UNIVERSITY OF UTAH Health Sciences Center 2001 Annual Report 2001futuresPASTfuturesPRESENT MISSIONSTATEMENT The University of Utah Health Sciences Center supports the mission and vision of the University of Utah and serves the public by improving health and quality of life through excellence in education, research, and clinical care. We educate competent and caring practitioners, educators, and scientists for the state of Utah and beyond. We advance knowledge through innovative basic and clinical research and scholarship and translate our discoveries into applications that help people. We provide compassionate, state-of-the art clinical care to our patients. We anticipate and respond to the needs of our communities through outreach, advocacy, and service. UNIVERSITYOFUTAH Health Sciences Center Table of C ONTENTS 2 S ENIOR V ICE P RESIDENT’ S M ESSAGE A. Lorris Betz, M.D., Ph.D. 4 L ASKER A WARD W INNER Mario R. Capecchi, Ph.D. 6 I N THE H EADLINES 8 P ROFILES IN P HILANTHROPY Spencer F. Eccles John A. Moran Harold H. Wolf, Ph.D. 14 I N R EVIEW School of Medicine College of Pharmacy College of Health College of Nursing University Hospitals & Clinics Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library 26 E XPANSIONS 28 E NDOWED C HAIRS 30 P ASSAGES 33 D ONOR R EPORT 62 O RGANIZATIONS2001 GROWTH. HUMANS DO IT; INSTITUTIONS DO IT. At the University of Utah Health Sciences we maintain high standards and a lofty reputation by graduating well trained and educated students, using the latest in medical science to benefit the people who seek our help and utilizing research to further improve the aid we give and the lessons we teach. Growth is essential if we are to continue getting better. Senior Vice President’s Message A.LORRISBETZ We are fortunate to still have some space in which to grow physically. In the next two to five years, the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Critical Care Pavilion (pg. ), the Huntsman Cancer Hospital (pg. ) and the new John A. Moran Eye Center (pg. ) will all become reality. They are designed to increase clinical care and research, thus allowing us to even better serve the people of the Intermountain West. All three will be built using virtually no public funds. It is the continued generosity of our individual, foundation and corporate donors that is so important in keeping Health Sciences viable and relevant. While Utah’s population has grown % in just the last ten years, the School of Medicine has not increased class sizes since its inception in the s. The building Backed by the latest technology, people from a variety of disciplines will work itself is a s structure that is side-by-side, sharing thoughts and ideas and fostering even greater breakthroughs outdated, overcrowded and does in research and broader understanding and knowledge among students. not meet current building codes. A student’s intellectual growth is of paramount importance. Removing financial We are critically short of research burdens allows them to concentrate on learning. To this end, Health Sciences and classroom space. Like humans, is using tickets supplied by the Salt Lake Olympic Committee to help generate however, institutions get to a point endowed scholarships. where they can no longer grow We are also committed to raising more scholarship funds for minority students. physically. It becomes a time of Over ten percent of Utah’s population is non-Caucasian. If we do not keep our renewal. The Emma Eccles Jones quality minority students at home we are not serving them, nor the myriads of Medical Research Building and a people they would eventually treat. proposed new education building will be built on ground where old Growth, be it human or institutional, must be nurtured and well-managed. buildings have been razed. Both When it is, the results are astounding. are conceived as places where The generosity of the people of Utah and its institutions never ceases to amaze intellectual growth is stimulated. me. Their remarkable commitment, unstinting sense of duty and unwavering loyalty keeps University of Utah Health Sciences growing so that we can be among the leaders in what we do: educate students, maintain the health of our citizens and conduct research that extends the frontiers of discovery. A. Lorris Betz, M.D., Ph.D. Senior Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean, School of Medicine MARIOCAPECCHI RECIPIENT of the 2001 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the nation’s highest honor. In a voice so quiet you have to lean close to hear distinctly, Mario R. Capecchi, Ph.D., describes his pioneering work in illuminating the role genes play in our lives. His descriptions are so logical, you would never guess they represent a breakthrough in biomedical research. Why didn’t someone try this before? You listen and learn that it takes a mind, and a determination, of Capecchi’s caliber to ask the important questions and pursue them until you get answers. His mind and relentless nature have won for Capecchi the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the nation’s highest honor. “Mario Capecchi is a scientist’s scientist. His dedication and perseverance are legendary,” says fellow geneticist and longtime colleague Raymond F. Gesteland, Ph.D., now University of Utah Vice President for Research. This dedication may be due in part to his childhood in Italy when, during World War II, he was forced to fend for himself on the streets at the age of four. Capecchi’s mother Lucy, a Sorbonne trained poet, belonged to a group of artists opposed to fascism and Nazism. She sensed that the Nazis would not tolerate her outspoken opposition for long. She made plans with friends to care for Capecchi if she were taken away. The inevitable happened when Capecchi was four years old. However, the money his mother had given friends to care for Mario ran out and he was thrown onto to the streets to fend for himself. Four years later, when released from Dachau, Capecchi’s mother found her son naked and starving in a hospital. She took him to the United States to live with her brother, a physicist. The influence of the uncle and the Quaker schools he attended turned Capecchi’s interests to science. At Antioch College he first studied political science, followed by physics and chemistry, in which he earned a double major. Although he studied under Nobel Prize winner James Watson at Harvard and taught there himself for several years, he wasn’t satisfied with the intellectual atmosphere. It was too stifling: “a bastion of short-term gratification,” says Capecchi. He wanted to pursue gene targeting—a far-reaching but novel technology. So in he came to Utah, a place where he would be allowed to pursue significant, long-term projects. Even though his first grant application to the National Institutes of Health for funding to support gene targeting was turned down, Capecchi found ways to pursue his ideas. Capecchi and other scientists throughout the world have generated at least , different mice for determining the role of specific genes in a living animal using Capecchi’s gene targeting technique. Researchers are now able to modify any particular gene and then insert it into a mouse embryonic stem cell, from which the whole mouse develops. Watching the mouse grow, scientists look for variations that might be caused by the inserted gene. Studies of these mice help reveal the role each gene plays, whether it guides the development of a limb or the function- ing of the nervous system. Using the knowledge gained, scientists hope to eventually assemble a blueprint of how each gene contributes to the functioning of a human. This technology, once turned down for a grant by the NIH because it was “not worthy of pursuit,” has now advanced biomedical research beyond what was thought possible in Capecchi’s early days at Harvard. Although he is approaching retirement age, his wife, Laurie Fraser, only half-jokingly anticipates he will die in his laboratory. Capecchi admits he doesn’t contemplate stopping anytime soon. He plans to investigate other important questions, such as how genes guide brain development and growth. It is a daunting task, but fits in with the Capecchi philosophy, “If you don’t start, you’ll never get there. So you have to start and dream about the possibilities.” INTHEHEADLINES excerpts from the Salt Lake Tribune and Desert News U. Research Team’s Part of Ribosome Mapping Project Named One of Year’s Most Significant Scientific Feats A University of Utah research project that helped provide a microscopic glimpse into ribosomes was named as among the most significant scientific feats of . Today’s edition of Science magazine ranked a biochemistry project—which a U School of Medicine research team contributed to—as one of the year’s top scientific advances. —Excerpted: Salt Lake Tribune article by Greg Lavine; December , . Sight for Ailing Eyes Innovative medical technology applied by two surgeons at the Moran Eye Center in Salt Lake City is allowing people with dislocated lenses in their eyes to once again see clearly. Ike Ahmed, a surgeon at the eye center who performed the operation with surgeon Alan Crandall, said the use of capsular tension rings to hold the lens made the surgery unique. —Excerpted: Salt Lake Tribune article by Norma Wagner and Greg Lavine; January , . Utah center seeks answers on how to treat addictions …the fact that the Addiction Research and Education Center exists at all signifies a big shift in how we view people hooked on drugs. “Addiction is a brain disease,” said Glen Hanson, University of Utah neuroscientist and founder of the center.