SUPPORTING RESEARCH

Why is support for research a constant and continuing priority? Because research is the Chobanian & Avedisian School’s very foundation. Without research, treatments for patients will never improve.

We are a recognized research powerhouse. Our strength lies in both our numbers and in our interdisciplinary approach. Take cancer—an enemy we fight on many fronts. Research finds the molecular biomarkers that signal the presence of disease. Research tracks remissions across years and across populations. Research sifts through billions of lines of genetic code to find the A, C, U, or G that is out of place.

We have physicians and scientists working from all of these angles and many, many more. Furthermore, we provide an environment—in this case, the BU-BMC Cancer Center— that facilitates collaboration, moving research findings more quickly into our clinics and classrooms.

Another example is addiction. Many of our faculty provide care to and advocacy on behalf of people living with addiction in our local communities. At the same time, they are looking for ways to treat chronic pain. To name just one example: Venetia (Vanna) Zachariou, PhD, the chair of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics and physiology and biophysics, is working to understand intracellular adaptations to peripheral nerve injury and/ or prolonged opioid exposure, in order to develop novel therapeutics for chronic pain conditions and pain/addiction comorbidities.

Discovery is an essential part of medicine—but it is not free. A breakthrough in the lab might take decades to translate into a marketable drug. Because government support is unpredictable, philanthropy is increasingly essential. Our efforts, helped in part by strong donor support, have led to the Chobanian & Avedisian School being ranked 32nd among research medical schools in the 2023 U.S. News & World Report.

In 2022, Nancy J. Sullivan, a nationally renowned infectious diseases expert and chief of the Biodefense Research Section at the federal government’s Vaccine Research Center, was named the new director of BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), a leading academic research center that allows scientists to study infectious diseases and pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, Ebola, and Zika, in a protected environment.

The NEIDL holds a prominent position in BU’s Strategic Plan for 2030, given its importance to understanding and developing coordinated responses to emerging threats from infectious diseases. Sullivan’s longtime focus has been the fight against Ebola, Marburg, and other hemorrhagic fever viruses. She was recently named as the inaugural holder of an Edward Avedisian Professorship.

LEVERAGING A PERSONAL STRUGGLE FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD Richard Shipley (Questrom’68,’72, Hon.’22)

When BU Trustee Emeritus Richard Shipley was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he did what anyone would do: he started researching his options. But he found that it was nearly impossible to obtain a full list, much less accurate pros and cons, of the diagnostic and treatment options available. The data that was available was often biased, poorly organized, and written in language that required a medical degree to understand. In 2016, the Shipley Foundation acted on its mission of improving the diagnosis and treatment of disease by creating the Shipley Prostate Cancer Research Center at the Chobanian & Avedisian School, which explores new prostate cancer treatments and generates information to help educate men about the breadth of available options so they can, with their healthcare team, find the treatment that works best for them.

ON THE FRONT LINE: CANCER

The BU-BMC Cancer Center brings together a diverse group of researchers from across the BU community who are involved in cancer research, broadly defined—ranging from basic laboratory science to patient care to population-based studies. The Center embodies BU’s tradition of collaborative, interdisciplinary research, including inquiries focused on understanding the molecular events associated with cancer initiation and progression in high-risk populations, and the direct translation of these findings into the clinical realm. The Center also draws upon the richly diverse patient population of Boston Medical Center to ask and answer questions about cancer in new ways. For example: How can revolutionary new cancer therapies that have only been tested on small, selected groups of patients be made available to much larger populations—and thereby reduce disparities in health outcomes? Pictured left to right, below, are the Center’s three codirectors: Julie Palmer (SON’80, SPH’85), Matthew Kulke, and Gerald V. Denis.