Residents and fellows in the Department of Pathology & Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine shined at the annual Trainee Research Symposium. The event, which was held April 17-18, 2023, in the Eric P. Newman Education Center, featured talks from several trainees, a presentation from a distinguished guest speaker and an awards ceremony where several trainees were honored for their outstanding presentations.
Trainee talks included:
- “Characterization of DICER1 Mutations in Clinically Aggressive Thyroid Carcinomas from a Large Database of Real-World Patient Samples” – Sanica Bhele, MD, Head and Neck Fellow
- “Anticoagulation management in patients tested for heparin-induced thrombocytopenia in the cardiothoracic intensive care unit diverges from expert guidelines” – Nick Spies, MD, CP Resident
- “Gastrointestinal histoplasmosis in immunocompromised patients: Pitfalls of confirmatory diagnosis with urine antigen and serum antibody testing” – Alicia Dessain, MD, Liver/GI Fellow
- “The serum free light chain assay is less sensitive for assessing monoclonal gammopathies among Black patients” – Vahid Azimi, MD, CP Resident
- “Eplets coverage on commercial solid-phase immunoassays for anti-HLA antibody screen” – Patricia Hernandez, MD, CP Chief Resident
- “Interobserver Reliability of the IASLC Histopathologic Grading Scheme and Evaluation of Tumor Spread Through Air Spaces (STAS) in Invasive Lung Adenocarcinoma” – Callie Torres, DO, AP/CP Resident
- “LC/MS-MS Quantification of Myo-Inositol: A Novel Biomarker for Kidney Disease” – Cate Omosule, PhD, Clinical Chemistry Fellow
- “Automating the Detection of Preanalytical Errors Without Expert-Curated Training Labels” – Nick Spies, MD, CP Resident
- “A chikungunya virus-like particle vaccine induces broadly neutralizing and protective antibodies against alphaviruses in humans” Saravanan Raju, MD, PhD, CP Resident and PSTP Member
- “Time and motion capture comparison of bioMérieux VITEK MS PRIME vs. Bruker MALDI Biotyper MALDI-TOF MS workflows for organism identification” – Nicole Tarlton, PhD, Medical & Public Health Microbiology Fellow
- “Is Fragmentation of Prostate Core Biopsies Inevitable? A Quality Improvement Initiative” – Krithika Shenoy, MBBS, AP/CP Chief Resident
- “MYCN Amplification in a Pediatric Patient with Metastatic Neuroblastoma” – Reza Ghasemi, PhD, Laboratory Genetics & Genomics Fellow
- “Impact of Implementing Point of Care Hemoglobin A1C Testing in an Obstetrics Outpatient Clinic” – Homa Weli, MD, PhD, CP Resident
- “Hemoglobin A1c control is an independent predictor of circulating troponin concentrations using machine learning” – Hannah Brown, PhD, Clinical Chemistry Fellow
- “Performance of a Modified ALLType NGS HLA Typing Assay with the Ion Chef/Ion S5/TypeStream Visual System” – Manli Shen, PhD, HLA Fellow
- “Developing and implementing a Validation Plan for Modification of Microbead Volumes in a Single Antigen Bead Assay” – Robert Frick, MD, CP Resident
- “Sweat Rate does not influence Sweat Chloride Concentration” – Cate Omosule, PhD, Clinical Chemistry Fellow
- “Single-cell characterization of T follicular immune response to COVID-19 vaccinations using deep learning” – Nick Borcherding, MD, PhD, CP Resident and PSTP Member
On day two of the symposium, Timothy Amukele, MD, PhD, gave a presentation to trainees and faculty. Dr. Timothy Amukele is Vice President and Medical Director of ICON ILS ICL Laboratory, a global consulting company specializing in the biotechnology and public health sectors. Dr. Amukele’s expertise is in clinical laboratories in developing countries. He pioneered several innovations including the use of medical drones in hard-to-reach places and the List of Essential Diagnostics, which has been adopted by the WHO.
The event concluded with a recognition ceremony where Dr. Alicia Dessain and Dr. Nick Spies received awards for best oral presenters, and Dr. Manli Shen and Dr. Cate Omosule received awards for best lightning round talks.