Pathology at Johns Hopkins
The Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins is preeminent nationally and globally in the study and treatment of human disease and in professional training in all areas of pathology and laboratory science. Currently, there are over 1400 people in the department, which includes approximately 120 full-time faculty, 36 residents, 45 graduate students, over 100 fellows, and 1000 staff members.
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Next: March 25, 2019
PD-L1 in Cardiac Inflammation and Transplant Rejection
Daniela Ciháková, MD, PhD
Publications Spotlighted
Johns Hopkins Pathology Takes Center Stage:
Johns Hopkins Pathology has been the number one NIH funded pathology department for 11 of the past 12 years.
Our research interests span a broad area— we highlighted a few research discoveries.
- Mobile DNAs Enhance Disease Risk
- Probing the Genetics of Pilocytic Astrocytoma
- It's in the Genes: Antimicrobial Resistance Uncovered
- Standard phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) results take 48-72 hours and can lead to delays in the selection of optimal antimicrobial therapy.
- Real-time Nanopore whole genome sequencing and bioinformatic pipelines were used to predict phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing results among carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae clinical isolates
- Applying a rapid assembly approach, the overall agreement of genotypic results and anticipated phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing results was 92% (range, 80% to 100%).
- Evaluating the patients contributing the isolates, the real-time WGS assembly approach could shorten the median time to effective antibiotic therapy by 26 h compared to standard AST.
- Nanopore sequencing offers a rapid approach to both accurately identify resistance mechanisms and to predict AST results for K. pneumoniae isolates.
- Stem Cells Partner to Repair Bone Defects
Mobile DNAs Enhance Disease Risk
Payer LM, Steranka JP, Ardeljan D, Walker J, Fitzgerald KC, Calabresi PA, Cooper TA, Burns KH. Alu insertion variants alter mRNA splicing. Nucleic Acids Res 2019 Jan 10;47(1):421-31.
Alu are mobile DNA sequences that make each of our genomes unique. Lindsay Payer, Kathy Burns and colleagues have previously shown that these genetic variants are associated with risks to develop common diseases. In this paper, the investigators show that these prevalent sequences can alter mRNA splicing patterns. At the CD58 locus, they discovered an Alu insertion that causes exon skipping and confers risk for developing multiple sclerosis, a common autoimmune disease.
Probing the Genetics of Pilocytic Astrocytoma
Rodriguez FJ, Brosnan-Cashman JA, Allen SJ, Vizcaino MA, Giannini C, Camelo-Piragua S, Webb M, Matsushita M, Wadhwani N, Tabbarah A, Hamideh D, Jiang L, Chen L, Arvanitis LD, Alnajar HH, Barber JR, Rodriguez-Velasco A, Orr B, Heaphy CM. Alternative lengthening of telomeres, ATRX loss and H3-K27M mutations in histologically defined pilocytic astrocytoma with anaplasia. Brain Pathol 2019 Jan;29(1):126-40. 6.6
Pilocytic astrocytoma (PA) is the most frequent primary brain tumor in children; although, given its slow growth potential, patients are usually cured if the tumor can be totally removed. However, a small subset of PA can develop anaplastic changes which leads to a more aggressive cancer. To better understand this disease, for the first time, we characterized unique genetic abnormalities, including alterations in ATRX, H3K27M, and telomeres, in cases of PA with anaplasia.
It's in the Genes: Antimicrobial Resistance Uncovered
Tamma PD, Fan Y, Bergman Y, Pertea G, Kazmi AQ, Lewis S, Carroll KC, Schatz MC, Timp W, Simner PJ. Applying Rapid Whole-Genome Sequencing To Predict Phenotypic Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing Results among Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae Clinical Isolates. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2018 Dec 21;63(1). pii: e01923-18. doi: 10.1128/AAC.01923-18. Print 2019 Jan.
Stem Cells Partner to Repair Bone Defects
Wang Y, Xu J, Chang L, Meyers CA, Zhang L, Broderick K, Lee M, Peault B, James AW. Relative contributions of adipose-resident CD146+ pericytes and CD34+ adventitial progenitor cells in bone tissue engineering.NPJ Regen Med. 2019 Jan 7;4:1.doi:10.1038/s41536-018-0063-2. eCollection 2019.
Perivascular progenitor cell subpopulations work in concert to speed bone healing (Wang et al., NPJ Regenerative Medicine 2019). In an effort to grow new bone tissue, James Lab shows that human perivascular cells have distinct but overlapping utility in bone tissue engineering.
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What's New?
Congratulations, Byung-Hak Kang (BK)!
February 23, 2019
We are proud to announce that Byung-Hak Kang, Ph.D., a 2016 graduate of the Graduate Program in Pathobiology, along with collaborators, is co-first author on a paper published in Cancer Cell titled: "Aging-like Spontaneous Epigenetic Silencing Facilitates Wnt Activation, Stemness, and BrafV600E -Induced Tumorigenesis"....
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Congratulations, Lionel Chia!
February 23, 2019
Congratulations to Lionel Chia for his abstract titled: "HMGA1 induces the HOXB13 developmental gene to drive tumor progression in androgen receptor negative, castrate-resistant prostate cancer", Lionel Chia will receive the AACR-Bristol-Myers Squibb Scholar-in-Training-Travel Award to attend the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting taking place on March 29 - April 3, 2019 in Atlanta, GA... read more »
Advance in Kidney research
February 14, 2019
Most of our information about adaptive immune cells is derived from studying T and B cells in secondary lymphoid organs and peripheral blood. Consequently, very little is known about lymphocytes residing in non-lymphoid tissues. Dr. Mohanraj Sadasivam in Hamad's and Rabb's Laboratories has been studying a unique subset of alpha/beta T cells that lack expression of both CD4 and CD8 coreceptors and referred to as double negative (DN) T cells in the kidneys of the mouse model... read more »
