December 2007

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

I want to take the opportunity to wish you and your families the very best for the Holiday Season, with hopes for a healthy and peaceful 2008. I also want to give special thanks to the whole Department for your perseverance and patience during the chair selection process. I am both delighted and honored to have been selected, and will do my very best to serve the great department that Guy McKhann, Dick Johnson and Jack Griffin have developed.

All of you are well aware of the tremendous pace of discoveries in basic and clinical neurosciences, yet this is a challenging time in academic medicine. We face unprecedented challenges in the form of an 8% decline in NIH budgets since 2003, nationwide concerns about the viability of physician-scientists, and increasing competition and regulatory burdens for our clinical services. Despite these storm clouds, I am confident that the Department can continue to move towards even greater accomplishments. Our collective responsibility is to ensure that basic neuroscience discoveries continue at a rapid pace, and that the clinical neuroscience is positioned appropriately to efficiently translate these discoveries into new therapies.

2007 has truly been an outstanding year in many respects for our faculty and staff. It is always important to reflect on what has succeeded and this year we have plenty to choose from.

• Ten of our faculty were promoted to the rank of Associate Professor this year; Anne Comi, Nathan Crone, Nicholas Gaiano, Romergryko Geocadin, Mir Ahamed Hossain, Rafael Llinas, Guo-Li Ming, Carlos Pardo, Michael Polydefkis, and Hongjun Song. This is a fantastic cohort of individuals representing four PhD scientists and six clinician-scientists. They represent the next generation of academic leaders in basic and clinical neuroscience; we are all extremely proud of their accomplishments and their contributions to the Department.
• Our research portfolio climbed again to its highest ever level at $35 million (including both NIH and non-NIH sources). This is truly an outstanding achievement for the Department especially in the face of a 9th percentile pay line for NINDS. It represents herculean efforts by many investigators who submitted new or competing RPGs at every funding cycle.
• In addition to new RPGs in 2007 we have had two K awards: a K23 to Lori Jordan and a K08 to Andy Mammen, each received Clinician Scientist awards to Brett Morrison, Rebecca Gottesman and Andy Mammen.
• Neurology has played an important role in the development of the new medical school curriculum which will be initiated in 2009. David Newman-Toker has worked with Jay Baraban from Neuroscience and Dean MacKinnon from Psychiatry to develop an innovative 11-week program which integrates the current first and second year courses in Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Neurology and Neuropathology.
• Our development team has continued to work with donors and faculty in a highly productive manner. On December 18, 2007 Dan Hanley was inaugurated as the Jeffrey and Harriet Legum chair in Acute Neurological Medicine. The department is very grateful to the Legum family for its generous gift, and to their continued support of our research efforts. We also held the first meeting of the Legacy Circle in April with presentations to supporters of the Department who have made bequests to support research and clinical programs.
  
  
  
  Dr. William Brody, Dr. Justin McArthur, Jeffrey Legum, Harriet Legum, Dr. Dan Hanley, and Dr. Ed Miller
  
  
• Clinical services have continued to improve with much greater responsiveness to urgent referrals. A faculty-supervised lumbar puncture clinic, a growing and revitalized infusion center focusing on the use of Tysabri™ for Multiple Sclerosis, and safety initiatives led by Eric Aldrich and Ben Greenberg. Johns Hopkins Hospital was just given the "Gold Award" from the stroke “Get with the Guidelines” program. This means that for over two years we have sustained >85% compliance on all of the “Get with the Guidelines” performance measures. I believe only about two dozen or so stroke programs out of nearly 700 have achieved this. Last year was the first time it was awarded. Our Brain Rescue Unit (Stroke Unit) was successfully recertified and achieved state-wide certification; Eric Aldrich is also leading a team which has taken responsibility for stroke care at Howard County General Hospital.
• The Packard Center continues to grow and is now estimated to fund about 75% of all scientific publications focusing on ALS. This year the Packard Center disbursed almost $4 million in research funds and is increasingly moving towards drug discovery and translational neuroscience to fulfill its mission of developing treatments for motor neuron disease. In addition to directing the Packard Center, Jeffery Rothstein played a leadership role in the recently funded Clinical and Translational award to the School of Medicine ($100 million over 5 years) which will help kick-start translational research programs across the Institution and foster interdisciplinary collaborations.
• Continuing the initiatives that Jack Griffin started, we have continued to work on career development for residents, fellows and junior faculty. Dana Boatman and other faculty initiated an internal review process for K awards and first R01s. We believe that this program will increase the success of these critically important grants during this especially difficult time for NIH funding. Maintaining and strengthening the physician-scientist track will be a major focus for departmental leadership in 2008 and beyond.
• Bayview has had another very strong year with growth in clinical programs including headache, myositis and memory. Raf Llinas and the Bayview stroke service received first-in-the–state recertification as a comprehensive stroke center. They also received the American Heart Association award for adherence to stroke guidelines which was given to only 36 stroke centers nationwide. The Bayview interventional neuroradiology suite was completed and the first cerebral stent was placed this year. During the past year Bayview opened its Headache and Myositis Centers, both of which were featured in the New York Times. Abhay Moghekar won the Frank Ford award for outstanding resident teaching, and Chris Earley was elected to the Royal College of Physicians.
• Seven faculty members were elected to the American Neurological Association: Michael Polydefkis, Doug Kerr, Raf Llinas, Andy Zimmerman, Mark Walker, Dana Boatman, and Andrea Corse

• Dr. Ben Carson, head of Pediatric Neuro- surgery, visits with the six students participat-ing in this summer’s Internship in Brain Science: Vivian Ukegbu, Jacob Ennals, Deandria Spencer, Lena Harris, Khristian Rhodes and Khadeijah Palmer-Rhodes.

  Dana Boatman and several other faculty lead our second annual program to introduce minority high school students to neuroscience research. Through gift funds the Department provided a stipend for six outstanding students who spent time in different research laboratories. From the four students in last years program one is now in Pre-Med and another is planning to go to Nursing School. In another initiative to attract medical students from under- represented minorities into the clinical neurosciences, the Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Neurosurgery hosted the Student National Medical Association’s regional leadership program in September. Over 80 participants were addressed by Drs. Levi Watkins, Ben Carson and Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa and also attended workshops.

Finally, some of our biggest challenges relate to space, or the lack of it. Because our clinical and research programs have been so successful, the Department faculty numbers have grown rapidly in the last five years from about 100 in 2002 to 140 today. The staff almost doubled to 308 during the same period. Neurology divisions and programs are now scattered throughout fifteen separate buildings on the East Baltimore Campus alone which hinders interactions, collaboration and fractionates all kinds of interactions among our faculty and staff. With the planned opening of Rangos (or L1) Building just north of Madison Street in 2008 we are planning for a more rational distribution of our space resources.

I thank all of you for your support this year, and wish you the very best in 2008.

Yours sincerely,
Justin C. McArthur, M.B.B.S., M.P.H
Professor, Departments of Neurology, Pathology and Epidemiology
Interim Chair, Department of Neurology