This Week@WesternU, June 4-8, 2012

Towne & Gown Golf Classic

WesternU invites the public to an exciting day of golf to benefit student scholarships.

The Towne & Gown Golf Classic, benefiting the University Scholarship Fund, will be held on June 18, 2012 at the Glendora Country Club, 310 Amelia Ave., Glendora, Calif.

Registration and lunch starts at 11 a.m. followed by a noon shotgun start. The Hole-in-One prize is a 2012 Cadillac, sponsored by Symes Cadillac of Pasadena. Reception dinner and awards ceremony will follow the event.

Cost is $175 per golfer or $700 per foursome. Proceeds will benefit the University Scholarship Fund thanks to the generosity of T.F. Chen, DDS. Deadline to enter is June 11, 2012.

For more information or to sign up for the Towne & Gown Golf Classic, please contact Susan Terrazas at 909-706-3476, email sterrazas@westernu.edu, or Austin Braunwalder at 909-469-8495, email abraunwalder@westernu.edu.

Click here to view the website.

Helicopter Drop

Everyone is invited to join the Towne & Gown Golf Classic Helicopter Drop, whether or not you’re coming out to the golf course. While hovering over our designated hole, our helicopter team will dump numbered golf balls, and the owner of the golf ball that lands in the hole (or closest to the pin) will win the 50-50 cash prize. Click here for more information.

Follow WesternU on Twitter

WesternU now has a Twitter account. Follow us at @WesternUNews.

Follow Health’s Angels of WesternU

Follow @WUHealthsAngels on Twitter as they ride their bicycles from San Francisco to Los Angeles from June 3-9, 2012.

From the College of Pharmacy:

Good Neighbor Pharmacy (GNP) and the Institute for Community Pharmacy (ICP) will co-host the 10th annual, and final, GNP/ICP Scholarship Golf Classic at the prestigious Robinson Ranch Golf Club in Santa Clarita, Calif. on June 13, 2012. The GNP/ICP Scholarship Golf Classic has been a tremendous success during the past nine years, raising more than $1 million in scholarships for the WesternU College of Pharmacy and the USC School of Pharmacy. This tournament has routinely attracted more than 200 corporate, civic and entertainment leaders from Southern California and across the nation each year for a day of fabulous golf and industry networking. All proceeds raised each year have provided scholarships in support of students at WesternU College of Pharmacy and the USC School of Pharmacy who are pursuing careers as independent pharmacists.

Mike Quick and the GNP/ICP tournament committee have been incredibly generous with their time and support in producing this event over the past nine years, and the WesternU College of Pharmacy is deeply thankful for their loyal commitment to the success of the students at WesternU. It truly has been a decade of success!

Click here for registration information.

Kudos on accomplishments

Congratulations to Dr. David Sanchez on his most recent publication, co-authored with members of the UCLA Nanomedicine Development Center, titled “Cascade search for HSV-I combinatorial drugs with high antiviral efficacy and low toxicity.” In this paper, a computer algorithm was used to determine the optimal drug combination to block HSV-I replication in vitro with or without a bias toward a particular drug or set concentration. Using this platform, the authors were able to determine an optimal combination of multiple drugs using just 180 combinations instead of the 118,000 possible combinations. This work is currently being translated to animal model systems. The technology, which was developed at UCLA, is under patent review.

Ding XT, Sanchez DJ, Shahangian A, Al-Shyoukh I, Cheng G, and Ho CM. “Cascade search for HSV-1 combinatorial drugs with high antiviral efficacy and low toxicity.” International Journal of Nanomedicine. 2012:7 2281-2292.

The article can be found here and here.

From the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific:

Kudos on accomplishments

Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. has appointed David Connett, DO, COMP associate dean of clinical services, to the Osteopathic Medical Board of California. Click here to read the full story.

Brion Benninger, MD MSc, Professor/Vice Chair, Medical Anatomical Sciences, Family Medicine, Lebanon, Ore. and College of Dental Medicine, has had his manuscript accepted for research work regarding Botox. Dr. Benninger has investigated the didactic and clinical training that dental students receive and compared it to the didactic and clinical training of their DO/MD colleagues. Essentially dental students have more didactic formal training and clinical skills at injecting pharmacological agents into specific spaces to anesthetize nerves then their DO/MD colleagues. There are a number of states that do not promote dentists to inject Botox. Botox is an incredibly useful therapeutic agent used successfully in many orofacial conditions. Currently, Oral Maxillofacial surgeons administer Botox, however, many of these cases occupy appointments in clinics, which could and should be treated by general dentists, thus freeing up clinic appointments for patients who may require surgery.

Dr. Benninger had an abstract accepted at the International Association of Medical Science Educators. This novel research project uses anatomy to create a bi-directional peer-to-peer interprofessional student teaching pedagogy. He is mentoring OMS1 Meghan Aabo and Taylor Delamarter, clinical anatomy researcher, during this project. Dr. Benninger is impressed with the contributions from both Meghan and Taylor regarding this project. He will present this work at the international conference on June 23-26.

Dr. Benninger and John Mata, PhD, collaborated on a research project investigating a mini-anchor screw used primarily by orthodontic specialists. Potentially these mini-screws have several benefits. Dr. Benninger said there are several mini-screws that have recently come on the market and researchers including himself and Mata are currently investigating them. The benefits of mini-anchor screws would be decreased time braces would be worn and patients wouldn’t necessarily require night head-gear. This research project has two components: The first piece investigating the anchor screws with pigs, and the latter with donor-cadaver-patients.

COMP-Northwest Hosts Gift of Literacy celebration

Nearly 300 first-graders made a promise to read during Lebanon’s Gift of Literacy program, held on the COMP-Northwest campus in Lebanon, Ore. Tuesday, May 29, 2012. Click here to read the full story.

From the College of Allied Health Professions:

Department of Physical Therapy Education News

Associate Professor Tony Mosconi, PhD, served as a judge for the 2012 California State Science Fair which was recently held at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. This annual event consisted of science projects submitted from almost 1,000 high school and junior high school students from more than 400 schools in the state. A volunteer group of almost 300 scientists and engineers from private industry and higher education evaluated the projects to select winners in several categories for a total of $50,000 in awards.

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