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Renowned Research Institute recruits collaborate to shape the future of medicine
Stellar Research Institute Team Changing the World of Medicine
BY PATTI MUCK
The collaboration has begun.
Over the past two years, top-notch researchers, scientists and physicians from around the nation have gathered at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute. With expertise in a wide range of specialties — including bioinformatics, molecular imaging, diabetes, liver disease, medical genomics, proteomics and more — these recent recruits join a stellar cast of team members to shape the future of medical care.
Methodist’s new director of the diabetes and metabolism research program, Dr. Willa Hsueh, (pronounced Shoy) has just arrived in Houston and is already collaborating with Dr. Stephen Wong and Dr. King Li on how bioinformatics and imaging might aid her research on diabetes.
“The resources and the interdisciplinary spirit, combined with the establishment of crucial core facilities, brought me here,” Hsueh says. “I now realize this move has allowed my research to expand exponentially.”
From Harvard and the National Institutes of Health on the East Coast and from UCLA and the University of California, San Francisco on the West Coast, medical brain power is converging in Houston to take part in a collaborative mission to seek better treatments and cures for patients around the globe. Dr. Michael W. Lieberman, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) founding director, calls it “building a bridge from the laboratory to the bedside.”
The most recent TMHRI recruits include Wong and Li, who came aboard within the last two years, and Hsueh, who moved here in February. Also joining the Research Institute team in early 2008 are Dr. John Baxter and Dr. R. Mark Ghobrial, both from California. All cite Methodist’s commitment, vision and resources as driving factors that motivated their moves in the midst of remarkably successful careers elsewhere. But the biggest incentives attracting them to Houston are the promisesof collaboration and the freedom to explore their disciplines without boundaries. “There is huge potential here, mainly because of the quality of the people, the organization and the location within the Texas Medical Center,” says Li, former chief of the Radiology and Imaging Sciences Program at the
National Institutes of Health. As Methodist’s new chief of radiology, Li was surprised by the “warmth of the people and their openness to collaborate” when he arrived here in June 2007. “This spirit of collaboration is not just within Methodist but all over the Texas Medical Center, including Rice University, the University of Houston and Weill Cornell (through its affiliation with The Methodist Hospital). This is a huge bonus to a newcomer.”
He is working on a multitude of projects, including a lung cancer screening and image-guided therapy treatment study, and the development of a multimodality image-guided therapy suite combining CT and various types of imaging technologies, expected to be running in April 2008.
Li’s enthusiasm for Methodist and the Texas Medical Center was contagious. During a telephone conversation with colleague Wong, Li suggested his friend visit. “I paid a courtesy call, and I liked it here,” Wong recalls. “It struck me as much more open here with fewer boundaries. It’s a wonderful place for doing translational research.”
The former director of bioinformatics at the Harvard Center of Neurodegeneration and Repair and also director of the Functional and Molecular Imaging Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is now Methodist’s chief of medical physics and head of bioinformatics for the Research Institute.
A skilled and knowledgeable scientist in both bioinformatics and radiology — and the inventor of the inkjet printer production system — Wong describes himself as one who “puts it all together” with technology interplay that can help in the treatment and prevention of all diseases.
Wong and Li are working together on image-guided diagnosis and therapy systems. Wong also is working on biomarkers for early detection and combination drug treatment; neuroimaging and informatics for neurodegeneration and neurological disorders; and on-the-spot
Dr. Stephen Wong
Research Institute
diagnosis to shorten the care cycle for patients, making it quicker and more economical. Fusing all the relevant data — putting it all together — can change the way medicine is practiced, he says.
Both Li and Wong welcomed Hsueh in mid-February when she arrived in Houston by brainstorming collaborative strategies for the coming months and years. As former chief of the Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension Division at the UCLA School of Medicine, Hsueh has spent more than two decades studying diabetes and its related health problems. She brought eight California team members with her and hopes to craft an unparalleled diabetes research center at Methodist.
“The spirit of the Research Institute is to promote translational research and allow us to study our discoveries in humans,” Hsueh says. “We are focusing on approaches using nuclear receptors and also treatments that inhibit inflammation as important avenues to pursue.”
Her codirector in the Diabetes and Metabolism Research Program is Baxter, who also will serve as director of the Genomic Medicine Program. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Baxter is former chief of the Endocrinology Section and director of the Metabolic Research Unit at the University of California, San Francisco. He is an entrepreneur, scientist and physician who has made a name for himself in genetic engineering and the study of hormone action.
Baxter brought four key team members from California and will keep his group intact through subcontracts supplemented with new hires in Houston. “The biggest problem now is we have all these concepts, and they’re not getting out to people,” Baxter says. “You feel like you’ve learned something and people are still dropping off with heart attacks every 25 seconds — I find that very disturbing.” He sees the Research Institute and its environment as a conduit to get proven concepts to patients more quickly. Ghobrial, the newest Research Institute recruit, left his positions as director of the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program and the Pancreas Transplantation Program at UCLA because of “a unique opportunity here to change our business.” As director of the Comprehensive Liver Center and liver transplantation, as well as director of the Immunobiology Research Center, Ghobrial believes the resources on hand and on the way will push the Research Institute to the forefront of international prominence. “You achieve greatness by putting the three good resources together: hard work, a great hospital Dr. John Baxter and vision,” he says. “The vision and greatness are here.”
And now the hard work begins.
Ghobrial, Baxter, Hsueh, Wong and Li join their previously recruited Methodist and Research Institute colleagues, including TMHRI president/CEO and director Lieberman; Dr. James Musser, executive vice president and codirector of TMHRI;
Dr. Richard Robbins, chairman of the Department of Medicine; Dr. Barbara Bass, chair of the Department of Surgery and developer of The Methodist Institute for Technology, Innovation and Education; Dr. Osama Gaber, head of the Division of Transplantation in the Department of Surgery; and others.
As recruitment efforts continue, Research Institute goals include increasing clinical trials from 700 to more than 1,000 and building on — and adding to — Methodist’s nationally recognized strengths in the fields of cancer, neurosciences, heart and other specialties.
Dr. R. Mark Ghobrial
The guarantees of teamwork, collaboration and resources brought them to Methodist, but the Research Institute’s star recruits also came here to accomplish big things in their fields. The following question was posed to Methodist’s newest leading physicians: What do you hope to accomplish here?
Dr. Baxter: My big focus right now is developing thyroid hormone-like and other types of compounds to treat atherosclerosis, obesity and diabetes that do not elicit bad side effects. If we can successfully harness these compounds, it may be the most potent treatment we have for preventing/treating heart attack, stroke, obesity and diabetes. Dr. Ghobrial: The need here is to create a comprehensive center for treatment of liver problems — a onestop shop that builds a bridge between medicine, surgery, clinical and basic science research. The country right now is moving toward collaborative multidisciplinary approaches that cross link different specialties to provide the best benefit to our patients and to advance meaningful research. The Methodist environment is probably the best hospital in the world to foster this multidisciplinary approach to liver disease. Dr. Hsueh: I want to build a discovery program for diabetes that will allow us to prevent and treat the disease and its complications. Prevention, treatment and then TMHRI’s approach to promote commercialization of our discoveries — all of this is important. Dr. Li: My vision is to build a highly innovative, unique and world-class imaging sciences program. The future will be our ability to combine all the information we have and practice the four ‘Ps’ of medicine, which are to predict, prevent, personalize and prognosticate. If we can do all four, we can truly change how medicine will be practiced. Dr. Wong: My specialty is a cross between bioinformatics and medical imaging, and I’m especially interested in the interplay of the two. They are becoming the cornerstones for the next generation of medical care, and they will permeate all specialties. The key is to integrate this tidal wave of technology so patients can get seamless, better and cost effective medical care.
