Green Award honors MSTP student Zhang

By Deborah Wormser

Growing up in rural China, Yuanyuan “Faith” Zhang admired her cardiologist mother’s clinical commitment and career satisfaction. Ms. Zhang also saw the limitations of medicine during the nation’s 2003 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Ida M. Green Award winner Yuanyuan “Faith” Zhang is joined by Nobel Laureates Drs. Joseph Goldstein and Michael Brown (left and right) and her husband, Blair Goodman
Ida M. Green Award winner Yuanyuan “Faith” Zhang is joined by Nobel Laureates Drs. Joseph Goldstein and Michael Brown (left and right) and her husband, Blair Goodman.

“My heart sank as the national death toll rose. I learned my first lesson in medicine: For all its power, medicine cannot always prevail. It made me want to help patients, as my mother does, and more importantly, expand the limits of the possible through research,” said Ms. Zhang, a sixth-year student in the dual M.D./Ph.D. Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) who has been named recipient of the 2015 Ida M. Green Award.

At a June 8 ceremony, Kathleen M. Gibson, President and CEO of Southwestern Medical Foundation, and Rust Reid, former Trustee and Vice President of the Cecil and Ida Green Foundation, presented Ms. Zhang her certificate and $2,000. The monetary award is provided through the Foundation’s annual support for the Women in Science and Medicine Advisory Committee (WISMAC).

“I am deeply honored to receive the 29th Ida M. Green Award. I owe my success to my parents who taught me the value of hard work and education by example. I would also like to thank the many great mentors in my life who have been instrumental for my career path as a physician/scientist,” Ms. Zhang said.

As a Cornell University undergraduate nutrition major with an interest in fighting malnutrition, Ms. Zhang worked on a public health project. Her faculty mentor recommended she consider enrolling in an M.D./Ph.D. program. After college, she spent two years in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul Greengard at Rockefeller University in New York City and came to UT Southwestern Medical School in 2009.

From 2011 through May 2014, she worked on her Ph.D. in the molecular genetics laboratory run jointly by Nobel Laureates Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein and Dr. Michael S. Brown. In a published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year, she reported the first observation that growth hormone under the control of the stomach-derived hormone ghrelin induces autophagy (a cellular recycling process) in the liver to provide the building blocks of glucose (blood sugar). During starvation from famine or from a medical condition called anorexia nervosa, when fat tissue is severely depleted, the brain can only use glucose, which is produced in the liver in a process that requires growth hormone.

Dr. Michael Brown, Director of the Erik Jonsson Center for Research in Molecular Genetics and Human Disease, noted that Ms. Zhang found that liver autophagy is necessary but insufficient by itself to maintain glucose levels in the brain, indicating another factor is involved and pointing to new lines of research.

“Nobody could be more proud of Yuanyuan than her two parents ... Joe and me,” Dr. Brown joked at the award ceremony. He also praised Ms. Zhang’s community service, which included encouraging young women to go into science by demonstrating laboratory skills to some 200 high school students through WISMAC. She also volunteered at community clinics and health fairs, and founded a leadership training program in the graduate school, SEALs (Students Emerging Academy of Leaders).

At the Green Award presentation, Dr. Joseph Goldstein, Chairman of Molecular Genetics, said, “We wish you the best of luck in medical school and also in your post-medical school internship and residency. Congratulations.”

“I am most proud of being a student of Drs. Brown and Goldstein,” Ms. Zhang said. “They have been hugely supportive of me and have shaped my thinking and development in many ways. I’d like to think that I will take them with me for the rest of my career and could only wish for a fraction of their success.”

Ida M. Green Award

The award was established by Southwestern Medical Foundation in honor of Mrs. Green, who died in 1986. Her husband, Cecil Green, who died in 2003, worked at General Electric and later co-founded Texas Instruments. Mrs. Green provided unrestricted gifts to many community organizations, including a major bequest to Southwestern Medical Foundation.

The award acknowledges a female student in the UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences who demonstrates outstanding commitment to the well-being of other students, to research excellence, and to exceptional community service.

###

Dr. Brown, a Regental Professor, holds the W.A. (Monty) Moncrief Distinguished Chair in Cholesterol and Arteriosclerosis Research, and the Paul J. Thomas Chair in Medicine.

Dr. Goldstein, a Regental Professor, holds the Julie and Louis A. Beecherl, Jr. Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Research, and the Paul J. Thomas Chair in Medicine.