Identifying Positive and Negative Factors That Affect the Promotion of Clinical Faculty at the Wayne State University School of Medicine: Does Gender Matter?

INTRODUCTION: Despite well-documented gender disparity in academic medicine, there are many women who achieve success, including successful promotion to associate and full professor status. This study sought to determine whether there was a gender difference in the perception of positive and negative factors affecting the process of promotion to associate or full professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine (WSUSOM). METHODS: All clinically active associate and full professors who achieved their most recent promotion at the WSUSOM were sent a link to a survey that obtained demographic information as well as the opinions of the respondents regarding what positive and negative factors impacted their most recent promotion. RESULTS: Of the 73 respondents (24%), 58 (19%) were included in our final analysis. Two obstacles ("Lack of interest and encouragement from institutional or departmental leaders" and "Lack of tangible commitment from institutional or departmental leadership [e.g., protected time]") were ranked in the top three ranks by a substantially greater percentage of females than males. Gender-specific networking was seen as significantly more valuable to female faculty members whereas having a stay-at-home partner was seen as significantly more valuable to male faculty members. CONCLUSION: At the WSUSOM, providing more gender-specific networking for women, increasing interest and encouragement from institutional and departmental leaders, and providing a tangible commitment to female faculty from these leaders may help more women to achieve promotion to associate or full professor.

Phenoxodiol-Topotecan co-administration exhibit significant anti-tumor activity without major adverse side effects.

OBJECTIVE: We previously showed that Phenoxodiol is able to sensitize epithelial ovarian cancer cells to Paclitaxel, Carboplatin, Gemcitabine, and Docetaxel. The aim of this study was to determine the value of Phenoxodiol-Topotecan coadministration. METHODS: Nine epithelial ovarian cancer cell lines isolated from ascites or ovarian tissue were treated with increasing concentrations of Topotecan (5-500 ng/ml) with or without Phenoxodiol pretreatment (10 microg/ml) for 24 h and cell viability was measured using CellTiter 96 AQueous One Solution Cell Proliferation Assay. The effect of Phenoxodiol-Topotecan combination therapy in vivo was determined using the topotecan resistant A2780 mouse xenograft model. RESULTS: In vitro, pretreatment with Phenoxodiol lowers the topotecan IC50 from >500 ng/ml to 2.5-100 ng/ml in five out of nine cell lines tested. RESULTS from animal experiments confirmed the advantage of Phenoxodiol-Topotecan combination therapy over monotherapy controls. Median tumour kinetics from animals receiving Phenoxodiol-Topotecan in combination was significantly slower compared to those animals receiving the respective monotherapies. In addition, co-administration with Phenoxodiol reversed Topotecan-induced myelosuppression. CONCLUSION: Phenoxodiol-Topotecan combination therapy allows the administration of both agents at lower doses while retaining significant anti-tumor activity compared to monotherapy. These findings suggest that the Phenoxodiol-Topotecan combination may represent an alternative treatment modality for the management of ovarian cancer and justifies further investigation in the clinical setting.