Glenn Flores, M.D., FAAP, director of the Health Services Research Institute at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and professor of pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, has been named chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Dr. Flores will also serve as senior associate dean for child health, the George E. Batchelor Endowed Chair in Child Health, and physician-in-chief at Holtz Children’s Hospital at UM/Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
 
After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College, Dr. Flores received his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, followed by a residency in pediatrics at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and a fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University School of Medicine.
 
He has served in leadership positions in pediatrics at Boston Medical Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and as distinguished chair of health policy research at the Medical Research Institute in Minneapolis and as a research affiliate at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.


Francis Hornicek, M.D., Ph.D., has been named chair of the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Miami Health System and Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Hornicek, who completed his residency at University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital and began his academic career on the Miller School faculty, has served most recently as chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Hornicek has also been named director of orthopaedic oncology at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. He will serve as a member of the Sylvester Clinical Research Advisory Board, the Scientific Steering Committee, and the Academic Advisory Council, among other leadership activities. He will work closely with Sylvester Director Stephen D. Nimer, M.D., and Associate Director for Clinical Research Jonathan C. Trent, M.D., Ph.D., to expand sarcoma care and research.
 
During his distinguished career Dr. Hornicek has also been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, where he became chief of the Musculoskeletal Oncology Service.


Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale has named José J. López, M.D., MBA, FACEP as Chief Medical Officer.

Most recently, Dr. López served as Chief Executive Officer at Healthpoint Hospital in Abu Dhabi, where he positioned the hospital as a dominant provider in the local market serving nearly 1,700 patients daily. Previously he established and was Chief of the award-winning Emergency Medicine Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi.
 
Board-certified by the American College of Emergency Medicine, Dr. López earned his M.D., completed his residency, and was chief resident in emergency medicine the University of Massachusetts. He received an MBA in Medical Services Management from John Hopkins University and holds certificate in managing health care delivery from Harvard Business School. Dr. López graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Tufts University. 


When a new bundle of joy requires extra special medical care in the Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, parents and extended family might feel overwhelmed. At West Boca Medical Center, the medical staff works hard to relieve those fears, by caring for any premature or at-risk baby.

Further enhancing this care, the hospital is now the only one in Palm Beach and North Broward County, to have installed the NICVIEW 2™ Live Streaming Camera Systems in its Level III NICU, the highest level of care available. Parents and their family members can now see their baby at all times, even when they cannot be there in person. The password-protected camera provides parents and their family members a secure virtual window to their newborn in the NICU.
 
“This new and protected technology is giving families and loved ones another way to connect with their baby even when they can’t be present all of the time in our Level III NICU,” said George Rizzuto, chief executive officer of West Boca Medical Center. “We understand the challenges families face when their child is in the NICU, often unexpectedly, so we are trying to take concerns about separation out of the equation. Families can see their baby at any time, and feel secure knowing they are getting the very best care possible at our hospital.” 


Researchers from Cleveland Clinic’s Florida Research and Innovation Center (FRIC) have identified a potential new target for anti-COVID-19 therapies. Their findings were published in Nature Microbiology.
 
Led by FRIC scientific director Michaela Gack, Ph.D., the team discovered that a coronavirus enzyme called PLpro (papain-like protease) blocks the body’s immune response to the infection. More research is necessary, but the findings suggest that therapeutics that inhibit the enzyme may help treat COVID-19.
 
“SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – has evolved quickly against many of the body’s well-known defense mechanisms,” Gack said. “Our findings, however, offer insights into a never-before characterized mechanism of immune activation and how PLpro disrupts this response, enabling SARS-CoV-2 to freely replicate and wreak havoc throughout the host. We discovered that inhibiting PLpro may help rescue the early immune response that is key to limiting viral replication and spread.”
 
One of the body’s frontline immune defenses is a class of receptor proteins, including one called MDA5, that identify invaders by foreign patterns in their genetic material. When the receptors recognize a foreign pattern, they become activated and kick-start the immune system into antiviral mode. This is done in part by increasing the downstream expression of proteins encoded by interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs).
 
In this study, Gack and her team identified a novel mechanism that leads to MDA5 activation during virus infection. They found that ISG15 must physically bind to specific regions in the MDA5 receptor – a process termed ISGylation – in order for MDA5 to effectively activate and unleash antiviral actors against invaders. They showed that ISGylation helps to promote the formation of larger MDA5 protein complexes, which ultimately results in a more robust immune response against a range of viruses.
 
“While discovery of a novel mechanism of immune activation is exciting on its own,” Gack said, “we also discovered a bit of bad news, which is that SARS-CoV-2 also understands how the mechanism works, considering it has already developed a strategy to block it.”
 
The research team shows that the coronavirus enzyme PLpro physically interacts with the receptor MDA5 and inhibits the ISGylation process.