Carver College of Medicine Events
Women In Micro & Immuno Coffee Hour
Monday, September 8, 2025 11:00am to 12:00pm
Join us for the Women in Micro & Immuno Coffee Hour. It is the monthly coffee hour on the second Monday of the month from 11 a.m. to noon in 1289 CBRB. Enjoy coffee, pastries and contribute to the discussion!This is open to ALL — students, staff, postdocs, and faculty interested in promoting women in science.Speakers change monthly. Contact: jessica-tucker@uiowa.edu for details.

Molecular Physiology and Biophysics Seminar, Bo Chen, PhD
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 9:30am to 10:30am
REDCap Basic Training
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 10:00am to 11:00am
This is the first step in the REDCap training series. In this training, we will build a new REDCap project from scratch and cover basic features such as:
• Building forms with proper field types and validation
• Assigning user permissions
• Project backup and overview with data dictionary, codebook, pdf, and xml
• Ensuring your project works properly by testing with real world application
• Making mid-study modifications safely after having started data collection in production
• Creating...

Neuroscience & Pharmacology Seminar: Serena Dudek, PhD
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 10:30am to 11:30am
Insights into hippocampal function from studies on synaptic plasticity in area CA2Serena M. Dudek, PhDSenior Investigator and Acting Chief, Neurobiology LaboratoryNational Institute of Environmental Health, NIH

Neuroscience Interdisciplinary Program Thesis Defense Seminar: Brittany Todd
Tuesday, September 9, 2025 11:00am
Brittany Todd is a PhD candidate in the Neuroscience Interdisciplinary Graduate Program, as well as a student in the Medical Scientist Training Program. Her research has been with Drs. Alexander Bassuk and Elizabeth Newell's laboratories.If you are unable to attend in person, please consider showing your support and attending via Zoom. Please email britt-hokanson@uiowa.edu for the zoom link.
Recent Articles from the University of Iowa
Pancancer outcome prediction via a unified weakly supervised deep learning model
Tuesday, September 2, 2025
Accurate prognosis prediction is essential for guiding cancer treatment and improving patient outcomes. While recent studies have demonstrated the potential of histopathological images in survival analysis, existing models are typically developed in a cancer-specific manner, lack extensive external validation, and often rely on molecular data that are not routinely available in clinical practice. To address these limitations, we present PROGPATH, a unified model capable of integrating...
Growth inhibition of common neonatal pathogens differs between bovine lactoferrin products
Friday, August 29, 2025
Introduction. Infection is a leading cause of mortality during the first year of life, with the neonatal period being particularly high risk. It is critical to identify non-antibiotic approaches to improve neonatal infection outcomes due to the non-specific clinical signs of neonatal infection and negative consequences of early-life antibiotic exposure. Lactoferrin is a protein found in all mammalian milk that has a variety of antimicrobial properties. Clinical trials have shown that lactoferrin...
Mechanistic insights into the small-molecule inhibition of influenza A virus entry
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Influenza A virus (IAV) is a zoonotic pathogen responsible for seasonal and pandemic flu. The extensive genetic and antigenic diversity within and between IAV phylogenetic groups presents major challenges for developing universal vaccines and broad-spectrum antiviral therapies. Current interventions provide limited protection due to the virus's high mutation rate and capacity for immune evasion. Recent advancements in viral hemagglutinin (HA)-targeting small-molecule entry inhibitors offer a...
Treatment of Persons with Rheumatoid Arthritis with a History of Cancer
Monday, August 11, 2025
PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review article examines the evolving evidence on cancer recurrence and new malignancy risk associated with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), including TNF inhibitors, rituximab, IL-6 inhibitors, and JAK inhibitors, in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and a prior malignancy.
Effective Aerosol Inoculation of Dose-Escalated Seasonal Influenza H3N2 Virus in Controlled Human Infection Model
Friday, August 8, 2025
Human challenge models (CHIMs) are instrumental in advancing influenza research but have traditionally relied on intranasal inoculation, which does not mimic the natural aerosol transmission of the virus. We conducted a dose-escalation influenza CHIM study to evaluate the safety and feasibility of two modern aerosol delivery systems: a flow-focusing monodisperse aerosol generator (FMAG) and a medical nebulizer. Fourteen healthy adults aged 18-49 years were exposed to influenza A/Perth/16/2009...
A versatile H5N1-VSV platform for safe influenza virus research applications
Friday, August 8, 2025
The H5N1 strain of influenza A virus (IAV) continues to cause severe infections in a range of avian and mammalian species, including sporadic but concerning cases in humans. There is growing concern that circulating H5N1 strains could lead to widespread human outbreaks. Research with highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses is restricted to Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) laboratories. Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV)-based vaccine vectors expressing heterologous viral proteins from Ebola, SARS-CoV-2, Lassa...
Palmitate enhances MSC immunomodulation of human macrophages via the ceramide/CCL2 axis in vitro
Thursday, August 7, 2025
CONCLUSION: Palmitate-exposed MSCs show enhanced immunomodulation of human MDMs, through the ceramide/CCL2 axis in vitro.
Reduction of TRAF3 by heterozygosity or aging impacts B cell function
Thursday, August 7, 2025
TNF receptor-associated factor 3 (TRAF3) is a signaling adaptor protein that is ubiquitously expressed but has highly distinct cell type-specific functions. TRAF3 plays critical roles in restraint of B lymphocyte activation, differentiation, and homeostatic survival. Consistent with such roles, loss-of-function mutations in TRAF3 have long been found in various human B cell malignancies. Mice lacking TRAF3 specifically in B cells have autoimmune manifestations, lymphadenopathy, and increased...
Pseudomonas infections persisting after CFTR modulators are widespread throughout the lungs and drive lung inflammation
Wednesday, August 6, 2025
Cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) modulators improve the physiological defect causing cystic fibrosis, but the lungs of most people remain infected and inflamed. A leading hypothesis implicates damaged segments as the cause of persistent infection and predicts that mildly diseased segments within an individual's lungs will clear after treatment, whereas severely diseased segments will not. Our findings contradict this hypothesis. We used bronchoscopy to sample the least-...
Crosstalk between DNA damage and cGAS-STING immune pathway drives neuroinflammation and dopaminergic neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease
Saturday, August 2, 2025
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder marked by substantial degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra and dopamine depletion in the striatum, leading to debilitating motor and non-motor impairments. Recent studies provide clues on the pathogenic role of DNA damage in age-related neurodegenerative diseases, but the molecular mechanisms of DNA damage response in PD remain poorly understood. We found that the accumulation of DNA double-strand breaks...