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The retreat, which is by the chancellor’s invitation, will bring together attendees representing UNMC, The Nebraska Medical Center, UNeMed and the community. It will be held at the Westside Community Conference Center, 3534 S. 108th St., in Omaha.
Paul Simmons, Ph.D., director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, will present on aspects of regenerative medicine. Ary Goldberger, M.D., professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, will speak on biomedical informatics.
The ideas to be discussed at the retreat were developed and refined last year by the Chancellor’s Council.
“These ideas reflect what the Chancellor’s Council believes to be vital areas UNMC must excel in to achieve its goal of becoming a world-class academic health sciences center,” said UNMC Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D. “I look forward to seeing these ideas refined further during the retreat so they can be used to help UNMC progress.”
In addition to regenerative medicine and biomedical informatics, other ideas or focus areas for the retreat include:
- Curriculum renewal;
- Employee loyalty and wellness;
- Promotion of science literacy;
- Technology transfer;
- Health disparities;
- Health care workforce; and
- Clinical research organization.
Regenerative medicine is a broad definition for innovative medical therapies that will enable the body to repair, replace, restore and regenerate damaged or diseased cells, tissues and organs. Scientists worldwide are engaged in research activities that may enable repair of damaged heart muscle after a heart attack, replacement of skin for burn victims, restoration of movement after spinal cord injury and regeneration of pancreatic tissue to produce insulin for people with diabetes. Regenerative medicine promises to extend healthy life spans and improve the quality of life by supporting and activating the body’s natural healing.
Regenerative medicine encompasses a variety of research areas including cell therapy, tissue engineering, biomaterials engineering, growth factors and transplantation science.
“Based on his work as president of the International Stem Cell Society and his position in Houston, Dr. Simmons is in a position to know what the issues are in the world of regenerative medicine,” said John Gollan, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the UNMC College of Medicine. “His insight will prove useful to us as we look to bolster our efforts in gene therapy, biomaterials engineering and other areas of regenerative medicine.”
Dr. Simmons earned his Ph.D. from the Paterson Institute in Manchester, England. Prior to accepting his current position with the University of Texas Health Science Center in 2006, he worked in Australia for the previous 16 years, serving as program head of stem cell biology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center during his final six years there.
In addition to presenting at the retreat, Dr. Simmons will give a Grand Rounds seminar open to the campus at 4 p.m. today in the Durham Research Center. His presentation is titled, “Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC): From Concept to Clinic.” It is sponsored by UNMC Graduate Studies.
Dr. Goldberger earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1970 and his medical degree from Yale University in 1974. He has served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School since 1985 and was named professor of medicine in 2004. Since 1999, Dr. Goldberger has served as program director of the National Institutes of Health Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals.
“Dr. Goldberger is a highly respected research scientist with outstanding NIH support,” said Ken Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center. “He has published extensively in high-ranking scientific journals, including Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. We look forward to his insights into bioinformatics and know we can learn a lot from him.”
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“It is necessary to develop a new environment and new information systems that support collaborative interdisciplinary research and identify interventions to improve best practices in biomedical research, health care, and education of the next generation of biomedical researchers,” he said. “It also is imperative to re-engineer how studies in basic, clinical and population sciences at UNMC are conducted.”
In addition to presenting at the retreat, Dr. Goldberger will give a scientific seminar that is open to the campus at noon today in the Wittson Hall Amphitheater. The seminar is titled “Fractals, Chaos Theory and Complexity: Finding Hidden Information in Your Data.” It is sponsored by the UNMC Eppley Center and the Center for Clinical and Translational Research.
The Chancellor’s Strategic Planning Retreat also will feature several breakout sessions on each of the other ideas on the agenda. The breakout sessions will allow participants to determine areas UNMC should focus on during the next year.
During the day’s final breakout sessions, the Chancellor’s Council will match goals and actions from the earlier sessions against UNMC’s critical success factors for education, research, community partnerships, cultural competence, economic growth and employee loyalty to create the 2008-11 UNMC strategic plan.
“Each year, this retreat allows us to make important suggestions and decisions that help us advance as an institution,” Dr. Maurer said. “I am truly excited to see what will come from the synergy we create during this year’s retreat. I know it will be a fruitful day.”