Illinois Medicine

I L L I N O I S M E D I C I N E 11 HE COLLEGE OF MEDICINE CHICAGO, medical schools at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, and their affiliated hospitals and clinics are in the process of enrolling 150,000 Illinoisans in the national Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program. The consortium, one of several such groups across the nation, will help bring 1 million or more participants over the next five years into a research effort to improve the prevention and treatment of disease based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment and genetics. The Illinois consortium received $4.3 million in fiscal year 2016 and a total of approximately $45 million over five years. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle for each person. "With UIC's unique ability to reach diverse communities through our clinics throughout Chicago, and through our regional College of Medicine campus in Peoria, we are well-positioned to help answer the questions that will help bring precision medicine to everyone," says Robert Barish, MD, vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. UI Health's 13 Mile Square Health Centers are federally qualified neighborhood clinics located in some of Chicago's most underserved communities, notes Robert Winn, MD, associate vice chancellor for community based practice at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, director of the University of Illinois Cancer Center, and a co-principal investigator on the grant along with Martha Daviglus, MD, PhD, and Denise Hynes, PhD, MPH, RN. "Our Mile Square Health Centers reach into communities that carry an exceptionally heavy burden of disease," says Winn, noting they serve African-American neighborhoods on the city's south and west sides where cancer, diabetes, heart disease and asthma rates can be more than twice as high as in other populations. Volunteer participants in the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program are contributing a wide range of health, environment and lifestyle information. The participants will also answer questions about their health history and status, share their genomic and other biological information, and grant access to their clinical data. COM Enrolls Participants in National Precision Medicine Initiative T A STARVING STEM CELLS MAY STRENGTHEN BLOOD VESSELS OLLEGE OF MEDICINE RESEARCHERS have uncovered how changes in metabolism of human embryonic stem cells help coax them to mature into specific cell types and may improve their function in engineered organs or tissues. The group focused on the role of glutamine in stem cells because the amino acid is known to serve as a major source of carbon used to make cellular building blocks in cancer cells — which, like stem cells, also grow very rapidly. They traced the path of glutamine in human embryonic stem cells and found that it wound up in the cells' mitochondria. When the researchers selectively withheld glutamine from human embryonic stem cells growing in the lab, they noticed that levels of an important regulatory molecule called OCT4 decreased significantly, and the cells began to differentiate. "When you starve the cells of glutamine, you dial down that OCT4 switch so that the cells can then mature," says Jalees Rehman, MD, who led the study, published in the journal Cell Reports. "To successfully engineer new blood vessels or tissues for diseased patients, we need to help stem cells adapt to the metabolic environment and demands of the mature organs." C BNORMALITIES IN BRAIN REGIONS involved in forming insights may help explain why some people with anorexia nervosa have trouble recognizing their dangerous, dysfunctional eating habits, according to a study of structural brain connectivity led by researchers at the College of Medicine Chicago and UCLA. Study participants with anorexia nervosa who scored lowest on a test measuring their ability to form insights had more connective abnormalities than other patients in brain regions linked to error detection and conflict monitoring as well as self-reflection, according to the research, published in the journal Psychological Medicine. "The brains of people with anorexia nervosa who have poor insight may not generate an 'error message' when told, for example, that they are putting themselves at serious risk for death by severe restricting," says Alex Leow, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and bioengineering in the COM and corresponding author on the paper. ABNORMALITIES FOUND IN 'INSIGHT' AREAS OF THE BRAIN IN ANOREXIA

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