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| Alumni Association Home > Minnesota Magazine > Past Issues > 2008 > March-April 2008 | ||||||||
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When the news broke that University of Minnesota researchers had reconstructed a rat’s heart and that it was beating in a laboratory jar, my own heart skipped a beat. Then it swelled with pride. This breakthrough offers hope that medicine’s dream of growing new tissue to repair human hearts and other organs might come true.
Within hours, news of the U’s discovery was heralded all over the world by leading biomedical and tissue engineering authorities. “We’ve opened the door to the notion that any organ can be made. It’s really been just science fiction until now,” says lead scientist Doris Taylor, director of the U’s Center for Cardiovascular Repair and the Medtronic Bakken professor of medicine and physiology.
Recruiting Doris Taylor from Duke University a few years ago was a huge coup for the University. Attracting top-notch researchers takes time—at least two years—and state-of-the-art laboratory space. The problem is that the University has virtually no space left to offer other research superstars. The Academic Health Center has simply run out of room. Even Taylor doesn’t have enough space to expand her research.
The University has come up with an innovative plan to solve this dire problem. The Minnesota Biomedical Research Program calls for the state legislature to create a fast-track bonding process to build four major bioscience research buildings in the next decade. This is a smart plan that is vitally necessary to fulfi ll University President Bob Bruininks’ vision to make the U of M one of the world’s top three public research universities.
The Minnesota Biomedical Research Program would provide the kind of reliable, steadfast financial support that is needed to recruit and retain top researchers. The Medical Biosciences Building, funded by the 2006 legislature and scheduled to open in fall 2009, is the first of the four buildings but is already committed to expanding research of Alzheimer’s, cancer immunology, and muscle disease.
The U of M has taken a huge step toward building a new human heart with a patient’s own cells. Taylor and colleagues believe that one day they’ll be able to reconstruct lungs, livers, kidneys, muscles, pancreases, and other organs and tissues—saving millions of lives. “It would be more than a shame, it would be a travesty, to lose the opportunity to build the first functional organ due to lack of resources,” Taylor says.
Just imagine what U researchers could do if they had sufficient resources. It is up to the leadership of this state to move medical innovation at the University forward. The legislature will vote on the Minnesota Biomedical Research Program this spring, and the U needs alumni and friends to speak out on behalf of this critical funding request. Every single one of us knows someone who has suffered or even died from a disease for which the University, with adequate state support, might very well discover a cure.
Please visit www.SupportTheU.umn.edu to learn how to contact your legislators today. Tell them that with their help, Minnesota can keep changing the world of medicine. —Margaret Sughrue Carlson (Ph.D. ’83)