CU Anschutz In The News

One of the largest databases, “Request a Woman Scientist,” launched a year ago by the group 500 Women Scientists, contains the names of more than 8000 scientists from 133 countries. It’s open to anyone who self-identifies as a female scientist, says Elizabeth McCullagh, a postdoc at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora and a co-founder of the database. “If you feel like you fit into that mold—whether you’re an undergrad, a graduate student, a postdoc, a professor, an independent scientist, if you think you’re a high schooler who could actually be involved—everyone is welcome.”

Isoketals adhere to and damage proteins, and Harrison's group found that the resulting injured proteins stimulate immune cells known as dendritic cells, which in turn activate T cells. It's "a pretty good case," says nephrologist Richard Johnson of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.

Another promising lead came when pediatric pulmonologist Livia Veress of the University of Colorado in Denver and colleagues zeroed in on fibrin clots in rats exposed to mustard. When she dissected the animals, she pulled out of their lungs white clots called casts that looked like "tree branches," she says. "I realized I'd seen that before"—in children with plastic bronchitis, a rare complication of surgery to repair congenital heart defects. Veress tested a clot-busting drug, tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), in rats exposed to normally lethal mustard doses—they all survived.

Cardiologist Robert Eckel of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, who was also on the ACC/AHA committee, agrees. "I don't see apoB changing the playing field very much," he says.