Rudi Keller @CDTCivilWar

When the University of Missouri faced a decision of whether to impose immediate, deep cuts or tap reserves for $20 million when Gov. Eric Greitens announced mid-year restrictions on state support, the School of Medicine chipped in $3.1 million for use by other campus divisions.

MU Health Care, the university-owned hospital and clinic system, alsoprovided $3 million. MU Health Care shows a healthy bottom line and patient fees pay the salaries of clinical faculty in the school.

And as MU undergoes changesbecause ofcontinued funding deficits and directives to find money for reallocation, the School of Medicine will be one of the major beneficiaries of those reallocated dollars. To meet the required cuts in general fund spending, the school cut 7.2 faculty positions, saving $773,825, and six staff positions, saving $455,514.

On the addition side, the hiring plan includes 59 new faculty, at a cost of $13.3 million, and another $1.25 million for tools and support to put those faculty to work. Many of the new faculty will be clinical appointments without tenure, but a significant number will be researchers.

Along with closing deficits, the budget plan announced June 2 by UM System President Mun Choi sets aside $47 million for investments in research and academics on the four system campuses. The Columbia campus will have $22.9 million as its share.

One priority building project is the planned Translational Precision Medicine Complex, a lab for interdisciplinary work conducted by 44 teams of researchers. Interdisciplinary work under the umbrella of the One Health/One Medicine initiative is already occurring but the school sees the building as a way to enhance the campus reputation with a space designed for the purpose. When first proposed in 2015, the building had a $120 million price tag.

The medical school increased its National Institutes of Health grant funding 18 percent in fiscal year 2016, Dean Patrice Delafontaine said. Finding money to build the lab is in the early stages, he said, but he wants to complete it within five years.

It is the wave of the future, he said. It is the assembly of research teams from complementary schools to tackle the big health problems. I think having a new facility like that really helps attract top level researchers. Top level researchers generally come with grant funding already and are in an optimal position.

The 59 new faculty in the medical school are the largest for any school of the 161 new faculty positions included in the budget plan. The campus total includes 58 faculty who will contribute to priority research fields and 34 will fill other tenured positions. The medical schools hires will be about 80 percent non-tenured faculty for clinical positions, Delafontaine said.

The new faculty will staff expanding clinical programs and earn their salary through patient fees, he said.

Clinical faculty play a key academic role because they are training the next generation of medical students, Delafontaine said. They train the students in the residency program and train more advance residents in fellowships. They also contribute to the research mission both through clinical research as well as collaboration with basic researchers.

The university calls its priority research areas the Mizzou Advantage and for the School of Medicine, that is the One Health/One Medicine initiative. The university is looking for 29 faculty for the program.

Today we are interviewing a candidate for our faculty and this candidate happens to be a bio-engineer, Edward Yeh, chair of the schools Department of Medicine said Friday. He is interviewing with us in the medical school but also interviewing in the school of engineering. We use engineering concepts in using biological materials to help cardiologists rebuild a heart after heart attack or nanotechnology to deliver cancer drug. This is a very valuable interaction between disciplines.

Yeh took his post in December after 16 years with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. His specialty is onco-cardiology, itself an interdisciplinary field of medicine concerned with the effect of cancer treatment on heart function.

An example, he said, is the drug sold under the brand name Herceptin. It helps women with late-stage breast cancer live longer and helps prevent the return of cancer after surgery in early stage cases. But in clinical trials, Yeh said, up to 28 percent of patients developed heart failure and died.

It had become quite alarming and the initial clinical trial was almost stopped, he said. They worked with cardiologists to monitor patients, find out what went wrong, and now it is widely used to help breast cancer patients.

Yeh has an aggressive goal of tripling grant awards to School of Medicine researchers over the next two years.

I think we are actively trying to build this program, he said. I am very positive good results will come.

The future of medicine is technology that seems like science fiction.

If you want to develop a new kidney, you can print it using biomaterials and different cells, Yeh said.

The interdisciplinary lab will have the equipment, such as 3-D printers, that can tap that potential, he said. The recruiting efforts are designed to bring people to turn potential into reality, he said.

To have a vision is not enough, Yeh said. We need to have the right people. I believe our leaders are putting together teams of visionary scientist who can make that happen.

While the campus overall suffers from enrollment woes, the School of Medicine isnt having any difficulty filling its 128 annual slots for medical degree candidates and the other slots for academic students, Delafontaine said.

We are in a good situation to progress, he said. We have made some administrative changes that are increasing efficiencies and we are working smarter. We are very much on track to achieve continued growth in education, research and clinical programs.

rkeller@columbiatribune.com

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MU medical school growing clinical, research programs amid cuts - Columbia Daily Tribune