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Greenwood Genetic Center gets $1.2M NIH grant Staff Report
Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd raises funds for heart association
Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd P.A. announced the firm’s employees raised more than $10,000 for the American Heart Association as part of this year’s Upstate Heart Walk. The firm participated in the walk on April 24 with six teams and 29 walkers.
Fitness professionals support Parkinson Society
B3 Strength and Performance recently hosted the “PR for Parkinson’s Competition” with all proceeds benefiting the Greenville Area Parkinson Society. Upstate gyms and B3 Strength and Performance members came together to compete for competition titles and to raise money. The event raised more than $11,000 for the society.
PR Society presents Mercury Awards
The South Carolina chapter of Public Relations Society of America honored the state’s public relations industry with the 31st Mercury Awards. The event, presented by Dominion Energy, presented 23 categories of awards to professionals and students who submitted work from 2021. The complete list of Mercury Award winners beis posted online at scprsa.org.
T YMCA of Greenville raises more than $1.25M
YMCA of Greenville announced that it raised more than $1.25 million during its 2022 annual campaign. Funds provide financial assistance for individuals to participate in the Y’s programs or services. The $1.25 million will provide children, adults and families scholarships for wellness memberships, youth sports programs, swim lessons, the SC Youth in Government program, afterschool care and summer day camps, as well as funding the Y’s food delivery programs for those experiencing food insecurity across Greenville County. Fuel receives award at 2022 SCPRSA Mercury Awards event in Columbia.
Hartness to expand community farm
Hartness, the village founded by the Hartness family on Greenville’s Eastside, announced the launch of phase II of The Hartness Farm. Located within Hartness and organically managed, The Hartness Farm features sustainable farming, community engagement and resident living. The second phase of the farm includes expansion, the addition of chickens and the introduction of a crop share program for Hartness residents.
Velocity Truck Centers buys Greenville’s Christopher Trucks
Velocity Truck Centers said it further expanded into the Southeast with the acquisition of Greenville-based Christopher Trucks. Terms were not released. With the nine locations in North Carolina and two in South Carolina, VTC adds two more locations with the purchase of Christopher Trucks. Christopher Trucks was founded in 1951 by McAdams Christopher. Christopher Trucks and its employees will maintain operations in the region under the Velocity Truck Centers name, according to a news release.
Fuel receives Mercury Award for Goodwill campaign
Fuel, a Greenville-based marketing and advertising agency specializing in strategy, branding, and demand generation, received a Mercury Award of Merit from the South Carolina Public Relations Society of America during the annual Mercury Awards program recognizing exceptional work of communicators from throughout the state. Fuel received the award in the brand/reputation management category for its Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont “Going Bolder” brand campaign. Fuel helped the organization develop new, bold positioning statements to more clearly represent its higher purpose. Designed to help shift the public’s perspective from seeing Goodwill as simply a retail store that sells donated items to fund job training to an organization dedicated to helping people achieve their greatest potential and live their best lives, the campaign
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he Greenwood Genetic Center’s Rich Steet, director of research, and Heather Flanagan-Steet, director of functional studies, have secured a renewal of their long-standing grant titled “Pathogenic Mechanisms of Lysosomal Disease.” The R01 grant, which is administered by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a division of the National Institutes of Health, provides $1.2 million over four years to continue the team's ongoing work to better understand the mechanisms behind lysosomal storage disorders, according to a news release. The duo has spent years studying the function of lysosomes and how their abnormal function results in the clinical features associated with LSDs. While the clinical features vary between different types of LSDs, common findings include coarse facial features, cardiac and skeletal anomalies, learning difficulties, and a shortened life span, the news release said. Prior research under this grant focused on a single disorder, mucolipidosis type II. The research team has made significant progress in understanding how MLII symptoms develop, and they have been able to successfully treat cardiac and skeletal disease manifestations in their zebrafish models, the release said. This breakthrough has fostered collaborations to advance treatment studies into a mammalian model with the ultimate goal of developing an effective therapy for patients with this rare disease. "We are pleased that our prior work on LSDs has been so fruitful and that we are able to continue to move toward better understanding and novel treatment options for families impacted by these rare disorders," Steet said in the release. The primary hypothesis for this new round of funding is that the mechanisms included a comprehensive internal and external introduction of the new statements across the region. “We are proud of our team’s work and honored to be recognized by SCPRSA for the Goodwill campaign,” Warren Griffith, Fuel founder and CEO, said in a news release. “When we began working with Goodwill last year, we were inspired by their mission, and through research, strategic planning, branding, and a comprehensive rollout plan, the campaign came to life.”
identified in MLII are similar across other LSDs, which could lead to novel therapies for several disorders. The grant renewal will also allow the research team to expand their work on the NUS1 gene which came to the team's attention through functional studies on a Greenwood Genetic Center patient. Through both cellular and zebrafish experiments, researchers were able to confirm that this patient’s NUS1 variSteet ant was pathogenic, and they were also able to identify the likely mechanism and a possible therapy. "Zebrafish that mimic this NUS1 variant not only exhibited a moveFlanagan ment disorder as seen through abnormal swimming patterns, but they also displayed significant accumulation of cholesterol in their lysosomes," Flanagan-Steet said in the release. "By using an FDA-approved small molecule, we were able to reduce cholesterol storage in the zebrafish and restore normal swimming behaviors." The additional funding through the grant renewal will help the team to refine how the storage of cholesterol in the lysosomes occurs in patients with NUS1 mutations and why it leads to neurological symptoms and movement disorders. "After completing 13 years of research through this grant funding, we are excited by the potential to further unravel the mysteries of lysosomal storage disorders and identify novel treatments that can help GGC patients and the thousands of others who are impacted by LSDs," Steet said in the release.
Sherman College board chooses firm to find next president
The Sherman College Board of Trustees has taken its first official steps to begin the search for the institution’s sixth president. The board identified and vetted several search firms to assist in the presidential search and selected Diversified Search Group. DivSearch was ranked one of the top executive recruiting firms in the nation by Forbes in 2021 and is the largest female-founded retained executive search firm in the world.
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