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Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery   

D. Bradley Welling, MD, PhD, Chair

In 2008 this Department added four clinical faculty members. Many of its faculty have extensive research experience. The Department recruited Theodoros Teknos, MD, and his team of researchers from the University of Michigan, as well as Subinoy Das, MD, from the Medical College of Georgia. Research programs involve molecular mechanisms of vestibular schwannoma formation, hearing and speech disorders, communication and language acquisition in children, chemoprevention in head and neck cancer, otitis media and chronic sinusitis. Many researchers received funding in 2008, both through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and extramural grants. They also had numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals. For the 16th consecutive year, U.S.News and World Report ranked the Department among the nation’s top 20 Otolaryngology programs. Department members continue to participate in trips to the Dominican Republic for Project EAR, an otologic medical mission, and several are also making humanitarian trips to Nicaragua.

Ongoing Research Programs

  • In a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded project titled “Molecular Mechanisms of Vestibular Schwannoma Formation,” D. Bradley Welling, MD, PhD, Long-Sheng Chang, PhD, and Abraham Jacob, MD, are collaborating to find new treatment options for vestibular schwannomas in conjunction with Ching-Shih Chen, PhD. They are working with two new compounds that have been found effective against schwannomas and are showing positive effects in xenograft models.
  • Susan Nittrouer, PhD, is directing two studies funded by the NIH, one titled “The Ontogeny of Segmental Speech Organization” and the other titled “Early Development of Children with Hearing Loss.” Both are yielding clinically relevant information regarding the manner in which children learn to speak, particularly those who are hearing impaired. Nittrouer’s data are challenging several accepted dogmas and will make an impact in the way physicians plan for and carry out early intervention for children with hearing loss.
    Gregory Wiet, MD, continues to work on his NIH-funded grant involving surgical simulation with a temporal bone dissection model and has made tremendous progress along with
  • Don Stredney, MS, and other Otolaryngology faculty. An international study group is being organized to collect data. Wiet’s study will have far-reaching implications to all areas of surgical simulation as well as in resident education; the goals are to further develop, evaluate and validate a virtual environment for training residents in techniques of temporal bone surgery.
  • Lauren Bakaletz, PhD, has three NIH-funded research grants for treating and preventing otitis media: “Determinants of H. influenzae Virulence in Otitis Media” will enhance understanding of nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae pathogenesis in otitis media and identify/characterize putative virulence determinants to assess their potential as vaccine or therapeutic targets; Subinoy Das, MD, Co-PI “Antimicrobial Peptides and Innate Immunity in Otitis Media” is examining the role of innate immunity in otitis media and identifying methods to augment these defense mechanisms; “RSV Upper Airway Infection & Otitis Media” is exploring the mechanism of protection as well as the ability of a recently developed RSV vaccine to inhibit bacterial otitis media following viral and bacterial co-infection.
  • Principal investigator Christopher Weghorst, PhD, along with co-investigators Amit Agrawal, MD, and Enver Ozer, MD, are studying the effects of food-based prevention inhibitors in human tissues at risk for oral cancer. This grant is supported by the National Cancer Institute and will extend work that has been done with chemopreventive agents.
    Hua Hua Tong, MD, secured NIH funding to explore the critical role of complement in the middle ear in host innate immunity against Streptococcus. The long-term objectives of this proposal are to evaluate host-bacterial cell inter-relationship to develop strategies for blocking or immunizing against this interaction and thus preventing the development of otitis media.
  • With funding from the NIH/National Cancer Institute, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute and the American Cancer Society, the Head and Neck Research Group investigates molecular predictors of aggressive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, the predictors of organ preservation and novel experimental therapeutics in head and neck cancer. Investigations in tumor microenvironment, tumor immunology, antiangiogenic therapy and human papillomavirus (HPV)-induced molecular changes are also cornerstone activities of this group, which includes: Theodoros Teknos, MD; Quintin Pan, PhD; Pawan Kumar, PhD; Mozaffarul Islam, PhD; and James Lang, PhD; as well as research associates Bhavna Kumar, Manchao Zhang, Yanjun Hou and Arti Yadav.

Research Accomplishments of 2008

  • Recruited as director of head and neck surgery was Theodoros Teknos, MD, a clinician and scientist from the University of Michigan who has received numerous National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI) grants and private foundation funding while also publishing many papers in scientific journals. Accompanying Teknos from Michigan to Ohio State were researchers Quintin Pan, PhD, Mozaffarul Islam, PhD, Pawan Kumar, PhD, and Bhavna Kumar. Here’s a synopsis of their research interests: the Pan lab is identifying "druggable" genes/targets, working to understand how these genes function in the context of head and neck cancer, and designing inhibitors against these genes as novel anticancer therapeutics; Pawan Kumar’s lab investigates alterations in cancer and endothelial cell signaling, particularly as they relate to the p38-MAPK and Raf kinase pathways; Islam is an authority on the Ras signaling pathway and the effect of RhoC on aggressive head and neck cancer behavior; Bhavna Kumar has published extensively on tumor biomarkers and their relation to tumor behavior.
  • From the Medical College of Georgia, the Department recruited Subinoy Das, MD. He has been researching chronic sinusitis, particularly serum protein profiles in patients with chronic sinusitis.
  • Abraham Jacob, MD, secured the Triological Society Career Development Award for looking at the “Role of Combination EGFR and AKT Pathway Inhibition for Treating Vestibular Schwannoma.” Cancer cells often become resistant to Erlotinib after eight to 12 months of administration, so this project is exploring combination therapies to overcome this resistance. EGFR/ErbB2, AKT and PAK should be the key molecular pathways targeted for drug development in NF2; this research is examining combination therapy (Erlotinib and OSU-03012) as treatment for vestibular schwannomas.
  • D. Bradley Welling, MD, PhD, Abraham Jacob, MD, and Long-Sheng Chang, PhD, determined that the AKT pathway is activated in vestibular schwannomas, and they continue to evaluate the growth-inhibitory and antitumor activities of a small molecule inhibitor of this pathway, OSU-03012. The researchers have demonstrated that both vestibular schwannoma and malignant schwannoma HMS-97 cells are more sensitive to inhibition of cell proliferation by this inhibitor than normal human Schwann cells; this inhibitor also induced apoptosis in both vestibular schwannoma and HMS-97 cells and caused marked reduction of AKT phosphorylation. Additionally, they have demonstrated that this inhibitor was well tolerated and inhibited the growth of HMS-97 schwannoma xenografts in mice after four weeks of oral treatment as demonstrated by high-field, small-animal magnetic resonance imaging.
  • Susan Nittrouer, PhD, completed a five-year longitudinal study following 205 children with and without hearing loss. Data were collected on language outcomes, psychosocial development, and parental attitudes and stress when dealing with a child with hearing loss. Results suggested several ways in which treatment of these children should be structured to help them achieve growth in all areas that is commensurate to that of children with normal hearing.
  • Gregory Wiet, MD, is conducting research funded by the NIH/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders that applies high-performance computing to otolaryngology – head and neck surgery. He is developing a simulation environment for teaching surgical techniques in otolaryngology. He received an NIH R-21 preliminary grant to develop a surgical simulator for temporal bone surgery and subsequently was awarded a $1.6 million grant to develop the system over the next five years.
  • Quintin Pan, PhD, and Theodoros Teknos, MD, discovered that PKCe promotes an aggressive, metastatic phenotype in head and neck cancer. Their lab also designed a novel cancer cell-homing, PKCe-inhibitory peptide (HN1-PKCe) as a therapeutic strategy for head and neck cancer, work that culminated in an NIH grant activated during 2008.  Teknos, Pan and Robert Baiocchi, MD, PhD, also designed a phase I/II clinical trial with scientific correlates that received the top score and funding through the National Comprehensive Cancer Network; this novel HDAC inhibitor trial for patients with oropharyngeal cancer was to begin accrual in 2009.