Snapshots

The AHC welcomed three distinguished researchers and clinicians during the first half of 2007. In January, Gunda Georg, renowned researcher in drug discovery and development for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and male contraception, joined the College of Pharmacy as head of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry. She also holds the Robert Vince Endowed Chair of Medicinal Chemistry and a McKnight Presidential Chair in Medicinal Chemistry. Jonathan Slack from Bath, England, became Director of the Stem Cell Institute in March. An accomplished developmental biologist, Slack researches the molecular makeup of stem cells, the properties that allow a cell to transform itself into another kind of cell, and the regeneration of body tissues. In June, Daniel J. Garry became the Director of the Lillehei Heart Institute and Division Director for Cardiology in the Department of Medicine. Garry, who researches the molecular mechanisms of heart stem cells, returns to his alma mater from the University of Texas, Southwestern.

On February 28, the Academic Health Center and the University Libraries launched the AHC History Project—an unusual collaborative initiative dedicated to preserving valuable AHC history within the University Archives. All who attended the celebration in the newly renovated Mayo Memorial Auditorium were invited to help create a “repository of wisdom” by preserving AHC historical documents and memorabilia. Guest speaker Gretchen Krueger, historical consultant for the American Society of Clinical Oncology from 2003 to 2006, gave a special lecture that honored the late University of Minnesota oncologist B.J. Kennedy, who was a passionate advocate of learning from medicine's history. Krueger drove home this simple truth that underscored the History Project's vital role in shaping the future: “A better institutional understanding comes from a well-documented institutional history.”

The University of Minnesota Rochester (UMR) campus is now an official campus of the University system. President Robert Bruininks announced plans for enhanced academic offerings, a full-time faculty, and a new physical location in November 2006. Building on community strengths, UMR will serve as a major hub for the new statewide Center for Allied Health Programs, offering new health-related programs and research partnerships as well as continuing courses from the schools of Nursing and Public Health.

The Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics continues to grow. In January, leaders from the University, the Mayo Clinic, and the State of Minnesota dedicated three new floors at the top of the Vincent Stabile Building in Rochester for the use of up to 300 researchers in genomics and biomedical science. This spring, the state legislature approved $25 million in biennial funding for the Partnership, and committed another $8 million for each of the next two years.

Together 10 years! In January, the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview celebrated a pioneering partnership formed in 1997 between Fairview Health Services and the University of Minnesota, its medical school, and its physicians. This innovative collaboration has allowed the University and its hospital to focus on its education and research missions, and Fairview to add leading-edge services in transplantation and cancer care. Today, the medical center has a solid financial foundation, which enables both entities—one a community health system; the other, academic—to bolster their strengths in patient care, research, and education.

Douglas Yee was named director of the University of Minnesota's Cancer Center in March 2007. Yee joined the University eight years ago and is a professor in the Medical School departments of Medicine and Pharmacology and the Tickle Land Grant Chair in Breast Cancer Research. His internationally recognized research has been at the forefront of breast cancer detection and treatment advancements, and includes the development of new anti-cancer drugs that focus on growth factor receptors. Yee succeeds John Kersey who has served as the director of the Cancer Center since its founding in 1991. Kersey will continue his research on childhood leukemia as holder of the Children's Cancer Research Fund Land Grant Chair in Pediatric Oncology.

The University of Minnesota was recently awarded a $22.5 million grant over seven years to establish a Center for Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance. As one of six sites chosen by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) nationwide, the University will research and monitor avian influenza and create public health strategies for controlling an influenza pandemic.

“The Minnesota NIH/NIAID Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance [MCEIRS] will be at the forefront of influenza research and be prepared to respond to research and public health needs in a time of increasing concern,” said Marguerite Pappaioanou, principal investigator and professor of infectious disease and epidemiology in the School of Public Health.

The center will bring together University strengths in veterinary medicine, public health and supercomputing. MCEIRS researchers will obtain multiple types of influenza viruses, adding to the database that supports research on how humans are infected with influenza, the severity of illness, and the development of vaccines and treatments. Internationally, the center will work with Chulalongkorn University in Thailand to conduct avian influenza surveillance of people, poultry, pigs, dogs, cats, and wild birds in rural Thailand; wild waterfowl in Vietnam; wild bird populations in Laos; and, commercial poultry operations in other Asian countries.

Key advisors to the center will be Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the School of Public Health; David A. Halvorson, professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine; and Vivek