Four DOM faculty with close connections to this year’s Arizona Bioscience Week activities

Vignesh Subbian, PhD, interim executive director of the BIO5 Institute and associate professor of medicine (Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine) and clinical translational sciences in the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson as well as systems and industrial engineering in the College of Engineering, will be presented with the Michael A. Cusanovich Bioscience Educator of the Year during the AZBIO Awards celebration.

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The Arizona Bioindustry Association event is being hosted Oct. 7 at the Phoenix Convention Center, as part of Arizona Bioscience Week (Oct. 5-9) activities. These include the Arizona Drug Discovery & Development Summit, Oct. 6, at the College of Medicine – Phoenix’s Biomedical Sciences Partnership Building, which will include the DOM’s Division of Translational Medicine Chief Jennifer Carew, PhD, as an invited speaker. She’ll be speaking at 9:25 a.m., Oct. 6, on “Exploiting NEDD8-Mediated Protein Turnover: From Cancer Vulnerability to Clinical Translation.”

Among the AZBIO Fast Lane Award honorees Oct. 7 also are Picard Medical/Syncardia Systems LLC and Precision Epigenomics Inc. Division of Cardiology Regents Professor Marvin Slepian, MD, JD, was a co-founder of Syncardia, which developed the first total artificial heart device, in 2001. And the PACCS division’s Interventional Pulmonology Program Director Billie Bixby, MD, is principal investigator on a grant awarded to develop Precision Epigenomics’ EPISEEK-MPE liquid biopsy test and improve diagnoses of malignant pleural effusions in lung cancer patients.

Dr. Bixby said, “Evaluating this technology in real-world clinical settings will help determine how molecular diagnostics can complement existing tools and improve diagnosis for patients with pleural effusions.”

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In a May release, Precision Epigenomics announced it would collaborate with the PACCS division on the CAMEO (Cell-free Analysis of Methylation in Effusion for Oncology) Study to evaluate performance of  the EPISEEK-MPE test. The company, which the U of A Department of Pathology’s Mark Nelson, PhD, leads as CEO, also announced earlier this month unprecedented early-stage sensitivity data for its EPISEEK Multi-Cancer Early Detection Test, which includes testing for lung cancer.

Dr. Subbian, who’s also affiliated with the College of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and is the Center for Biomedical Informatics & Statistics associate director, has worked with PACCS Division Chief Sairam Parthasarathy, MD, on extending utility of positive airway face masks used in obstructive sleep apnea treatment for use in respirators for ICU critical care cases during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as with an Arizona post-SARS-CoV-2 consortium studying lingering long COVID symptoms.

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“Dr. Subbian is an amazing mentor and educator. He has mentored so many up-and-coming investigators including a young investigator in our NIH-funded training program,” said Dr. Parthasarathy, who’s one of three AAPLS principal investigators referring to the Arizona Approaches to Pandemics, Lung & Sleep Program, which is funded through the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

The Educator of the Year Award is named for a former University of Arizona vice president of research and Regents Professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics who died in 2010. Dr. Cusanovich was a protein chemist, who earned international recognition for his work.

For more on the AZBIO Awards, see: azbio.org/awards2026. 

For more on Arizona Biosciences Week, see azbio.org/azbw2026.

And, for more on the Arizona Drug Discovery & Development Summit, see this link.