San Antonio Research Unit Appoints Science Director

John L. VandeBerg has been appointed scientific director of the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR). VandeBerg, 46, has headed SFBR's department of genetics since 1982. He began his new position October 1. The nonprofit foundation is located in San Antonio. Its 2,700 primates are used in a variety of studies on human diseases. The foundation studies atherosclerosis, hypertension, cancer, diabetes, and osteoporosis, as well as infectious diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis, and herpes. In the coming year, VandeBerg will oversee a move to larger facilities at the Texas Research Park in San Antonio. He is also involved in plans to form new research partnerships with private biotech companies. A collaboration is currently under way between SFBR and Se-quana Therapeutics in La Jolla, Calif. Using the baboon model, the combined research team will explore treatments or preventative measures for the debilitating bone condition osteoporosis. They will do this by identifying nearly 300 gene markers in the baboon and then using those markers to find the location of the comparable genes that control bone mass in humans. "This is really a combination of Sequana's expertise in molecular biology and positional cloning and our expertise in genetics and osteoporosis," VandeBerg says. The project is being funded by the National Institutes of Health's Human Genome Project and is the only grant from that project supporting the gene mapping of a nonhuman primate. "Baboons are very closely related to human beings," says VandeBerg. "Their genetics, physiology, and pathology of disease are very similar to those in humans. Because we can completely control their diet and environment, we can dissect out the genetic contributions to common diseases in ways that are not possible with human subjects." VandeBerg received his Ph.D. in genetics from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, in 1975. From 1975 until he joined SFBR in 1982, VandeBerg was a researcher in genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. F. Ivy Carroll, a chemist at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) in Research Triangle Park, N.C., received the 1993 Pacesetter Award last month from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The award, first presented in 1976, acknowledges individuals or organizations for their accomplishments in drug abuse research, prevention, and treatment. Carroll, the director of RTI's Center for Organic and Medicinal Chemistry, was honored for his discoveries associated with biochemical mechanisms of action of cocaine and the synthesis of cocaine analogs with potential as medications. "The mechanism of action for cocaine is believed to be involved in the inhibition of dopamine uptake," he says. "We've been studying the protein that does that, called the dopamine transporter....Our research has identified what's happening. "We're doing this with the hope that we can find ways of treatment for drug abuse in people, but also as basic information, so if we can't find a treatment, maybe someone can find ways to make use of the [data]." A summary of Carroll's work can be found in "Cocaine receptor: biochemical characterization and structure activity relationships of cocaine analogs at the dopamine transporter," Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 35:969, 1992. "The next step in this research is identifying two things," Carroll says. "First, can you block the effect? And, to my knowledge, nobody has found a way to do that," he says. "The other is a maintenance type of chemical that may not block the effect, but you can provide people with something that would stop them from having the cravings and rushes you get with cocaine." Carroll received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Auburn University in 1957 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1961. He has worked at RTI since 1960. RTI is a nonprofit, independent research institute founded in 1958. It performs research in the social, chemical, statistical, biological, environmental, and engineering sciences. Mildred Gordon, a cell biologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, died August 23 of cancer. She was 73 years old. Gordon's work centered on basic research on the human sperm and the endometrium, the inner lining of the uterus. She received her bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College in 1941 and her Ph.D. in anatomy from Yale University in 1966. Between 1956 and 1978, Gordon was on the faculty of five different universities. Her last position was as a professorial lecturer in the departments of cell biology and anatomy at Mount Sinai, a job she obtained in 1981 and held until her death. ---- Donald William Kerst, a physicist and inventor of the betatron atomic accelerator, died August 19 of a brain tumor. He was 81 years old. Kerst, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from 1962 until his retirement in 1980, developed the device during World War II. The betatron, a transformer that could produce 300 million electron volts, allowed physicists to accelerate electron beams and inspect subatomic particles. Kerst received his bachelor's degree in 1934 and his Ph.D. in 1937 from the University of Wisconsin. ---- Francis Merlin Bumpus, a medical researcher who performed studies on high blood pressure at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, died August 8 of coronary artery disease. He was 70 years old. Bumpus, who performed research until his death, explored the use of inhibitors and blockers to treat many coronary ailments, including high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis. He received his B.S. from Purdue University in 1944 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1949. He joined the Cleveland Clinic in 1949 as a chemist. ---- Arie Nicolaas Habermann, a computer scientist and an assistant director at the National Science Foundation, died August 8 of a heart attack. He was 62 years old. Habermann had been assistant director for NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering department since October 1991. Prior to that he was head of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. Born in Groningen, the Netherlands, he received his B.S. from the Free University of Amsterdam in 1953 and his Ph.D. in computer science from Eindhoven University of Technology in 1967. Habermann joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon in 1968 and became head of the school's computer science department in 1979. ----

San Antonio Research Unit Appoints Science Director

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