October 22, 1999
Contact: John Scarffe, KU Endowment, (785) 832-7336.
LAWRENCE -- Joan S. Hunt, professor of anatomy and cell biology at the University of Kansas Medical Center and a world leader in the field of reproductive immunology, has been selected to receive the Chancellors Club Research Award at KU for 1999.
The Chancellors Club, established in 1977 by the Kansas University Endowment Association, is KU's major-donor organization. The $5,000 annual Chancellors Club Research Award honors a KU Medical Center researcher whose work has led to significant scientific discoveries. Hunt will receive the award tonight at the 22nd annual meeting of the Chancellors Club at the Lawrence Holiday Inn Holidome.
"I'm thrilled to receive this award, and delighted that my colleagues within the institution find my research program interesting and important," Hunt said.
Candidates for the award are nominated by colleagues, students and alumni. In letters supporting her nomination, Hunt's peers at the KU Medical Center and throughout the United States praised her innovative work in reproductive immunology, which has expanded understanding of the mechanisms that underlie maternal acceptance of the genetically different embryo/fetus.
The practical implications of Hunt's research are numerous. Though pregnancy may seem a routine fact of life, Hunt explained that it is a very complicated process in which everything has to go right and often doesn't, as revealed by the high number of unsuccessful pregnancies.
About one in 10 U.S. couples is infertile, Hunt said, and about 50 percent of pregnancies are lost, usually in the early stages when the woman doesn't know she is pregnant. Hunt's research focuses on the way genes are regulated at the maternal/fetal interface to promote appropriate communication between the mother and the baby.
When Hunt entered the field of maternal-fetal immunologic relationships, "there were few evidence-based explanations for the absence of a maternal rejection response to the genetically different placenta and fetus," wrote Kent L. Thornburg, professor at Oregon Health Sciences University, in his nomination letter. "We know much more now, in part because of Professor Hunt's courageous foray into the immune capability of the mother and the developing immunologic power of the fetus through the placenta."
Hunt also has studied the role of infection during pregnancy, the main cause of miscarriage in the middle trimester of pregnancy. These studies have added to the development of treatments to sustain pregnancy when infections are present.
Hunt joined the KU Medical Center in 1984 as a research assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Oncology. In 1995 she became a professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
She earned her bachelor's degree in bacteriology at KU in 1956, followed by a master's degree in medical technology the next year. Twenty years later, after raising her son, she resumed her studies and earned a second master's degree in medical microbiology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Intrigued by research, she went on to complete a Ph.D. in immunology at the University of Kansas in 1983.
Hunt's national and international awards include the National Institutes of Health FIRST Independent Investigator Award and the American Society for Reproductive Immunology's J. Christian Herr Award for research excellence. At KU, she has received the Higuchi Endowment Award in Biomedical Sciences and the School of Medicine's Investigator Recognition Award.
Hunt is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Reproductive Immunology and serves on the editorial boards of Biology of Reproduction and Placenta, which are two of the three most highly cited journals in reproduction. She is currently serving as chairperson for the National Institutes of Health study section for her field, which she considers her highest honor because this group assesses the merits of scientific grants for research on human embryology and development. She has also been president of the American Society for Reproductive Immunology and currently serves on the executive council of the International Federation of Placenta Associations.
Hunt's publications include more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and 19 book chapters, and she has edited two books. Her colleague and department chair Dale R. Abrahamson commented on her accomplishments: "This level of productivity would be outstanding by any measure, but is made even more so by the fact that Dr. Hunt has accomplished this in only 18 years."
The KU Endowment Association is an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management foundation for the University of Kansas. Founded in 1891, it is the oldest foundation of its type at a public university in the United States and one of the largest.
Story by Val Alexander Renault