Spotlight on the SUS Mid Career Award
2021-2022
Hari Nathan, MD, PhD, FACS, FSSO
University of Michigan
Project: Fulfilling the Promise of Hospital Consolidation to Improve Clinical Quality and Costs
Dr. Hari Nathan is an Associate Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Surgery at the University of Michigan. He was trained in general surgery at The Johns Hopkins University, where he also received a PhD in Clinical Investigation, and in surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Nathan’s clinical focus is on tumors of the liver, bile duct, pancreas, and stomach.
Dr. Nathan’s research seeks to identify strategies to improve outcomes and control costs for surgical care. His work has been funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institute on Aging. He was previously awarded the 2018 American College of Surgeons Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson II Promising Investigator Award. Dr. Nathan is also involved in regional efforts to improve healthcare delivery. He is the Director of the Michigan Value Collaborative, a coalition of 100 Michigan hospitals and 40 physician organizations focused on improving the value of healthcare. He is also the Co-Chair of the Cancer Steering Committee for the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative (MSQC) and directs MSQC efforts to improve pancreatectomy care across Michigan.
The research project supported by the SUS Mid-Career Award seeks to elucidate strategies implemented by high-performing hospital networks to optimize the delivery of surgical care. Through quantitative and qualitative approaches, the research team will identify opportunities for hospital networks to improve surgical quality, reduce costs, and promote equity.
2020-2021
Harald C. Ott, MD
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Project: Acute and chronic effects of e-cigarette use on the lung
2019-2020
Ankush Gosain, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics
Division of Pediatric Surgery, Department of Surgery
Children’s Foundation Research Institute, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital
Project: Neural Crest Cell and Extracellular Matrix Interactions in Hirschsprung Disease
Dr. Gosain directs Pediatric Surgery Research at the Children’s Foundation Research Institute of the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital. His basic science laboratory focuses on Enteric Nervous System and Gastrointestinal Mucosal Immune development and function as they relate to congenital and acquired disease in children. As a practicing Pediatric Surgeon-Scientist with a clinical focus on congenital colorectal diseases, he has a unique perspective to understand the mechanisms responsible for aberrant ENS development and how these impact children. The long-term goal of his research is to gain an understanding of the interactions between the Enteric Nervous System and Gastrointestinal Immune System in both development and disease to permit the generation of novel neuro-immunomodulatory therapies that may potentially target a broad range of congenital and acquired pediatric gastrointestinal tract diseases (e.g. Hirschsprung disease, Necrotizing Enterocolitis, Intestinal Atresia, Motility Disorders, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, etc.).
Spotlight on the SUS Junior Faculty Research Scholar Award
Sponsored by an educational grant from the SUS Foundation
2021-2022
Samilia Obeng-Gysai, MD
SUS Mentor: William Carson, MD
Project: Examining Biological Correlates of Social Determinants of Health in Triple Negative Breast Cancer Patients
Dr. Samilia Obeng-Gyasi is a fellowship trained breast surgical oncologist at The Ohio State University within the Division of Surgical Oncology. Her practice is focused on surgery for breast cancer and benign breast diseases. She obtained her B.S. in Biology with highest distinction and departmental honors from Indiana University-Bloomington and her MD from The University of Michigan. She completed her general surgery residency at the Cleveland Clinic and a Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) accredited breast surgical oncology fellowship at Duke University. Due to her interest in health services research, after finishing her residency, she completed a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As a health disparities and health equity researcher, the overarching goal of her work is to understand how ancestry, social determinants of health, behavior and stress interact to influence cancer initiation and progression through the concepts of allostatic load, social genomics and epigenomics. Under the mentorship of Dr William Carson, her URM Junior Faculty Award project will focus on the collection of biological correlates of social determinant of health among women with triple negative breast cancer.
2021-2022
Priya Dedhia, MD, PhD
SUS Sponsor: Allan Tsung. MD
Research mentor: Matthew Ringel, MD; William Carson, MD
Project: Wnt and IGF2 in adrenocortical carcinoma metastatic progression
Dr. Priya Dedhia, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology at The Ohio State University. As an endocrine surgeon, her clinical and research efforts focus on improving treatment options available to patients with endocrine thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenal disease. Her background in cancer biology and generation of patient-derived organoids uniquely positions her to develop models for difficult to study endocrine cancers.
Dr. Dedhia completed her MD and PhD at University of Pennsylvania, where she used cell lines and mouse models to study mechanisms of oncogenesis in acute myeloid leukemia. This experience provided her with a strong foundation and framework to study oncogenic transformation. During her General Surgery residency at the University of Michigan, she generated and characterized 3-dimensional organoid models from pluripotent stem cells and from primary patient tissues. This work, which was supported by the American College of Surgeons Resident Research Award, showed that organoids retain many features of the original tumor and can provide unique biological insights that are lacking in 2-dimensional culture systems or mouse models.
Using these experiences, she has developed organoid models of adrenocortical carcinoma and medullary thyroid cancer. This proposal focuses on determining the contribution of Wnt and IGF2, poncogenic pathways known to be dysregulated in adrenocortical carcinoma, in metastatic progression using a novel in vitro metastasis platform. Dr. Dedhia’s long-term goal is to develop patient-derived tumor organoids to predict responses to different chemotherapeutic agents and to identify tailored treatment regimens for each patient.
2020-2021
Philip Spanheimer, MD
SUS Member Sponsor: Ronald Weigel, MD
Research Mentor: Charles Perou, MD
Project: TFAP2C Regulates Estrogen Responsive Transcriptomic States in Luminal Breast Cancer
Dr. Spanheimer graduated from Duke University and the University of Iowa College of Medicine. He did his General Surgery Residency at the University of Iowa including a T32 research fellowship. Following residency, he completed a Complex General Surgical Oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology and Endocrine Surgery and a member of the breast cancer research group in Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This proposal focuses on regulation of estrogen response and distinct gene expression patterns at the single cell level within heterogenous breast cancers. He will be mentored by Dr Charles Perou, who was the first to describe breast cancer subtypes based on gene expression patterns, and focuses on using genomics, genetics, and cell biology to characterize the biological diversity of human tumors and develop improved treatments that are specific for tumor subtype and for each patient. Dr Spanheimer believes that a granular understanding of regulation of global expression patterns resulting in key phenotypic traits, such as estrogen response, will identify mechanisms of resistance to therapy, patients at risk for treatment failure, and provide targets for novel therapeutics.
2019-2020
Alex Cuenca, MD, PhD
Mentor: James Markmann, MD
SUS Member Sponsor: James Markmann, MD
Project: The role of adjuvant induced myeloid-derived suppressor cells in allograft tolerance.
Following graduation from New College of Florida, Dr. Cuenca completed both his medical school and general surgery residency at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He obtained a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology with a dissertation focused on the neonatal innate immunity and sepsis during his research hiatus from clinical training, as well as an NIH F32 grant to support his efforts. Following the completion of his general surgery residency, he subsequently completed a pediatric surgery fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. Due to his interest in pediatric hepatobiliary disease, immunology, and transplant surgery, he ultimately decided to pursue an abdominal transplant surgery fellowship and will complete his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in July of 2019. He will start as an assistant professor of surgery in August of 2019 at Boston Children’s Hospital, where he will continue the work that he started at MGH.
The focus of the proposal will be on the role of innate immunity in allograft tolerance. As innate immunity coordinates the adaptive immune response towards either allograft rejection or tolerance, the goal of the study will be to determine if an adjuvant can be administered to condition the transplant recipient towards a more tolerogenic state. His mentor and SUS sponsor for this project is Dr. James F Markmann, a NIH funded surgeon-scientist and expert in transplant immunology at MGH. Ultimately, Dr. Cuenca’s vision is to expand this work to examine other adjuvants that may be used to augment innate immune suppressor cell populations in order to promote transplant tolerance and decrease the overall burden of necessary but deleterious immunosuppressive medication regimens.
Spotlight on the SUS Resident Scholar Awards
Sponsored by an educational grant from
SUS Foundation
2021-2022
Mohammed Olufemi Suraju, MD, MSc
Research Mentor: Ronald Weigel, MD
Dr. Suraju is a third-year general surgery resident at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics with a specialty interest in surgical oncology, and a strong motivation to pursue a career as a surgeon-scientist. With the support of this award, Dr. Suraju will be investigating the role of SUMO-conjugated ETV1 in breast cancer under the mentorship of Dr. Ronald Weigel. Their work will shed insight on a mechanism of oncogenesis driving two aggressive forms of breast cancer-HER2+ and triple negative subtypes, and may provide a rationale to target the SUMO pathway as a novel treatment for breast cancer. Dr. Suraju’s academic training to date includes undergraduate at University of Houston (BSc.), graduate school at Texas Southern University (MSc.), and medical school at University of Virginia School of Medicine (MD).
2020-2021
W. James Melvin, MD
Research Mentor and Member Sponsor: Katherine Gallagher, MD
Dr. W. James Melvin, M.D. is a 4th year general surgery resident at the University of Michigan. He graduated from the Ohio State University School of Medicine and studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. His primary mentor is Katherine Gallagher, M.D., an SUS member and Associate Professor of Vascular Surgery at the University of Michigan. Dr. Melvin is studying the role of transforming growth factor β (TGFβ)-mediated pathologic inflammation in diabetic wounds. The Gallagher Lab is investigating the use of topical anti-TGFβ nanoparticles targeted at macrophages to mitigate this inflammation and improve wound healing.
2019-2020
Austin Dosch, MD
Mentor: Nipun Merchant, MD
SUS Member Sponsor: Nipun Merchant, MD
Dr. Dosch has completed three years of residency training in General Surgery at the University of California, Irvine, where he developed a strong interest in surgical oncology and hepatobiliary diseases. In the past two years, he has been working as a post-doctoral research fellow in the laboratory of his mentor, Dr. Nipun Merchant, at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The lab is interested in elucidating the molecular mechanisms of therapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer. Specifically, Dr. Dosch’s project is focused on how the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1 influences tumor-stromal interactions to promote resistance to cytotoxic chemotherapy. Receipt of this award from the SUS will help greatly in the goal to further understand the phenomenon of stromal-mediated therapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer and also provide Dr. Dosch the important foundation to become the academic surgeon-scientist he aspires to be.
Spotlight on the SUS Resident Scholar Awards
Sponsored by an educational grant from
KARL STORZ
2021-2022
Alexandra Ladd, MD
SUS Mentor: Ali Zarrinpar, MD
Project Title: Utilization of visual artificial intelligence to improve intraoperative identification of biliary anatomy
Alexandra Ladd received her Bachelor of Science in molecular and cellular biology from Johns Hopkins University. She earned her medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is currently a fourth-year general surgery resident at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. She is working with her mentor, Dr. Ali Zarrinpar, on the utilization of visual artificial intelligence to improve intraoperative identification of biliary anatomy. The aim of the project is to use data collected from near-infrared fluorescence cholangiography (NIRFC) images during laparoscopic cholecystectomy to train artificial intelligence (AI) models to interpret biliary anatomy and identify the critical view of safety in real time, thus improving the safety of this operation.
2020-2021
Saba Balvardi, MD
Mentor: Liane Feldman, MD
Project: Effect of video-based guided self-reflection on intraoperative performance: a pilot randomized controlled trial
2019-2020
Brian Fleischer, MD
Mentor: John Alverdy, MD
SUS Member Sponsor: John Alverdy, MD
Project: Analyzing the Sequelae of Non-Native Geometric Constructs on Bowel and its Effects on Anastomotic Leak
Dr. Fleischer was born in New York City and grew up in Suffern, NY, a suburb located approximately 20 miles northwest of Manhattan. After graduating from high school he attended Cornell University for both his undergraduate (B.S. Biological Engineering, Class of 2012) and graduate studies (M.Eng. Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2013). His education then took him to New Orleans where he enrolled at the Tulane University School of Medicine in the fall of 2013, culminating in his graduation in the spring of 2017. Following graduation Dr. Fleischer moved to Chicago to begin work as a General Surgery Resident at the University of Chicago. He has completed the first two clinical years of my residency and is about to embark on a two-year research fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. John Alverdy. His project is entitled “Analyzing the Sequelae of Non-Native Geometric Constructs on Bowel and its Effects on Anastomotic Leak”. Dr. Fleischer will be utilizing an in vivo mouse model, coupled with ex vivo analysis and computational simulations, to study how the various anastomotic connections we create in gastrointestinal surgery perturb the flow of intestinal contents and create unintended centers of stress in the bowel wall that may affect the rate of anastomotic leak.