Meet Physicians and Scientists

Stacy Waters, MBA, has been named the new vice president of Duke Health Development and Alumni Affairs (DHDAA), effective November 4, 2024.

Clinicians, researchers, and educators at Duke University School of Medicine and across Duke Health are using artificial intelligence (AI) to schedule surgeries more efficiently, give students immediate feedback on academic writing, and help speed up drug discovery.

School of Medicine Dean Mary E. Klotman, MD, announced this week that Duke’s first Presidential Distinguished Chair will be named in honor of outgoing Chancellor for Health Affairs A. Eugene Washington, MD, and his wife, Marie.

The anonymous donor who established the inaugural Presidential Distinguished Chair in early 2021 said the gift was intended to support superb science and to honor the Washingtons. The professorship will be known as A. Eugene and Marie Washington Presidential Distinguished Chair.

This spring, 18 faculty members in the Duke University School of Medicine have been awarded distinguished professorships.

Diego Bohórquez, PhD, associate professor in medicine, has become known as a “gut-brain neuroscientist.” His team has shown that neuropod cells, a type of sensor cell in the gut, communicate with the brain and help influence decision making about food. This work opens up the possibility of targeting the gut to treat mental health disorders and has been recognized by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the New Yorker, and more.

To improve the survival of patients with brain tumors, Vidya Chandramohan, PhD, focuses on developing bacterial toxin-based therapies for glioblastoma.

In a daring yet successful experiment back in 1995, Matthias Gromeier, MD, discovered that genetic recombination of poliovirus with a distant relative, human rhinovirus type 2, eliminates the disease-causing capacity of poliovirus. Yet, the modified virus retains the ability to infect and damage cancerous cells, owing to their abnormal “wiring,” and—more importantly—provides powerful immune stimulation by inducing host antiviral defenses.

Gifts from generous donors have helped researchers who are working to answer basic questions about the human brain—answers that could lead to important discoveries in disease and improve patient outcomes.

For patients who find themselves slowly beginning to lose vision, today’s doctors have gene replacement therapy as a treatment option. However, there’s a small window of time when the therapy will work best, meaning if a patient isn’t seen soon enough, vision cannot be restored.

Finding a way to slow or even stop Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most difficult challenges facing medicine today. Many research and clinical trials have led to promising results over the years, while others have produced disappointing findings. But what if there were a way to get more out of these trials—even the ones with less-than-promising results? What if there were a better way to determine if a drug is hitting its intended target?