With this Ambassadors mailing, I want to highlight some of the superb successes of USC’s medical enterprise, and a video that showcases its extraordinary work. I hope you will take a few moments to watch this video, as it certainly captures the remarkable dynamism of our Health Sciences Campus.
Last month, the USC community celebrated the transformative $150 million naming gift that we received from the W. M. Keck Foundation, a gift that will significantly accelerate our pioneering medical research, clinical care, and education. This gift also unified our medical enterprise under the name Keck Medicine of USC, further aligning the missions of the Keck School of Medicine and Keck Medical Center (Keck Hospital of USC, USC Norris Cancer Hospital, and the university’s faculty practices). Today, the Health Sciences Campus represents 44% of USC’s budget, which is appropriate for a top American research university, given the emerging biotechnology revolution and USC’s aspirations to be at its fore.
To lead our clinical and patient care efforts into the future, we recruited Thomas Jackiewicz to serve as senior vice president and chief executive officer for USC health. He reports directly to the president, and will work closely with Provost Elizabeth Garrett and Dean Carmen Puliafito of the Keck School of Medicine. In this key leadership role, Mr. Jackiewicz is spearheading our efforts to significantly grow and enhance the patient care of the hospitals and the private practices, while embracing the many opportunities in this area.
Before coming to USC, Mr. Jackiewicz served as chief executive officer of UC San Diego Health System and as associate vice chancellor of University of California, San Diego Health Sciences. He had previously served as the chief operating officer of Columbia University Medical Center, and earlier in his career, held leadership positions at Stanford University School of Medicine, Oregon Health Sciences University, and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
Arriving at USC at the beginning of January, Mr. Jackiewicz found a medical enterprise on solid footing. Over the past three years, the revenues of the Keck Hospital of USC and the USC Norris Cancer Hospital increased from $390 million to $600 million. Over that same three-year period, the integrated faculty practice revenues increased from $121 million to $142 million, representing an 18% increase.
Further, in 2011, despite the economic downturn and an extremely competitive environment for research dollars, the Keck School of Medicine of USC increased its sponsored research funding portfolio by 14% over the previous fiscal year, thereby reaching nearly $250 million. Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) comprised 73% of those grants—the highest ratio of NIH to non-NIH grants in the past seven years. Over the past four years, research volume at the Keck School increased by 43% cumulatively—the largest four-year increase of the past 13 years. This is a landmark achievement, particularly given the competitive landscape for research funding.
• • •
These successes translate to real results. Of USC’s 44 active business start-up companies, 31 are related to medicine and health care, and many of these are close to revolutionizing key fields, particularly in the areas of cancer treatment—which includes gene therapy that combats brain cancer—and Alzheimer’s disease. Just as importantly, our researchers care deeply about their work. They’re passionate and personally invested. For example, as a child, Dr. Berislav Zlokovic watched as his grandmother fell victim to Alzheimer’s. From that devastation, he pledged to find a cure during his lifetime, and he is confident that his work at the USC Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute moves us all toward that triumph.
I foresee equally grand results in other areas, and to advance our innovative research in cancer, we recently appointed Dr. Stephen Gruber as director of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He comes from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and brings a rare combination of skills and talents. He’s a medical oncologist, a cancer geneticist, and an epidemiologist. He understands how the genes inside our bodies interact with the environment around us, but his agenda prioritizes a larger goal: clinical translational medicine. He seeks to seamlessly blend the basic sciences, the social sciences, and the political sciences. In doing so, he produces new drugs, new therapies, and new medical devices that transform the way we fight every type of cancer.
This touches on another area in which we have reason to cheer: the physicians and staff at the Keck Medical Center of USC continue to provide stellar, world-class care. Every day, I hear moving stories with inspiring outcomes, and I’d like to share a particularly special one here. At a USC event in December, I met Charmean Neithart, who had been a patient of
Dr. Steve Giannotta, the chairman of our department of neurological surgery. When Ms. Neithart was pregnant with her third child, she began to experience severe headaches and a constant ringing in her ears. An MRI revealed that a small tumor had formed at the base of her brainstem, an area that controls breathing and heart rate, and regulates the central nervous system.
The surgery to remove this tumor is extremely risky: one slip of the scalpel can paralyze the patient, or send her into a deep coma. Dr. Giannotta is one of only a handful of people with the skill and the experience to conduct this delicate surgery. Ms. Neithart weighed her options, and ultimately decided she couldn’t live every day not knowing if the tumor would rupture at the base of her brain. She elected to have the surgery.
The procedure went perfectly. Ms. Neithart is now the healthy and happy mother of three children, as well as the owner of a successful interior design business. Stories such as these inspire all of us, but they also remind us of our work’s urgency and importance. When we cheer the growth in our research portfolio, or applaud a prestigious award that our faculty receives, we are really cheering stories such as Charmean Neithart’s. We’re cheering our researchers’ new ideas and fresh discoveries. We’re cheering our doctors’ everyday successes.
• • •
In this spirit, I want to add that USC researchers continue to receive international acclaim. Discover magazine featured research by Professor Paula Cannon in its “Top 100 Stories of 2011” issue, highlighting her research as number two on its list! She and her team are working on advances that create the potential for a human patient’s own cells to suppress HIV. Also, Professor Michael Bowdish treated the first patient on the west coast to be released from the hospital with a fully artificial and portable heart—a feat that drew considerable attention.
Meanwhile, Professor Inderbir Gill and his team were the first in the world to use robotic surgery to repair a rare aneurysm in a patient with only one kidney. Clinical trials are also underway for a new therapy that has the potential to treat not just cancers, but neurologic diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and cardiac disorders.
Also at USC, Professor Peggy Farnham led a group of researchers who discovered that only a small region of a protein responsible for controlling the proliferation of both normal and cancer cells is required for the initial process of turning on genes. This finding paves the way for the eventual development of a molecular inhibitor that would prevent cancer genes from being activated. This would be a milestone discovery for science—and for humanity.
Others at USC are forging exceptional growth in biomedicine and stem cell research, taking basic research from bench to bedside, while producing innovative treatments, devices, and drugs. These are just a few examples that speak to a larger point: USC has the people, skills, creativity, and commitment to make life-changing and world-changing progress.
I believe this is just a beginning, and we will celebrate even more spectacular breakthroughs. USC has recruited 50 new faculty to Keck Medicine since I began my tenure as president, and a particularly strategic hire can have a transformative effect on our programs. Moreover, once these new faculty arrive at USC, we encourage them to pursue robust interdisciplinary work, and introduce them to leading thinkers in other fields. Our Ming Hsieh Institute for Engineering Medicine for Cancer, for instance, brings together our impressive talents in medicine, engineering, and the sciences.
We’re encouraging these collaborations among our students, as well. Notably, the HTE@USC (Health, Technology and Engineering) program’s first cohort of students arrived this year. This four-year program for medical students and engineering Ph.D. students teaches doctors to think like engineers (and vice versa), with the hope of stimulating the development of processes and devices that improve our health. All of these efforts bridge our Health Sciences and University Park campuses, while advancing our grander vision for a strongly united USC.
As you can see, this is an exciting time for Keck Medicine of USC, and many of these accomplishments come to life in the video I mentioned at the beginning of my letter. I once again encourage you to watch it, and with this mailing, I also want to share an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times at the end of last year. It offers an outside look at USC’s ambitious fundraising efforts. I hope you enjoy this piece, and thank you again for serving as an Ambassador for USC.
Yours truly,
C. L. Max Nikias
President