burlington, Vt. area can be difficult, especially in winter. It’s even more challenging for the veteran who is living with chronic pain or has been diagnosed with a sleep disorder or cardiac arrhythmia.

When University of Vermont neurologist Michael Hehir, M.D., treats patients with a relatively rare neuromuscular disorder called Myasthenia Gravis, he has to weigh the benefits of the medications he prescribes against their typical side effects.

Cholera outbreaks continue to plague areas like South Sudan, Eastern Uganda, and Kerala, India, but there’s hope for addressing this infectious disease: Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved the only vaccine for use in the U.S. to protect against cholera infection. The University of Vermont’s Vaccine Testing Center was one of three national sites to test the vaccine – called Vaxchora – for effectiveness.

In May, Vermont became the 28th state to adopt legislation mandating reporting of breast density information to patients. New University of Vermont (UVM) research - published July 18, 2016 in the Annals of Internal Medicine - shows that density assessment, as currently practiced, is subjective and highly variable across radiologists and warns of the implications of relying on the subjective measurement for clinical decision-making for breast cancer screening.

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.