With The Hartwell Foundation’s support, Yolanda Fortenberry is entering a new phase of her research seeking a treatment for sickle cell disease.
For Yolanda Fortenberry, associate professor in the Department of Biology, pursuing new and better treatments for sickle cell disease (SCD)—a group of inherited blood disorders that afflict approximately 100,000 Americans, most of them Black and many of them children—is more than an interesting research project. It’s personal.
As a Black woman who grew up in New Orleans’ predominantly African American Lower Ninth Ward, Fortenberry has witnessed SCD’s devastating impact firsthand. She lost an uncle and two childhood friends to the disease, and the grandchild of another friend was recently diagnosed with it.
“I understand how my work is going to affect the community I come from,” she says. “That is important to me.”
Now, Fortenberry is about to embark on a new phase of this work with a grant from The Hartwell Foundation, which supports early-stage, innovative biomedical research with the potential to benefit children in the United States. This spring, she was one of 12 faculty scientists nationally to receive a prestigious Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award and designation as a Hartwell Investigator. The award will provide $100,000 per year for three years for her sickle cell studies.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SCD occurs in approximately one out of every 365 Black births. The disease is caused by a genetic mutation that affects hemoglobin, the protein that enables red blood cells to deliver oxygen throughout the body.
Red blood cells containing normal hemoglobin are round and pliable—”like gummy Life Savers,” Fortenberry says. “They can change their shape and pass through even the smallest capillaries.” The mutation, however, causes hemoglobin molecules to stick to one another, forming long rods that cause the cells themselves to become rigid and sickle-shaped.
Those stiff, misshapen cells pile up inside a person’s blood vessels, starving their tissues of oxygen, damaging their organs and causing excruciatingly painful episodes known as pain crises. The disease is also associated with an increased risk of stroke and shortened life expectancy. Children with SCD may experience delayed growth and development along with anemia, fatigue and pain: “They live with the fear of not knowing whether they’ll go to school or the emergency room when they wake up in the morning,” Fortenberry says.
Most available treatments, such as pain medication and blood transfusions, only address the symptoms and complications of SCD; at present, the only cure is a bone marrow transplant. But because of a shortage of compatible donors, fewer than 18% of children with the disease are eligible for the procedure. The rest must seek relief from their pain crises at hospitals and clinics. Unfortunately, factors such as poverty and racial bias can make it difficult for African Americans with SCD to get proper care; multiple studies have shown, for example, that healthcare workers sometimes suspect Black patients in crisis of being drug addicts in search of a fix.
Fortenberry is working on a therapy that would stop sickle cells from forming in the first place. Early access to such treatment would prevent long-term organ damage and improve both the length and quality of patients’ lives.
The key to her approach lies in a class of synthetic molecules known as aptamers: bits of single-stranded RNA or DNA that can be designed in the lab to bind to specific proteins, changing their behavior.
Fortenberry has explored the therapeutic potential of aptamers for nearly two decades, and her interest in blood and blood disorders goes back even further. The first in her family to graduate from college, Fortenberry began participating in summer research projects at local universities while still in high school. She wrote her undergraduate thesis at Louisiana Scholars’ College, an honors college within Northwestern State University, on blood glucose levels in the slug. From there, she went on to study molecular biology and protein chemistry in graduate school at Louisiana State University School of Medicine.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 2000s, Fortenberry started exploring the possibility of using aptamers to prevent and treat blood clots. (She is now developing a project to address the rare but serious clotting disorder associated with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccines.) One of the clotting proteins she targeted with aptamers is also implicated in various cancers, and her research opened up new avenues for treating metastatic breast cancer in particular.
Later, as an assistant professor of pediatric hematology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Fortenberry turned her attention to SCD. In 2017, she and her colleagues developed two aptamers that can keep hemoglobin molecules from sticking together, thereby preventing the formation of sickle cells.
The problem, says Fortenberry, is that she has only been able to make her aptamers work in the test tube. Now, with The Hartwell Foundation’s support, she intends to find a way to transport them into red blood cells so they can be used to treat actual patients.
“The idea is to get these aptamers from the bench to the bedside,” Fortenberry says.
One possible solution is to combine her therapeutic aptamers with other aptamers that are designed to pass through the cell membrane. These transfer aptamers could then smuggle Fortenberry’s anti-sickling aptamers into the cells where they are needed.
But Fortenberry isn’t putting all of her aptamers in one basket. After joining the CWRU faculty in 2018, she began collaborating with Umut A. Gurkan, the Warren E. Rupp Associate Professor in the Case School of Engineering and a specialist in biomedical microtechnologies. Together, they are investigating whether particles such as exosomes—tiny extracellular vesicles that ferry cargo in and out of cells—can be used as transport vehicles.
Fortenberry is confident that, within three years, she will have at least one effective method of getting her aptamers into red blood cells, and possibly more. At that point, she intends to begin studies in an animal model. At the same time, she hopes to start working with biomedical engineers on packaging the aptamers as an easily administered therapeutic—ideally, a pill.
“We’re well on our way,” she says.
Alexander Gelfand is a freelance writer in New York City.
Provost and Executive Vice President Ben Vinson III, the Hiram C. Haydn Professor of History. Photo by Matthew Lester
Case Western Reserve has launched an effort to increase the numbers of arts and humanities scholars holding leadership positions in higher education, with an emphasis on attracting scholars from underrepresented minority groups. The initiative, supported by a four-year, $2.028 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will prepare participants for roles in academic administration, address barriers to their advancement and stimulate dialogue—in true humanist fashion—about the nature of leadership itself.
The Humanities in Leadership Learning Series (HILLS) is the successor to a pilot program funded by a previous grant through the Mellon Foundation. In 2019, the foundation awarded $100,000 to 13 similarly oriented programs at colleges and universities around the country. Case Western Reserve is one of the first two of these institutions to obtain support to expand their original offerings.
HILLS was developed by Provost and Executive Vice President Ben Vinson III, the Hiram C. Haydn Professor of History, and two faculty colleagues, both of whom have administrative experience. Timothy Beal, the Florence Harkness Professor of Religion, served as interim dean of the college in 2019. Joy Bostic, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies, served as the university’s interim vice president for inclusion, diversity and equal opportunity in 2019-20. This summer, she was named the college’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion.
Timothy K. Beal, the Florence Harkness Professor of Religion. Photo by Keli Schimelpfenig
The program’s main component will be a semester-long seminar, conducted each fall, for five faculty members and three postdoctoral scholars from the College of Arts and Sciences. The postdocs, supported by the Mellon Foundation, will hold one-year appointments in arts and humanities departments. In addition to contributing to the HILLS seminar, they will each offer an undergraduate course in their specialty and pursue their research. The program directors are eager to recruit scholars whose work explores issues related to race and racism, ethnicity and social justice.
In the pilot version of the HILLS seminar, held in Spring 2020, a group of four faculty members met twice a month to discuss various dimensions of leadership. Beal and Bostic were joined by Kurt Koenigsberger, associate professor in the Department of English, and Lisa Huisman Koops, professor and head of the Music Education Program in the Department of Music.
Joy Bostic, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies and associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. Photo courtesy of the Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity
Several of the questions they considered went to the heart of the HILLS program’s mission. For example: What, if anything, do scholars in the arts and humanities uniquely bring to higher education leadership? Is there anything especially valuable about their intellectual or scholarly dispositions? Their teaching experience? Their subject matter or methods?
Both the theory and the practice of leadership generated topics for the seminar. At one session, Beal and the fellows probed the distinction between leadership and management. At another, they asked how leaders should respond to past incidents or long-standing issues that have caused hurt and alienation within an institution.
“Those meetings,” Beal says, “were not only remarkably enlightening for each of us, but they led to a genuine sense of community. One of the most challenging aspects of academic leadership is how isolating it can be. Our times together have been an antidote to such isolation, hinting at a potential model for others in leadership to adopt and adapt.”
The program design also includes an annual academic leadership symposium for CWRU graduate students in the arts and humanities, as well as periodic workshops that will bring graduate students together with seminar members and senior administrators. “We want scholars at early stages in their careers, both graduate students and postdocs, to interact in meaningful, sustained ways with people like Dean Joy Ward, Ben Vinson, Joy Bostic and me—people who have been on both sides of the desk,” Beal says.
To extend HILLS’ impact beyond Case Western Reserve, the program directors will produce a leadership development curriculum for use by other colleges and universities. They also plan to host an annual summit, with speakers and attendees from many institutions, on advancing arts and humanities scholars and promoting diversity in higher education administration.
Alice Lo
This spring, two Case Western Reserve undergraduates received Goldwater Scholarships, the preeminent national award for college students pursuing research careers in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics.
Eduardo Williams-Medina
Alice Lo and Eduardo Williams-Medina are among 409 sophomores and juniors from across the United States to receive the scholarship this year. Candidates for the award must be nominated by their academic institutions; for the 2021 competition, there were 1,200 nominees from 438 colleges and universities.
Both Lo and Williams-Medina plan to graduate in 2022—Lo with degrees in biochemistry and biology, and Williams-Medina with a degree in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism. They share a commitment to investigating cancer biology; in summer 2019, for instance, they both participated in CWRU’s Cancer-Focused Summer Undergraduate Research program (CanSUR). During the COVID-19 pandemic, when they lost access to laboratories, they continued their research by other means, learning to use the computational tools of bioinformatics.
In addition to CanSUR, Lo has received support from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Summer Undergraduate Research Program and two programs administered by CWRU’s SOURCE office (Support of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors). She is a co-founder of the Undergraduate Research Society and a reviewer of submissions to Discussions: The Undergraduate Journal of Case Western Reserve University. Lo plans to earn a doctorate in cancer biology and become a principal investigator in the field of neuro-oncology.
Williams-Medina, who is preparing for a career as a physician scientist, has served as a volunteer at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center. He is a participant in the Emerging Scholars Program, vice president of external affairs for the student organization La Alianza, a resident assistant and a voting member of CWRU’s Academic Integrity Board.
Donald E. Schuele, the Albert A. Michelson Professor Emeritus of Physics, died Dec. 19 at age 86. His successor to the Michelson chair, Cyrus C. Taylor, calls him “one of the university’s great servants” and “a passionate believer in the centrality of students in everything that we do.”
Schuele earned his doctorate in physics at Case Institute of Technology (CIT) in 1963 and joined the faculty later that year. He saw himself primarily as a teacher, but being part of CIT’s research community was also deeply important to him. He liked to say that “research and teaching go together.”
Starting in 1976, when he became chair of the physics department, Schuele assumed a series of leadership roles, including vice dean and dean at CIT (he held the latter position twice). With support from the Case Alumni Association (CAA) and brothers Kent Hale Smith and Kevin Smith, he established scholarship programs that substantially boosted CIT’s enrollment, and he oversaw the creation of its first cooperative work-study programs. Schuele also served as Case Western Reserve’s vice president for undergraduate and graduate studies.
Although he found the administrative phase of his career rewarding, Schuele later said he always intended to “work his way back to professor.” After 17 years, he finally did. When CAA presented him with a Meritorious Service Award in 2019, he was still maintaining his lab and working with graduate students, even though he had retired in 2006. His other honors included a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship, John Carroll University’s Distinguished Physics Alumnus Award and CAA’s Sam Givelber ’23 Award.
A lifelong sports fan, Schuele was known to play hard-fought pickup games on the basketball court with his students. During the 1980s, he lent his physics expertise to the Sports Equipment Technology Committee of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Schuele’s wife of 63 years, Clare, died in July 2020. He is survived by six daughters, 13 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and two siblings. In a condolence letter to his family, one of his former students wrote, “Your father was the reason that I had a very good life.”
Gheorghe Mateescu, professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry, died Jan. 22 at age 92. Mateescu enjoyed an international reputation for advancing imaging technologies, which he championed as vital tools for both scientific research and the practice of medicine.
Mateescu launched his research career in his native Romania before immigrating to the United States in 1967. He was named to the chemistry faculty in 1971, after completing a doctorate under CWRU professor (and future Nobel Laureate) George Olah. Mateescu was founding director of the university’s Major Analytical Instruments Facility, a position he held for almost three decades. He received the John S. Diekhoff Award for Distinguished Graduate Student Teaching in 1991 and was named the chemistry department’s Outstanding Alumnus for 2015.
Throughout his career, Mateescu maintained close ties with Romanian scientific and educational institutions. In 2004, he received the Star of the Order of Romania, the nation’s highest honor. From 1995 to 2014, he organized workshops on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging that brought researchers from around the world together with Romanian scientists and radiologists.
As part of his legacy at CWRU, Mateescu endowed two student awards in chemistry and one in biomedical engineering.
“Gheorghe brought terrific energy and enthusiasm to the chemistry department throughout his distinguished career,” says John Protasiewicz, the Hurlbut Professor of Chemistry. “His stories of leaving Romania, working with George Olah or running his latest NMR spectroscopic experiments always left you with a smile. He cared deeply for all members of the department, especially for students. His strengths in bringing people together from many countries made him remarkably successful in organizing collaborations. He was also a constant reminder of how immigrants have enriched the United States and strengthened our international scientific position.”
Mateescu is survived by his wife, Claudia, two siblings and many nieces and nephews.
Peter Bennett, associate professor in the Department of Music, is the author of Music and Power at the Court of Louis XIII: Sounding the Liturgy in Early
Modern France.
Timothy Black, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, is the co-author (with Sky Keyes) of It’s a Setup: Fathering from the Social and Economic Margins.
Lauren Calandruccio, associate professor in the Communication Sciences Program in the Department of Psychological Sciences, was appointed to the Louis D. Beaumont University Professorship II.
Michael W. Clune, the Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities in the Department of English, is the author of A Defense of Judgment.
Sarah Diamond, associate professor in the Department of Biology, was among 50 leading scientists contributing to a United Nations report on climate change and mass extinction.
Elina Gertsman, the Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan Professor in Catholic Studies II in the Department of Art History and Art, received the 2021 Baker-Nord Center Award for Distinguished Scholarship in the Humanities. Her latest book is The Absent Image: Lacunae in Medieval Books.
Heather McKee Hurwitz, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, is the author of Are We the 99%? : The Occupy Movement, Feminism, and Intersectionality.
Emmitt Jolly, associate professor in the Department of Biology, received the 2020 Most Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at Tuskegee University.
Lydia Kisley, the Warren E. Rupp Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, was selected as a 2020-21 Chemical Machinery of the Cell Fellow through the Scialog program, sponsored by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Harsh Mathur, professor in the Department of Physics, was named a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Susan McClary, the Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, received an honorary doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Lisa Nielson, Anisfield-Wolf SAGES Fellow and lecturer in the Department of Music, is the author of Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamicate World: A Social History.
Anthony Pearson, the Rudolph and Susan Rense Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, received the 2021 Morton L. Mandel Award for Outstanding Chemistry Faculty.
Pavel Fileviez Perez, associate professor in the Department of Physics, was elected to the Ethics Advisory Committee of the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields.
Rachel Hall Sternberg, associate professor in the Department of Classics, is the author of The Ancient Greek Roots of Human Rights.
Giuseppe Strangi, professor and Ohio Research Scholar in Surfaces of Advanced Materials in the Department of Physics, was named a fellow of the Optical Society of America.
Joy K. Ward, dean of the college and professor in the Department of Biology, was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition, she was selected as a member and chair of the advisory committee for the Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Elisabeth Werner, professor in the Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, co-organized a trimester-long international
symposium as a Simons Fellow at the Haussdorf Research Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, Germany.“The Interplay Between High-Dimensional Geometry and Probability” began in January 2021 with a series of remote lectures by leading scientists in Austria, Israel, Luxembourg, Poland and the United States. Two weeklong workshops in February and March gave young researchers the chance to present their work. In addition, participants formed problem-solving groups that met throughout the spring.
Stanislaw Szarek, the Kerr Professor of Mathematics and interim department chair, notes that Werner, in co-organizing the event, “showed leadership in research at the highest international level.”
The program was dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Meckes. “Professor Meckes contributed to this area of mathematics and would have been one of the most important participants,” Werner says.