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| JEFFERSON CENTER FOR PANCREATIC, BILIARY, AND RELATED CANCERS |
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Multidisciplinary Team
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 Dr. Ya-Ming Hou, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was born in Taiwan, and graduated from high school in Taipei, Taiwan.
She graduated from National Taiwan University in 1979, summa cum laude with a B.S. degree in Agricultural Chemistry. Dr. Hou then graduated in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley,
receiving her M.A degree. She then went on to obtain her Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986.
She was a Charles A. King Trust postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1991 and then received
a fellowship as Chercheurs Associe au CNRS to study at the Institute of Moleculaire et Cellulaire du CNRS, Strasbourg, France.
Dr. Hou joined the faculty of Thomas Jefferson University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology in 1992, and rose to the rank of Professor in 2003. Dr. Hou has served as a panel member on NIH study sections
and as an Ad hoc reviewer for national and international grant review committees.
Dr. Hou’s primary interests and research have been to understand the fidelity of the cellular decoding machinery—the process
of transferring the genetic information stored in DNA and RNA into protein amino acid sequences. The decoding machinery is
established on the ribosome and consists of multiple steps that require cellular energy commitment. The rate and quality of
this decoding process is the key determinant of cellular survival and growth, and it is particularly needed and in high demand
for proliferation and differentiation of cancer cells. Dr. Hou has focused on the tRNA molecules that play an active and essential
role throughout the decoding process. She has investigated the kinetic mechanisms of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, tRNA methyl
transferases, tRNA 3’ end maturation enzymes, and tRNA-ribosome interactions and dynamics. She is committed to elucidating
the kinetic and molecular basis for how tRNA activities determine the rate and quality of decoding.
Dr. Hou has co-authored over 80 peer reviewed scientific papers and has been invited to present her work at national and international
meetings. She enjoys mentoring postdoctoral and predoctoral trainees and lecturing to Jefferson Medical College and Thomas
Jefferson University Graduate programs.
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Dr. Jeffrey I. Joseph , (Associate Professor of Anesthesiology) is the Director of the Artificial Pancreas Center, Cell and Tissue Engineering
of the Department of Anesthesiology, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Joseph is a board certified
anesthesiologist with fellowship training in cardiac anesthesiology and research. He has worked in the operating rooms at
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for the last 19 years in all areas of anesthesiology, critical care, and pain management.
Prior to his anesthesiology training at Jefferson, Dr. Joseph completed two years of a general surgery residency at Metropolitan
Hospital in Philadelphia. He graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1983 and Dickinson College
in 1979 with honors. During his career at Jefferson, Dr. Joseph has helped mentor ~ 300 anesthesiology residents, numerous
medical students, five master’s students, and four Ph.D. students in Biomedical Engineering.
Dr. Joseph’s research has focused on the design, construction, and testing of medical devices used in the hospital and outpatient
settings. In 1996, Dr. Joseph co-founded Animas Corporation to facilitate the development of an optical implantable blood
glucose sensor and insulin pump technology for use in ambulatory patients with diabetes. A multidisciplinary team of Jefferson
physicians and scientists worked with Animas engineers to develop and test the optical sensor in animals and humans with diabetes.
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).
Animas Corporation completed a successful initial public offering in 2004 (Nasdaq: PUMP) and was acquired by Johnson & Johnson
Corporation in 2006.
In 1998, Dr. Joseph founded the Artificial Pancreas Center (APC) at Jefferson to coordinate the multidisciplinary effort required to integrate a real-time glucose sensor, a computer control algorithm,
and an insulin delivery system. Artificial pancreas systems are being developed to automate the control of blood glucose levels
in hospitalized patient with hyperglycemia and ambulatory patients with diabetes. Efforts to integrate glucose sensor technologies
into an artificial pancreas are being funded by the Department of Defense (DOD) and Industry. Current research has focused
on the use of real-time glucose sensors to improve glycemic control in patients undergoing major surgery. Clinical trials
have demonstrated a marked reduction in morbidity and mortality in surgical patients when glucose levels are maintained in
the near-normal range with insulin
Other inventions currently being developed by Dr. Joseph include:
- an implantable sensor that continuously monitors blood pressure, blood flow, heart rate, and pulse waveform in ambulatory
humans with heart disease,
- an implantable drug delivery catheter that utilizes tissue engineering techniques to grow vascular tissue in a scaffold for
rapid and precise insulin absorption into the blood stream,
- a bedside hospital device that automatically and reliably delivers a clean sample of blood from an intravenous/arterial catheter
to an external blood chemistry sensor,
- an endotracheal tube that suctions secretions to prevent ventilator acquired pneumonia, and
- computer algorithms that utilize complex models of human diabetes physiology to safely and effectively control an insulin
pump during meals, exercise, and illness.
Dr. Joseph has received the Dripps Memorial Award for Outstanding Resident Physician, the Arthur Tarrow Award for Research,
and the Becton Dickinson Career Achievement Award for medical device innovation. He is currently on the Board of Directors
of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (Vice-Chairman for Research), a voting member of the Food
and Drug Administration/Clinical Standards Laboratory Institute Panel to develop standards for continuous glucose monitoring
systems, and on the editorial board of the journals Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics, Biomedical Instrumentation and Technology, and the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology.
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 Dr. Donald Mitchell (Professor of Radiology) is the Director of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Division of the Department of Radiology.
Dr. Mitchell completed a residency program at George Washington University Medical Center, Washington DC and a fellowship
program at Hospital of University of Pennsylvania (HUP). He graduated from the SUNY at Downstate College of Medicine in 1981.
Dr. Mitchell is Board Certified in Radiology. His research interests include Abdominal MRI, MRI Contrast Agents and MRI Techniques.
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 Dr. Theresa Pluth Yeo, PhD, MPH, ACNP is an Assistant Professor at the TJU School of Nursing. She is the Program Director of the Advanced Practice Oncology Nursing
Program, which recently received a federal HRSA grant to focus on the needs of diverse and underserved cancer populations.
Dr. Yeo graduated from Cornell University in 1976 with a BSN, received her MSN and nurse practitioner certification from the
University of Virginia in 1983 and completed her MPH (’89) and PhD (‘07) degrees at The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg
School of Public Health. She served in the Department of Nursing at The Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1976 to 2005 and was
an Assistant Professor at the Hopkins School of Nursing from 1993 to 2005, (currently maintains adjunct status). Dr. Yeo directed
the acute care nurse practitioner program while at the Hopkins School of Nursing. Her clinical practice has been in the area
of acute care nursing and hematologic malignancies, and her research interests include occupational and environmental risk
factors for cancer. Dr. Yeo serves on the editorial boards of the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, The American Journal of Nurse Practitioners, and The International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
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