Four pilot projects igniting innovation on the MCV Campus

This story was published in the winter 2024-25 issue of 12th & Marshall. You can find the current and past issues online.

Help came from 800 miles away.

Joe and Sally Jenkins were already longtime supporters of VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center when fate brought them face-to-face with the true impact of their philanthropic endeavors.

For 25 years, cancer research took center stage in their charitable giving. Joe watched his brother battle cancer years ago, and when opportunities arose to give, the Jenkinses — who split their time between Richmond, Virginia, and Florida — chose Massey.

When Joe took a fall during their southern sojourn a few years ago, a chest X-ray to check his injuries revealed a small black dot on his lung. He sent those X-rays north, where Massey’s expert team of physicians diagnosed him with early stage lung cancer and initiated a treatment plan that brought Joe back to Richmond.

Today, Joe proudly says, he is cancer-free.

“By the time many of these cancers are discovered, like lung cancer, it’s often too late to treat them,” Sally says. Early prevention saves lives, and the couple are grateful Massey could treat Joe before the cancer metastasized.

Their experience – and the lingering question of “what if” the cancer had not been found – continues to fuel their desire to give in support of Massey’s research that aims to discover and treat cancer in its earliest stages.

“We’re interested in supporting research that helps with early detection,” Sally says. “Massey is a national leader in cancer care and we’re living examples of that.”

Research drives scientific progress, and philanthropy drives research. Scientific data from successful pilot projects, like those supported by the Jenkinses, is often the key component in securing grant funding that allows the project to progress to the next stages of research.

Throughout the MCV Campus, pilot projects are often made possible by private philanthropy.

Typically ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 per year, pilot grants allow researchers and physicians a chance to collect “proof of concept” data that they can then use to solicit substantial funding from the NIH, Department of Defense, the American Heart Association and other national organizations.

“As a result of pilot grants, discoveries are translated into clinical trials and new treatments in an accelerated timeframe, maximizing the investment and impact of the initial private support,” says Margaret Ann Bollmeier, president and CEO of the MCV Foundation.

The foundation manages the philanthropic gifts made by donors to ensure that the School of Medicine and all of its MCV Campus partners remain at the forefront of excellence and innovation in patient care, education and research.

“If someone has a great idea, but no funding, it will only remain a great idea,” says Fadi N. Salloum, PHD'05 (PHIS), associate chair for research in the Department of Internal Medicine who holds the Natalie N. and John R. Congdon Sr. Endowed Chair in the VCU Health Pauley Heart Center.

“Without pilot funding, scientists may never have the opportunity to grow that research,” Salloum says.

Pilot grants are small. The impact is huge.

According to Salloum, pilot grant funding leading to major grant awards – including NIH RO1 grants given to independent research projects that demonstrate strong preliminary and feasibility data – has shown an excellent return on investment of $75 to $1 for VCU’s Department of Internal Medicine.

“It’s difficult to measure the enormous value that pilot grants hold for VCU researchers and physicians,” says Patricia J. Sime, M.D., the William Branch Porter Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. “Research is expensive, and to make investments for the future we have to fund the research. Pilot grants give individuals the time and resources needed to test innovative ideas, acting as catalysts to help advance the science and help provide cures for tomorrow.”

Bethany L. Denlinger, M.D., H'95, is not only a noninvasive cardiologist on faculty with Pauley. She also believes in advancing the good work of her colleagues and supports their research by giving to the VCU Health Pauley Heart Center Pilot Grants Program.

“Research is an important part of the medical field, especially at an academic medical center,” Denlinger says. “For the care to be complete, it’s important for VCU to be evolving and changing.

“I take care of one person at a time,” Denlinger adds, “but research helps entire future generations.”

Can what you eat protect your heart during chemotherapy?

Women today are beating breast cancer at remarkable rates — only to suffer cardiovascular issues later in life.

But MCV Campus researchers, led by postdoctoral researcher Moriah Bellissimo Myers, Ph.D., are using lipids to study cardiovascular health to help begin developing nutritional therapies that could unlock long-term vitality and ward off those potential heart problems.

Myers, a registered dietician, was awarded a VCU Health Pauley Heart Center pilot grant earlier this year for a project that is characterizing plasma fatty acids during breast cancer treatment. Specifically, she will use lipidomics to analyze fatty acids in the blood of 200 women who are part of Pauley’s UPBEAT trial, a national study of cardiovascular decline following breast cancer treatment, to investigate changes in lipid metabolites during breast cancer treatment.

“It’s a really cool time in cardio-oncology research because the field is shifting from short-term, acute care to long-term care,” says Bellissimo Myers, whose mentors include cardiologists and basic scientists at Pauley as well as behavioral scientists at VCU.

“We’ve had phenomenal advancements in the detection and treatment of breast cancer, so survival rates for most stages are approaching 90% or more,” she explains. “But now that women are living longer post-cancer, they’re experiencing accelerated cardiovascular disease.”

Symptoms associated with cardiovascular decline include progressive fatigue and decline in exercise capacity and heart functions.

Women who have opted into this national study range from ages 18 to 85. Their blood was studied at two different intervals, the first prior to their cancer treatments, and the second three months into treatment. Bellissimo Myers is looking at what happens to lipids during the treatments, which include chemotherapy, hormone therapies or a combination of both.

The biomarkers in the blood offer precise, objective information that does not rely on participants’ recall compared to dietary history questionnaires.

Samples from around the country are analyzed at VCU Health. Bellissimo Myers says her ultimate goal is to develop diet therapies based on the results. About the time she received the Pauley pilot grant, she also received a $649,000 grant from the Komen Foundation to advance her research.

“Once you make it through treatment, we want to make sure you’re thriving,” she says, adding that she wants women to feel empowered by having tools they can incorporate into their daily lives that will boost their heart health.

“What I love about this is it’s all patient-oriented,” she says. “We want to give them choices about what they can eat or how they can exercise to improve their health.”

Bellissimo Myers says she is thankful to receive a pilot grant, which she plans to use as a springboard to apply for additional funding from external sources like the NIH. Pauley’s philanthropically supported pilot grant program raises $100,000 annually to support two to four investigators.

“To receive that grant funding validated years of work, and it showed me that my institution sees the need and the value in the research I want to conduct — and that it’s worth investing in,” she says.

“It instilled confidence in me and my vision for how I can help people, and it’s also the first step in an area of research that can truly impact people’s lives.”

Are pesticides at the root of cognitive decline?

Farmers. Military veterans. Golf course employees. Airline workers.

Four very different workplaces, all linked by a shared health risk: exposure to chemicals that could elevate risks for cognitive decline.

Laxmikant S. Deshpande, PHD'06 (PHTX), professor in the Department of Neurology, is conducting research that dives into the similarities between chemical nerve agents and pesticides. Both contain chemicals called organophosphates that have the potential to impact memory functions, seizures, anxiety, depression and more.

Deshpande was awarded VCU Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Center pilot grants in 2022 and again in 2023. The grants were funded through financial support from philanthropic donors that has made it possible for the PMDC to award nearly $500,000 in pilot grants since 2021. Deshpande’s research, which is also supported by the NIH CounterACT Program and the Department of Defense, looks at neurological effects of high-level organophosphate exposures over a short period of time, as well as sustained low-level exposure over long periods of time.

He explains that many people are exposed to these toxins through their occupations or the environment.

For example, farmers use pesticides for their crops, while golf course attendants do the same to keep greens pristine. Military personnel can be exposed through chemical warfare or pesticides used to sanitize living quarters overseas. Airline workers inhale organophosphates from jet fuel fumes. Exposure is not limited to these fields.

“There are many different ways we get exposed to pesticides or nerve agents,” Deshpande says. “That exposure changes the brain’s synaptic plasticity.”

Synaptic plasticity refers to the adaptive changes at the synapses — the junctions between which neurons communicate. When those connections are strong and active, memory function remains healthy.

The strength of that communication is vulnerable. And epigenetics — the study of how genes are affected by their environment — points to pesticides as a potential culprit.

In short, it’s all connected, Deshpande says. The genes of an individual exposed to pesticides or nerve agents could change, possibly reducing expression of factors essential for maturation of neuronal spines and synaptic proteins leading to synapse loss and compromising the brain’s synaptic plasticity.

That means increased risk for memory loss, seizures, suicidal thoughts, anxiety and other neurological deficiencies.

“Exposure to pesticides, be it occupationally or based on other environmental factors, has already been reported to produce long-term neurological effects,” says Deshpande, noting that people of color and migrant farm workers are the most at risk and have the least access to health care. His goal through the pilot project research is for his team to understand the mechanisms of organophosphate toxicities and identify therapeutics to reduce the risks of the cognitive decline and other neurological comorbidities, or even prevent it altogether.

“The generosity of our donors allows us to explore these novel ideas and work toward developing effective treatments that could directly impact the lives of civilians and military personnel alike,” Deshpande says. “It inspires us to strive for greater innovation and success, knowing we have a supportive community behind us.”

Can AI and data science revolutionize medicine?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has a place in medicine. How and where and when is still up for debate.

Robert E. Hoyt, M'71, H'74, is passionate about using data science and AI to improve medicine by saving time and money. Board-certified in clinical informatics, he serves as a faculty member for the American Board of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and an officer of the Medical Intelligence Society.

In addition, Hoyt has published four textbooks on innovation and AI in the medical community, including the most recent, “No Code Data Science.” Hoyt and his wife, Ann Karen Yoshihashi, M.D., have directed book sales revenue to support pilot grants within the Department of Internal Medicine, opening the possibility for researchers and physicians to delve deeper into studying data science and AI’s impact on medicine.

“It’s a matter of trying to raise the bar so more people understand what AI is capable of as well as its drawbacks,” Hoyt says.

Take ChatGPT, for example. The chatbot uses AI to understand and generate human-like text. With prompts, it can answer questions, write essays and compose code. Users can ask ChatGPT to refine its responses by providing more detail, changing the style of the prompt or asking for an answer in a different format.

Hoyt explains that ChatGPT is less than two years old, “but at the rate it’s evolving, there is cautious optimism that it will eventually be good enough for medical applications.”

Machine learning and predictive analytics could be used to support medicine in ways such as predicting sepsis in the ICU or forecasting which patients will develop atrial fibrillation by reviewing thousands of EKGs. “AI sees things in medicine we don’t see,” Hoyt says. “This is going to revolutionize medicine as we know it.”

And he doesn’t want to see the MCV Campus faculty and students — or their patients — left behind. An associate clinical professor of internal medicine, Hoyt met with medical students who are starting an AI student interest group and worked with others on a project comparing fracture risks of uninsured patients versus insured patients. In September, he gave Internal Medicine Ground Rounds and led an AI faculty workshop, “Data Science for Doctors Without Programming.”

He’s also collaborating with VCU School of Nursing faculty to use data science and AI to improve outreach into underserved communities to detect and prevent kidney disease and, ultimately, reduce the number of people who need dialysis.

“Wherever you are in your training, it behooves you to learn AI,” says Hoyt, who sees AI as augmented intelligence, not as a replacement for physicians. “We all need to understand it and how it relates to the complexity of medicine.”

He points to AI’s potential for aggregating extreme amounts of information and formatting the data in ways that let physicians and researchers visualize how to best use that data.

“Medicine is hard,” Hoyt says. “We’re not perfect. We can use all the help we can get.”

He says early adopters and cautious bystanders are equally important.

“There’s resistance, and for good reason,” Hoyt says. “I preach data science first, and then AI, because when it comes to using AI for crucial clinical decisions, it needs to be highly accurate.”

Could one gene mutation be the breakthrough in understanding lung cancer?

It is called the DREAM complex, but its functions are anything but whimsical.

Within the human body and in other organisms, DREAM refers to a multi-protein complex that binds to DNA and regulates cell cycle processes, including cell division. But Massey researchers have also connected the DREAM complex to oncogenesis, the process by which normal cells turn cancerous and escape the tumor suppressive mechanisms, leading to cancer growth.

Larisa Litovchick, M.D., Ph.D., a member of Massey’s Cancer Biology research program and associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, received a pilot grant through the Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center Innovation Pilot Award to support preclinical studies. Promising results from the pilot research have already demonstrated how introducing critical mutations within cells could prohibit the DREAM complex from forming.

“This mutation in one gene results in a dramatic change,” Litovchick says. The research has particular application for lung cancer, which affects roughly 6% of men and women. Of those, only about 22% live five or more years after diagnosis.

Litovchick says the research model could have translational implications as well as usefulness in studying and potentially overcoming cancer drug resistance.

She’s grateful for pilot grants, and especially for the alumni and community members who recognize their value and support them.

“Pilot grants are really important to be able to test early hypotheses,” Litovchick says. “NIH grants are very competitive, and require a lot of preliminary data, so you need to start with something. Pilot grants are critical in promoting innovation.”

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The School of Medicine communications team is always looking to highlight student success, faculty achievement, cutting-edge research and innovative initiatives around the MCV Campus. If you have an idea for a story, please submit your pitch to laura.ingles@vcuhealth.org.