Hurricanes 411

The Miami Hurricanes' dream of winning a national title in women's tennis was crushed Saturday by the Florida Gators in the NCAA quarterfinals.

No. 3 Gators top No. 11 Hurricanes in women's NCAA tennis quarterfinals

University of Miami Piano Preparatory Program raises money for earthquake relief

May 22, 2010 by projectmedishare

Posted in Earthquake

University of Miami Piano Preparatory Program raises money for ...

Winners/losers: Some get off to fast, slow starts

Two Overtown activist groups are concerned that the neighborhood won't benefit when the University of Miami builds a massive new Life Science & Technology Park in the area.

The groups, Power U For Social Change and Students Toward a New Democracy, or STAND, want the university to sign a written agreement promising to hire construction workers and provide job training to Overtown residents.

The university says it will consider the agreement, but that the two groups are not the sole representatives of Overtown residents. For instance, UM has been working with the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce, a black business group, which says the university has been cooperative.

The dispute came up Thursday night during a meeting of the Overtown Community Oversight Board, which is a city of Miami advisory group.

``Our community has been placed on hold for the last 40 years,'' said Keith Ivory of the Power U Center. ``We need a mechanism to pull our community together, not tear it apart.''

Ivory said he's concerned that the life science park will lead to gentrification in Overtown -- with wealthy outsiders moving in and longtime residents being forced out.

UM says the park will help medical professors turn their inventions into profitable products -- and create jobs for the community in the process.

The park would include six new buildings and would be built in several phases. Construction began in November for Building One, a mixed-use 252,000-square-foot facility at 1951 NW Seventh Ave. It is scheduled to open in June 2011.

The research park is located on a 7.2-acre site near Jackson Memorial Hospital and the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. It's bounded by Interstate 95, Northwest Seventh Avenue and Northwest 17th and 20th streets.

But Ivory says only eight Overtown residents have been hired to work on the construction project.

``I know 10 people who have approached the park to get jobs,'' Ivory told the city advisory board. ``They stop us at the gate and say they'll call us back.''

He said no one has received a call back yet.

UM tells a different story.

Jacqueline Menendez, UM's vice president of communications, said there are 80 or 90 workers at the construction site every day and that 12 to 20 of them are from Overtown, Liberty City and Allapattah.

Menendez said the university is working with the Miami-Dade Chamber to determine the economic impact of the park and jobs for people in Overtown.

An assessment of the skill sets of black-owned construction firms is forthcoming, said Bill Diggs, president/CEO of the Miami-Dade Chamber.

``It's incorrect to think that UM is not dedicated to hiring people from Overtown,'' Diggs said. ``There is a real concern and a real need to have workers that are local.''

According to Menendez, as UM officials reached out to groups in Overtown, those people told them Power U does not represent the community.

``Community members requested we deal with all the groups, not just Power U,'' she said.

Aside from jobs, the activists want the project's developer, Maryland-based Wexford, to fund a community trust to contribute to local nonprofits.

Stephanie Sandhu, a member of STAND and a UM student, declined to provide a copy of the proposed sustainable community benefits agreement to The Miami Herald.

UM has met with the activist groups, but the groups say the university doesn't really want to deal with them or sign an agreement.

Menendez said that's not true.

``We are looking at all the things contained in the community benefits agreement,'' she said, ``but we haven't made a decision about it.''

Also undecided is the Overtown Community Oversight Board.

``We have not taken an official position yet with regard to this project,'' said Saliha Nelson, the board's chair. ``We want to give UM an opportunity to answer some key questions.''

UM President Donna Shalala refuted a claim her colleagues are ignoring the activists.

``A small group has been meeting with my people and they will continue to meet,'' she said, referring to Power U and STAND.

The activists are moving ahead with plans to make their voices heard, Ivory said.

On June 1, they will protest at the park's construction site. And they are organizing a community meeting on June 2 at the Culmer Center in Overtown. They have invited the university and Wexford, as well as County Commissioner Audrey Edmonson and Miami City Commissioner Richard Dunn II.

Freelance writer Theo Karantsalis contributed to this report.

Overtown activists fear University of Miami science park won't help residents

University of Miami doctors have developed a new method of catching and killing tumor cells floating through the human bloodstream they say could be a potent new weapon against most kinds of cancer within a decade.

“This will be a big advance — powerful, simpler to carry out, cheaper and broadly applicable to virtually any cancer,” says Eli Gilboa, Ph.D., co-leader of the Tumor Immunology Program at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

After a cancerous tumor is excised from a patient’s breast, lung, prostate or other organ by surgery or radiation, there starts an agonizing wait to see if it has metastasized, or spread, to other parts of the body.

The UM medical team’s new approach is to get the body’s immune system to catch and kill the roaming cancer cells before they can affect other organs. The study appears in the May issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

The doctors acknowledge that the concept has been limited to laboratory test tubes and animals, and faces up to 10 years of human testing before general use.

In healthy people, the immune system is a powerful defense against disease, identifying tumor cells by spotting antigens, which are foreign chemical substances attached to the tumors.

The problem: Many tumors don’t have enough antigens to trigger the immune system. When tumors are small, the immune system is not properly activated, Gilboa says.

“Oncology knows how to get rid of big tumors you can see and surgically remove or radiate,” Gilboa said. “Most patients die when the disease spreads to areas we don’t know about or can’t access. This is where the immune system has the advantage.”

Gilboa and his team manipulated the body’s DNA and RNA to induce the cancer cells scattered through the body to “express,” or produce, more antigens. It makes them easier to spot by the immune system.

In the lab, the process eliminated tumors in rats.

Dr. Richard Jove, deputy director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles, called the work a “fundamental breakthrough that could be applied to any cancer.”

“The challenge for decades has been that the immune system has been tolerant to the antigens on tumor cells. It’s why tumor immunotherapy has not been particularly successful to date,” said Jove, who was not involved in the UM study.

Gilboa’s UM team includes Fernando Pastor, post-doctoral associate at Sylvester; Despina Kolonias, senior research associate at Sylvester; and Paloma Giagrande, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa.

Cancer killed 562,000 Americans in 2009, making it the second biggest disease killer after heart disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

University of Miami developing potent weapon against cancer ...

Luke DeBold never made it to 30 -- but he packed plenty of life into the 29 years he had.

The valedictorian of his 1998 high school class in Indiana, he reveled in random facts, loved making people laugh, and left Miami with his degree in business management and a nearly perfect grade point average.

He also was an accomplished Hurricanes closer and set-up reliever who won national titles in 1999 and 2001 and led Miami with a 1.74 ERA during the '01 season. DeBold wanted to go to medical school, but succumbed to cancer last Thursday after a two-year battle. By the end, he had lost the use of his legs and was partially blind, but friends and former teammates said he lived his life fully and with a positive attitude.

He told his dad he was ``ready to go,'' slipped into a deep sleep and died the next morning. The Hurricanes honored him in a ceremony before their game last Friday and afterward with a candlelight vigil in front of Alex Rodriguez Park. At his wake Monday night, nearly 1,000 people stood in line for more than two hours near his hometown of Dyer to pay their respects.

``He was so humble and polite that he asked his dad last week, `Can I go now? I'm ready,' '' said Paul Trembacki, a longtime friend who met DeBold when they were 14. Trembacki, now the assistant sports editor at the Times of Northwest Indiana, wrote a poignant tribute.

``We were kids that goofed around and were smart in math and science,'' Trembacki said Tuesday. ``He'd have study parties -- sleepovers -- in high school before exams. I heard his name when we were little kids before I ever met him, and it was always about his home runs.

`FAITH NEVER WAVERED'

``Luke was really quiet and liked to observe people. He was into odd intricacies -- stuff on The History Channel, stuff off topic. He was the master of self-deprecating humor, but was very religious from beginning to end. His faith never wavered.''

Former pitcher Tom Farmer roomed with DeBold for road trips and stayed close after college. Farmer and ex-teammates Marcus Nettles, Kris Clute and bullpen catcher Ethan Silverman attended the funeral. Baseball operations director Robert McDaniel represented UM.

Farmer, who was drafted in 2001 by the Tigers but spent more than two years in Triple A ball for the Dodgers, is a commercial real estate agent in Miami. He described DeBold as ``funny, charming, entertaining and so focused on school that he never wanted to be distracted.

`ALWAYS IN A GOOD MOOD'

``Luke never lost sight of where he came from and his Midwestern values. He was always in a good mood, always trying to make people feel comfortable and happy -- especially me, because I tend to be moody. I'd be in a bad mood and he would try to cheer me up by doing a book-bag dance. He'd have a million books in the bag and wear it on both shoulders and dance around like a turtle. He'd say `Do I have to do the book-bag dance again?'

``We made a pact that we'd go back to Omaha and win it. He wanted to be the best relief pitcher in college baseball and I wanted to lead the nation in wins. He decided we should dedicate the season to our fathers -- his dad worked in a steel mill and mine is an electrical contractor and we knew they worked incredibly hard to allow us to be at UM. We were going to work like they worked and make them proud.''

Former second baseman Clute, a Coral Gables police officer who was released from the Marlins' organization in 2004, said DeBold ``fought until the end, just like at Miami. He was one of the hardest-working pitchers we had, and the strongest. Oh my God, the guy had tree trunks for legs -- big-time strong.''

`HE NEVER GAVE UP'

UM coach Jim Morris said he never had heard of DeBold until he came to Morris' baseball camp. DeBold later earned a spot as a walk-on and was given an academic scholarship.

``He ended up having a really good career for us but was an even greater person,'' Morris said. ``The last time I talked to him was a few weeks ago. He was having a hard time talking, but he never gave up.''

DeBold, who would have turned 30 on June 19, holds the school record of 13 consecutive relief appearances and is among the top five in career appearances, with 103.

DeBold's parents, Thomas and Kay, and his younger sister, Dawn, couldn't make it to Senior Day in 2002. So season-ticket holders Stu and Jean Glassman, who were like second parents, walked him onto the field. Six years ago, the Glassmans named their dog Luke.

``It's a good, strong name.'' Jean said. ``I last talked to Luke in March. He was upbeat. I think he believed in miracles. He almost had the rest of us believing, too.''

Former Miami Hurricanes reliever Luke DeBold remembered fondly