Chancellor’s Innovation Circle Faculty Working Group Steering Committee
JOHN AKIN Austin H. Carr Distinguished Professor and Chair Department of Economics John Akin is serving his tenth year as Chair of the Economics Department. He received his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Michigan and taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin before coming to UNC in 1973. Much of his research and teaching have focused on financing and organizing health systems in developing countries. He has twice spent two year periods at the World Bank, once in the headquarters in D.C. designing the Bank's health financing guidelines and once in Uganda directing health reform activities in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. In 1989 he and a group of colleagues at the Carolina Population Center designed and initiated a recurring survey of health and nutrition information for China. That survey, the China Health and Nutrition Survey, continues to the present. He is married to Ella Akin, a Data Quality Assurance Manager in the UNC School of Medicine.
RICHARD BOUCHER William Rand Kenan Professor of Medicine Director, Cystic Fibrosis/Pulmonary Research and Treatment Center Co-Director, UNC Gene Therapy Center Director, NC BioStart Dr. Boucher is a pioneer in gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. He and his colleagues have been instrumental in developing strategies for clinical deployment of gene therapy techniques in inherited disease and are now focusing these same tools and expertise on the treatment of lung cancer and malignant pleural effusions. He has compared the transduction of non-small lung cancer cells by adenoviral and retroviral vectors and found that Ad vectors transduce squamous, adenoquamous and malignant mesothelial cells better than adenocarcinoma or large cells. Sensitive cells appear to have specificity for the Ad fiber knob. Retroviral transduction appears to be more efficient for adenocarcinoma cells metastic to the pleural space. Further investigation of the use of retroviral gene transfer in malignant pleural effusions demonstrated proteoglycans/glycosaminoglycans in effusions were inhibitory to viral transduction due to direct interaction with the vector. These results suggested that drainage of the pleural cavity may be necessary before attempting retroviral gene transfer into metastatic tumor cells. Dr. Boucher has also explored the transfer of several pro-drug metabolizing enzymes into