OHSU Researchers Achieve Bioscience Breakthroughs
Published Mar 06, 2007
A researcher works in a lab that is part of the university’s Neurological Sciences Institute in Beaverton.
When Oregon taxpayers in 2002 approved a $200 million bond initiative to support research at Oregon Health & Science University, the vote of confidence was further evidence that the state, and Portland in particular, is bullish on bioscience.
“Those dollars have been used for several important purposes for the university to continue its research growth. One of the most important was space,” says Daniel Dorsa, OHSU vice president for research.
About half the bond revenue was allocated to a $145 million project to construct a 12-story, 274,000-square-foot Biomedical Research Building, which opened in 2006. OHSU Foundation raised and continues to raise additional millions in philanthropic donations.
OHSU researchers in the building’s sophisticated laboratories study the prevention, cause, diagnosis and treatment of diseases and afflictions including cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, arthritis, obesity and multiple sclerosis, as well as other diseases of the brain, heart, eyes, nervous system and lungs.
OHSU is the state’s only health and research university and its only academic health center, treating more than 184,000 patients annually.
OUT OF THE LABS
The university is unique among its peers nationally because of its engineering school, which focuses on environmental links to human health. Dorsa says that one-two punch of medicine and engineering makes the university a leader in moving discoveries out of the labs and into use.
In fact, OHSU in partnership with Kaiser Permanente landed one of the first National Institutes of Health grant awards for clinical and translational science, which Dorsa defines as “the rapid movement of fundamental discoveries to applications that improve human health.”
OHSU nearly reached the $300 million mark for external research funding in 2006. “That’s been a dramatic growth, and most of that growth comes from NIH, which is the major funder of research in the country,” he says. “These are all competitively won awards by our scientists, and much of the growth is really a reflection of the excellence of the faculty.”
Not surprisingly, OHSU researchers frequently make international headlines for breakthroughs. In 2006, surgeons at OHSU’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital performed the first transplant of fetal stem cells into the human brain, while researchers at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute published a finding that a low-calorie diet may keep the immune system from decaying with age.
LEUKEMIA-FIGHTING THERAPY
Also in 2006, Dr. Brian Druker, program director of the OHSU Cancer Institute and discoverer of the promising cancer drug Gleevec, published the extraordinary results of a five-year study. During that time, nearly 90 percent of 553 subjects suffering from a specific type of leukemia survived after initial therapy with Gleevec, discovered in collaboration with drug giant Novartis.
OHSU’s private-sector partnerships, as well as entrepreneurial ventures based on research findings, promise a healthy future. “We’ve really ramped up our technology-transfer efforts, … and our faculty are becoming even more entrepreneurial all the time,” Dorsa says. “We want the business community to be interested in our technologies.”
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by Brian McCord
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