November 12, 2003

Totman Fund Honors MBC's Lederer

Baltimore, MD—Dr. W. Jonathan Lederer, Director of the Medical Biotechnology Center, was selected as the 2003 Keynote speaker for the annual Totman Medical Research Fund Retreat. The keynote address, entitled "Occluded elements in calcium signaling” was delivered Thursday, November 6, 2003. The presentation focused on how critical signaling in cells occurs in spatial domains that are unusually small (nanometers) and cannot be readily resolved with the best optical microscopes. It showed how assemblies of specific proteins into interacting protein complexes ("macromolecular complexes") underlie signaling in heart. The presentation recapped recent work published this year in Nature and Cell by Lederer and his co-workers at UMBI and elsewhere. This new research has already broadened our understanding of heart failure, arrhythmic disease and the development of "sudden cardiac death".

The Totman Medical Research Trust is a Vermont-based medical foundation that supports cutting-edge research in vascular and cellular biology at the University of Vermont (UVM) College of Medicine. The Ray W. and Idah Totman Medical Research Fund was established upon Mr. Totman’s death in 1988. It has sponsored research in Vermont since that time. Past recipients include established scientists such as Mark Nelson, chair of the Department of Pharmacology, and other widely known UVM investigators as well as star junior faculty members. This year the annual retreat of the UVM faculty working in Vascular, Neurovascular and Cardiovascular Biology and those in the Department of Pharmacology was held at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont.

The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute was mandated by the state of Maryland legislature in 1985 as "a new paradigm of state economic development in biotech-related sciences." With five major research and education centers across Maryland, UMBI is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of biotechnology. The centers are the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology in Rockville; Center for Biosystems Research in College Park; and Center of Marine Biotechnology, Medical Biotechnology Center, and the Institute of Human Virology, all in Baltimore.