CURRENTS
Immune Mechanism Discovered
T
emple’s Tyler School of Art has designed an art class especially for students at Temple’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine. During class, students draw the human body, observing nude models. They visit museums to explore renderings of the human form. Scott K. Shore, PhD, who initiated the offering, says art training adds an essential element to the medical school curriculum. “Dissecting a cadaver to learn about the human form is one thing. Observing the living body with an artist’s careful attention to form and function is another,” says Shore, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at the school. Isaac Wegner, a student in Temple’s postbaccalaureate medical school preparatory program, says drawing is a skill worth cultivating. “My dad is a cardiothoracic surgeon and always 8
| TEMPLE HEALTH MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2017
draws the heart and the major valves for patients,” he says. “It helps them visualize what’s happening inside of them and what’s going to be done to save their lives.” According to Douglas Reifler, MD, Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Professor of Medicine, medical schools across the country are looking to the humanities — art, literature, drama, and dance — to help develop their medical students. In addition to art class, Temple students can develop their powers of observation and expression through narrative medicine workshops (see page 42). They even took a cooking class that was taught by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s food editor: an eightweek course on creating healthy, affordable meals from scratch. Observant, empathetic doctors are not made by hard science alone.
FOX CHASE CELEBRATES
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CONTINUOUS YEARS OF NCI COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER STATUS.
JOHN CUNEO
The Art of Doctoring
Temple researchers have identified a cellular protein that senses the presence of influenza virus in the lung and rapidly destroys the infected cells. “This sensor, a protein called DAI, recognizes viral RNA and sets off a powerful auto-destruct program to prevent the infected cell from becoming a virus factory,” said Siddharth Balachandran, PhD, Associate Professor and Co-Leader of the Blood Cell Development and Function program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, who is lead author of the study, published last October in Cell Host & Microbe. Without DAI, influenza-infected cells continue producing more virus. But with DAI, infected cells kill themselves, helping to curb the spread of the virus. As Balachandran notes, this discovery opens new doors to research with exciting therapeutic ramifications. The University of Texas, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai contributed to the research.