Allergy-Immunology Wins Multiple Awards
At the annual meeting of American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) in Orlando, Florida this month featuring attendees from the United States, Canada and 72 other countries, the Division of Allergy-Immunology had a remarkable representation of Northwestern University allergy research.
The number of patients affected by allergy has increased among all age groups in recent years. Reports also show that children with food allergy are two to four times as likely to experience other allergic conditions and asthma that further impact quality of life and life expectancy than children without food allergy. Allergy research conducted at Northwestern has a focus on these challenging issues, reflected by a total of nine oral and ten poster presentations given by fellows and faculty from the Division of Allergy-Immunology.
Dr. Paul Bryce was invited to speak at the Presidential Plenary “Next Generation Science” session. He introduced his innovative work on food allergy prevention in his talk entitled “Rapid Induction Of Tolerance To Peanut By Antigen-coupled Cell Transfer.”
Dr. Anna B. Fishbein was honored with an American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Allergy and Immunology Outstanding Pediatric Abstract Award for her work on food allergy in children with Dr. Anne Marie Singh. The title of her presentation was “Allergen Specific IL-10 Producing T regulatory Cells Are Upregulated in Children Who Have Acquired Tolerance to Egg.”
Drs. Toral Kamdar and Tetsuji Takabayashi received AAAAI Interest Section Fellow-in-Training Abstract Awards and Dr Takabayashi's abstract "Mast Cells with a Unique Phenotype Are Highly Elevated in Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Nasal Polyps" was selected as the first place abstract in the Immunotherapy, Rhinitis, Sinusitis, Ocular Diseases and Cough interest section.
Drs. Anna Fishbein, Chia-Lin Hsu, Joy Hsu, Kathryn Hulse, and Toral Kamdar were recipients of 2012 FIT Travel Scholarships. The topics included the latest research advances in food allergy, asthma, chronic rhinosinusitis, and a variety allergic disorders.
Dr. Robert P. Schleimer is elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholors. The Society inducts former postdoctoral fellows, postdoctoral degree recipients, house staff and junior or visiting faculty who have served at least a year at Johns Hopkins and thereafter gained marked distinction elsewhere in their fields of physical, biological, medical, social or engineering sciences or in the humanities and for whom at least five years have elapsed since their last Johns Hopkins affiliation.
He is acknowledged as an outstanding scientist by the clinical, academic and pharmaceutical communities. He is chief of the Division of Allergy-Immunology in the Department of Medicine, the Roy and Elaine Patterson Professor of Medicine and professor of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. From 1979 to 1981, Schleimer was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins in the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He joined the faculty in 1981 and achieved the rank of professor of medicine before moving to Northwestern University in 2004. His long-standing research focus is on the immunopharmacology of allergic inflammation, cell adhesion, migration and, more recently, innate and acquired immune responses of the upper airways in humans. Schleimer has received NIH funding for more than 25 years, and he recently received an NIH Merit Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. He has been a member of the scientific advisory boards of more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies and has published more than 260 papers and edited numerous books and journal supplements. He has trained more than 35 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, with the majority becoming established investigators in academia and industry.
Schleimer was nominated by Bruce S. Bochner, the Cosner Scholar in Translational Medicine, professor of medicine and director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Johns Hopkins Asthma and Allergy Center.
