UT Southwestern doc honored with Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator designation

by John P. Meyer

The ultimate goal of Dr. Levine's research: "to develop new drugs that will increase beclin 1 expression and autophagy." Better her than us, I'm just sayin'.

Dr. Beth Levine: investigator

Let's cut to the chase: Dr. Beth Levine's research centers on studies designed to figure out whether breast cancer, HIV infections and autoimmune diseases (such as lupus) are enabled by a patient's defective autophagy gene, otherwise known as beclin 1, which her lab first identified. (Autophagy is defined as the process by which cells devour their own unwanted or damaged parts.) The goal, of course, would be to confirm this suspicion and then develop ways to "fix" the defective autophagy functitonality of affected patients.

Howard Hughes, as everyone who's seen movies about him knows, was deathly afraid of infections and - in his later years - went to extraordinary lengths to avoid bodily contact of any sort. Thus it's fitting that the medical institute which bears his moniker would be doling out shares of its $18+ billion in endowments to researchers engaged in this sort of study.

"Elementary, my dear autophagist."

As of Oct. 11, Dr. Levine became one of 10 designated Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigators on staff at UT Southwestern. According to her, the honor (and access to funding) "... will allow us to take our research findings and begin patient-oriented studies."

Otherwise known as the Jay P. Sanford Professor of Infectious Diseases, Dr. Levine can now tack some additional verbiage onto her CV. In regard to her researches: we wish her Godspeed.

And as another well-known calabash-smoking investigator once commented, "the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents, should be able accurately to state all the other ones, both before and after." If only it were that easy.