2019 DaCCoTA Annual Symposium
The first DaCCoTA Annual Symposium was held at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences on June 8, 2019.
Schedule
8:30 a.m. – 9 a.m. – Opening Remarks from Dr. Wynne, Dean and VP for Health Affairs, and Dr. Basson, Director and Lead PI of the DaCCoTA, Room E101
9 a.m. – 10 a.m. – Presentations from the Ready-to-Go and Feasibility Pilot Grant awardees, Chair – Colin Combs, PhD (UND), Room E101
- 9 a.m. – 9:10 a.m. – Sanku Mallik, PhD (NDSU) – Recipient of a Ready-to-Go Pilot Grant - Nanoparticles for drug delivery to triple-negative breast cancer
- 9:10 a.m. – 9:20 a.m. – Estelle Leclerc, PhD (NDSU) - Recipient of a Feasibility Pilot Grant - RAGE subcellular localization in human melanoma tumors
- 9:20 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. – Lyle Best, MD (TMCC) - Recipient of a Feasibility Pilot Grant - Tissue and genotype specific expression of C-reactive protein: relation to cancer biology
- 9:30 a.m. – 9:40 a.m. – Dharmakeerthi Nawarathna, PhD (NDSU)- Recipient of a Feasibility Pilot Grant - Biomanufacturing of safe and non-viral CAR T-cells for cancer immunotherapy
- 9:40 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. – Trung Le, PhD (NDSU)- Recipient of a Feasibility Pilot Grant - Point-of-care obstruction sleep apnea (OSA) monitoring and forecasting platform for cancer patients
- 9:50 a.m. – 10 a.m. – Stefan Vetter, PhD (NDSU) - Recipient of a Feasibility Pilot Grant - Prognostic and therapeutic value of two IDG-focus kinases in breast cancer treatment
10 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. – Break
10:15 a.m. – 10:55 a.m. – Presentations from DaCCoTA Scholars and Clinical Research Opportunities Program Awardees, Chair – Don Sens, PhD, Room E101
- 10:15 a.m. - 10:25 a.m. – Khosrow Rezvani, PhD (USD)– Recipient of a DaCCoTA Scholar’s Award– AKT/mTOR pathway in obesity and colorectal cancer: Molecular interconnections and potential clinical applications
- 10:25 a.m - 10:35 a.m. – Paola Vermeer, PhD (Sanford)- Recipient of a DaCCoTA Scholar’s Award - Tumor innervation in ovarian cancer
- 10:35 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. – Dan Steventon, DPT (Sanford) – Recipient of a Clinical Research Opportunities Award - Tools for monitoring chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN)
- 10:45 a.m. - 10:55 a.m. – Anu Gaba, MD (Sanford) – Recipient of a Clinical Research Opportunities Award -Breast cancer patterns and behavior in American Indians in the U.S.
10:55 a.m. – 11:40 a.m. – Descriptions of the various resources offered throughout the DaCCoTA network, Chair – Barry Milavetz, PhD (UND), Room E101
11:40 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – Lunch
12:15 p.m. – 1:05 p.m. – Keynote address from Don Warne, MD, MPH (UND) – Community-Engaged Approaches to Address Cancer Disparities in the Northern Plains, Room E101
American Indians in North Dakota and South Dakota suffer from numerous health disparities, including greater incidence of cancer and higher mortality rates. Through Community Engagement, the CTR has the opportunity to identify and pursue clinical and translational methods to reducing cancer disparities. In this session, we will highlight key disparities, promising practices, and our strategy to promote community-based, participatory research.
1:05 p.m. – 3:05 p.m. – Track 1 - Mentor Development for Clinical and Translational Researchers (Part I) chaired by Kelly Diggs-Andrews, PhD, from the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER), Room W203
Track 2 - Mock Study Section for junior participants chaired by Don Sens, PhD (UND), Room E223
3:05 p.m. – 3:20 p.m. – Break
3:20 p.m. – 5:20 p.m. – Track 1 - Mentor Development for Clinical and Translational Researchers (Part II) chaired by Kelly Diggs-Andrews, PhD, from the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER), Room W203
Track 2 - Navigating the Regulatory Landscape for junior participants chaired by Lora Black, RN, MS (Sanford), Room W206
A livestream of the sessions will be available on June 8, and recordings of the sessions will be available afterward.
- Suggested Hotels: Canad Inn (701.772.8404), Hilton Garden Inn (701.775.6000)
- Parking is available in the south parking lot of the School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Guest Network Access Information
Donald Warne received his MD from Stanford University and his MPH in health policy from Harvard University as a Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellow in Minority Health Policy. He has served as a Social Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and as a national board member of the American Cancer Society. His work experience is broad and multi-disciplinary and includes primary care medicine, public health, research, health policy, administration, academics, advocacy, and several years as a Staff Clinician with the Phoenix Epidemiology and Clinical Research Branch (PECRB) of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in Phoenix, AZ, where he conducted intramural diabetes research. Dr. Warne’s connections to PECRB/NIDDK began while working as a laboratory assistant while an undergraduate in the 1980s, and he has received mentorship from numerous outstanding NIDDK researchers over the subsequent decades. Dr. Warne served as PI for two Native American Research Centers for Health (NARCH) grants, including a research project focused on integrative and traditional medicine utilization in an Apache tribe in AZ while he served as the Health Policy Research Director for the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona and a research mentoring project in collaboration with the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board (GPTCHB). In addition, he has obtained millions of dollars in research and public health grants from HHS agencies and from non-governmental funding sources. Dr. Warne is Director of the Indians into Medicine program at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine & Health Sciences as well as Director of the DaCCoTA Community Engagement and Outreach Core.
Kelly Diggs-Andrews, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Diggs-Andrews Consulting, LLC, a consulting and media company whose goal is to broaden accessibility to science careers through science outreach, diversity training, and professional development.
She is also a Master Facilitator with the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) and a Certified Trainer with the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER), where she leads both in-person and virtual workshops for research mentors across career stages and disciplines nationwide. She has led trainings at national scientific conferences for the American Society for Microbiology, the Society for Neuroscience, the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, and others as well as numerous colleges, universities, and medical institutes. Her curricular expertise includes Entering Mentoring, Facilitator Training for Entering Mentoring, and Culturally Aware Mentoring.
Dr. Diggs-Andrews earned her BS in Biology from Alabama State University (2005) and her PhD in Biology and Biomedical Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis (2010). She was also the recipient of the NIH-Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, Chancellor’s Diversity Graduate Fellowship, and a National Cancer Institute Postdoctoral Supplement. In her previous role, she served as the Education and Mentoring Fellow with the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and spearheaded an NSF-funded program to develop ASM’s mentoring capacity, to advance investigator-educator collaborations and interdisciplinary research, and to broaden participation of underrepresented individuals in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.
Donald Sens, PhD, is a Professor of Pathology at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences. The major theme of his research is to identify environmental agents that elicit human disease and cause alterations in cell structure and function, which can be used as predictive biomarkers of disease development and progression. His current studies address the role of environmental exposure to arsenic and cadmium in the development and progression of human bladder, breast, prostate, and renal diseases, including cancer. Dr. Sens was a reviewer for the DOD breast cancer program at its initiation and chaired a DOD breast cancer study section for over 10 years. He has served as a mentor in many capacities and has direct mentoring experience with undergraduates, graduate students, residents, and postdoctoral fellows.
Lora Black, RN, MPH, is Senior Director of Clinical Research at Sanford Research and a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine, where she teaches biomedical ethics to medical students. She received her MPH from Creighton University, with a concentration in Health Policy and Ethics, and has practiced as an oncology nurse for fifteen years, eleven of which have been focused on oncology clinical research. Ms. Black has been instrumental in establishing clinical research trials and protocols with numerous entities, both internal and external to Sanford. As director of the Clinical Research Resources and Facilities Core, she works closely with researchers and clinicians affiliated with the DaCCoTA to educate and engage them in clinical research processes and facilitate conversations regarding commercialization options for their novel treatments and devices.