Anne Newman
Fall 2018
Baby Boomers have long been known as one of the largest generations, and now they are living longer and healthier than any generation before, says Anne Newman (MD ’82, Res ’85, Fel ’87), the newly appointed clinical director of the Aging Institute of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh. She is a Boomer herself.
“We’re going through an aging revolution,” says Newman. (Apropos for the generation known for anti-war protests and civil rights rallies.)
“The 65-year-old today is a healthier person than a 65-year-old was 30 years ago,” Newman explains. Could it be because of lifestyle changes? The availability of medications? Better care? “Big picture—we’re looking at people who are older now and questioning if there’s a different phenomenon than there was before, and what it means to clinical practice.”
Historically, aging studies focused on understanding risk factors for premature death, physical disability, and dementia, which are really important, Newman says. But now there’s a shift toward understanding the flip side—the absence of disease—and how older people can stay healthy for as long as possible.
Newman, Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and professor of medicine, as well as clinical and translational science, has been studying the aging process for more than 30 years at Pitt. Her interest in the elderly population began when she was a student at Pitt Med. Learning how all of the bodily systems interacted in the sickest, most complicated cases challenged and intrigued her. Geriatrics is “internal medicine—plus,” she says.
As principal investigator on a myriad of aging studies, Newman has tracked thousands of participants for up to three decades, yielding an extensive body of research. In 2014, she published a landmark study demonstrating what many physicians had previously only assumed: Walking is indeed protective against the loss of mobility in the elderly. Last year she reported in JAMA on rates of disability and pharmaceutical use in 90-year-olds who had been followed since they were in their mid-60s. This year’s publication highlights include a paper identifying cardiovascular biomarkers and physiologic indicators associated with mortality—information that could be used to develop new drugs or other therapies to “alter the trajectory of aging.”
Through her clinical directorship at the Aging Institute—a newly created position—she is working alongside institute director Toren Finkel, a basic scientist, to guide promising animal research toward clinical studies. As she and Finkel move forward, they’re “drawing on the collective wisdom of many researchers here at Pitt,” she says. That wisdom pertains to prevention, social environments, rehabilitation science, nursing, and basic science, notes Newman. “All of these aspects are important to the Aging Institute to address what it means to be healthy as you age.”
Ultimately, they hope to unearth what Newman calls “the holy grail of biomarkers”—the ability to measure substances in the blood to determine how old somebody is. “We’ve not had good ways of measuring that besides knowing someone’s birthday,” she notes.
Newman says her own research has influenced how she approaches aging, motivating her to make regular trips to the gym. She loathes the anti-aging industry that is so formidable in the United States. “I think it’s really important not to think of aging as a war to be waged but rather a process to be shepherded.”
Inna Belfer
We knew you when
BY SHARON TREGASKIS
Inna Belfer was a Pitt associate professor of anesthesiology and human genetics when a May 2014 National Institutes of Health announcement got her attention: Evaluation of all biomedical research grant applications would soon be expanded to include consideration of sex as a biological variable (SABV).
For an MD/PhD whose own research laid the groundwork for the relevance of sex as a variable in pain, an opportunity to help promote that policy throughout academic medicine was too good to pass up. Today, Belfer serves as the NIH’s scientific lead for implementation of the SABV policy in the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH).
“At least in pain, everyone knows that differences in sex are fundamental and have to be considered in our work to develop treatments for painkillers,” says Belfer, “because they work very differently in men and women.”
Despite her full-time NIH appointment, Belfer, who formerly directed the molecular epidemiology of pain program at the Pittsburgh Center for Pain Research, still managed to coauthor a dozen papers in 2017, detailing findings from research she was pursuing when she left Pitt, including a clinical trial testing a novel treatment for post-mastectomy pain and investigations into the mechanisms of pain sensitivity in sickle cell disease.
Belfer has stepped into this role at the NIH as the national conversation around sex and gender gains new prominence. As part of her position, she helps inform NIH funding priorities; she also founded the NIH Scientific Interest Group on Sex and Gender in Health and Disease, of which she now serves as chair. To promote greater participation in such conversations, she’s developing an online course on the topic, with modules on immunology, mental health, and urology, among others.
“We shape the science,” says Belfer, who serves as the ORWH liaison with the FDA, as well as with initiatives and agencies within the NIH, including those that support the career development of women scientists. “I make sure that important science will be done by the best labs and the best scientists.”
OBITUARIES
Charlene Dezzuti
JUNE 18, 1964–MARCH 15, 2018
In 1986, an infection changed Charlene Dezzutti’s career trajectory. She had been studying veterinary pathology at Ohio State University when she learned that a favorite uncle had been diagnosed with AIDS. After sitting vigil with him in a Pittsburgh hospital, she went back to grad school and added viral immunology to her studies. While she earned her PhD, her uncle got healthier. (He is still one of the longest surviving participants in the Pitt Men’s Study on the natural history of HIV/AIDS.)
Since graduation—and in her nearly 30 years of HIV research—Dezzutti made significant contributions in preclinical HIV prevention trials and preclinical product testing. She spent 13 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then moved back to her hometown in 2005 to join Magee-Womens Research Institute (MWRI), Pitt Med, and eventually Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health.
For the past two years, Dezzutti served as the principal investigator of the Microbicide Trials Network Laboratory Center, in which she oversaw product evaluation and pharmacodynamics studies in her own laboratory and six others. Her studies included examining HIV-infection susceptibility of tissue in the presence of contraceptive hormones. Before that, she held leadership roles in federally funded trials and in trials funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Dezzutti died of a sudden, aggressive cancer at the age of 53. Friend and colleague Sharon Hillier, Pitt professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences, says: “The loss of Charlene has left a big hole in our world. In our office and lab, we miss her smile, her infectious laugh, and her unwavering commitment to the search for HIV prevention options that are safe and effective.” —Kristin Bundy
-----------------------------------
Frank Sessoms
OCT. 24, 1947–JULY 22, 2018
A graduate of Meharry Medical College who returned to his native Pittsburgh for an internship and residency, Frank Sessoms (Res ’77) ran a private practice in East Liberty, specializing in pain management, for more than 40 years. “He touched a lot of lives,” former patient and friend Ralph Watson told the New Pittsburgh Courier. “He never hesitated to write a check, and he mentored a lot of people.”
Among those Sessoms mentored was David Hicks, a Pitt undergraduate and student officer for the Student National Medical Association chapter for Pitt pre-meds in the late 1990s. Paula Davis, now head of the University’s Office of Health Sciences Diversity, urged the aspiring physician to ask Sessoms for help funding travel to a conference. Sessoms was a mentor for Gateway Medical Society and allowed countless premed students to shadow him in his practice.
At Sessoms’s clinic, Hicks recalls, R&B played on the office sound system, and the walls were lined with photos: Sessoms with celebrities, Sessoms at local jazz clubs, Sessoms clad in the dapper suits for which he was known. The bulk of their brief appointment was devoted to an impromptu career advising session. “I could tell in five minutes he cared about me, my career development,” says Hicks, now deputy health officer for Jefferson County, Alabama.
The undergrad left with a $1,000 pledge from Sessoms for Hicks’s student group trip to attend the conference—and a dedication to pursuing the life of service the older physician exemplified.
“There weren’t many people itching to go into the community where he worked to provide medical care,” says Hicks.
“I imagine kids coming up through that neighborhood, they saw that their doctor was a black man with a style to his presentation. That’s a powerful image.” —Sharon Tregaski