Medical research growing at UT Austin
Dr. Kimberly Homan employs nanotechnology to image and treat pancreatic cancer.
I’ve spoken many times over the past six years about the opportunities a medical school at UT Austin would create.
When I speak of UT Austin as a strong foundation for a medical school, I’m talking about faculty members like Vishy Iyer, who is working with Matt Cowperthwaite, director of research at St. David’s HealthCare’s NeuroTexas Institute, to sequence the genetic codes of brain tumors to find better personalized treatments. I’m talking about James Tunnell in biomedical engineering, who has developed a pen-sized instrument that uses light to diagnose skin cancer without the need for a biopsy, making testing quick, painless, and affordable. And I’m talking about Kimberly Homan, who is using a $400,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop nanotechnology to image and treat pancreatic cancer.
These ingenious UT scientists are only a sampling and are working only in one area among many in which our faculty is active — cancer. We’re already doing a great deal of medical research at UT Austin. The creation of a medical school — producing newfound collaborations, opportunities for clinical trials, and powerful new potential to attract grants — would greatly accelerate the medical research already underway on the Forty Acres. And there’s no predicting how far the implications might reach.
Am I claiming that a UT Austin medical school would help lead to a cure for cancer? I see no reason it shouldn’t.
What starts here changes the world.
