Other Featured News:

1. Columbia University Magazine featured a comprehensive story on Controversies in Chronic Lyme Disease. The article, entitled "Rash Judgment", provides a balanced perspective on the current controversies and work being done at Columbia to address these issues.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/Summer2007/RashJudgment.html

2. The Columbia University Lyme and Tick Borne Diseases Research Center (LTBDRC) opened on April 30 2007 at the Medical Center, culminating years of fund-raising effort by Time for Lyme, Inc, the Lyme Disease Association, and many private donors. This is the first University based research center to address the debilitating symptoms that plague patients with chronic Lyme Disease, with the goals of focusing on the identification of better diagnostic tests, biomarkers of treatment response, and more effective and sustained treatments. While this Center is not a clinical facility that provides treatment to patients, it is a research facility that has been created to conduct both diagnostic and treatment studies into which research patients can enroll. A symposium to celebrate the opening was held on April 30 to a packed standing-room only crowd. The symposium included introductory comments by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman (chair of Psychiatry), Dr. Lee Goldman (Executive Vice President for Biomedical Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia), Diane Blanchard and Debbie Siciliano (co-presidents of Time for Lyme, Inc), Patricia Smith (president of Lyme Disease Association), and actress Mary McDonnell (president of the Universe, Battlestar Gallatica). Scientific presentations were given by Dr. Brian Fallon (Director, LTBDRC), Dr. Ben Beard (Director, Vector Borne Diseases at CDC), Dr. Ian Lipkin (Director, Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory), Dr. Rafal Tokarz (Lyme Resaerch Fellow, Microbiologist), and Dr. James Moeller (Mathematician and Imaging Analyst). For more information about the Center and the controversies around Lyme Disease, see columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/Summer2007/RashJudgment.html.

3. New Fellowship Program in Lyme Disease is launched. Through the generous efforts of Jennifer Weis Monsky and John Monsky and their family and friends and in gratitude to doctors who treat patients with persistent Lyme Disease (especially Dr. Kenneth Liegner), a new educational program has been launched. Starting in July 2006, we committed ourselves to training a newly graduated family medicine physician in the science and art of diagnosing and treating patients with Lyme and other tick-borne diseases. This Fellowship program was started because of the urgent need for physicians to be trained who can work with both adults and children with chronic Lyme disease. The decision to provide advanced training to a Family Medicine physician was based on our goals to identify an individual whose primary concern would be excellence in comprehensive patient care, whose concern was broadly multi-systemic, and whose training prepared the individual to work with both adults and children. In addition to this Fellow's multi-disciplinary post-residency education at Columbia, the Fellow will be helping us in the conduct of clinical research so that new research results can emerge from this very exciting fellowship. The Fellow will therefore develop an expertise in the critical reading of medical literature, a working knowledge of the conduct of clinical research, and an in depth knowledge of the complexities of this illness. Dr. Fallon is quoted as having said, "I wish I could do this Fellowship! This Program will be a terrific training opportunity and should help in the shaping of an outstanding new clinician for the Lyme disease patient community." In order to train more than one post-residency fellow and to make this program a more permanent training opportunity for others, we are seeking to raise $500,000 over the next 2 years. So far, we are half way toward that goal. Please check out donor opportunities if your circumstances allow you to support our efforts in that way.

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