Our Expanding Discovery Enterprise

Good morning!

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, which is a reminder that we are officially in tornado season. This year’s tornado season announced its arrival this past Wednesday when a band of severe weather passed through that had potential to yield dangerous activity in many parts of the state. Mississippi, as a whole, is lucky that the severe weather for that afternoon was not as bad as predicted, but our thoughts are with those areas and families that did experience damage. Soon, though, we can expect our cars to be covered in pollen with the associated onset of seasonal allergies. But then, the trees and plants around us will be growing and in full bloom and Mississippi’s beauty will be on full display.

Speaking of growth, the Medical Center is also seeing the expansion of one of its mission areas: research. The challenges faced in 2020 required us to make some changes to many of our normal operations, but our research program, under the leadership of Associate Vice Chancellor Dr. Richard Summers, took advantage of many opportunities last year and had some great successes.

By the end of December 2020 – the halfway point for Fiscal Year 2021 – our Office of Sponsored Programs reported $67.6 million in outside funding spread among 181 awards. This puts UMMC on track for a record-breaking year in both dollars brought in and number of grants received. This number includes COVID-19-related operational support from programs such as the CARES Act, COVID-19 research projects (more on those later) and new and continuing research in our areas of expertise.

Some notable projects in that last category include:

• The National Ovarian Cancer Academy, a Department of Defense-sponsored program brought to UMMC by Dr. Nita Maihle, associate director for basic research in the UMMC Cancer Center and Research Institute;
  
  
• A study on the role of GABA-A receptors in alcohol use disorders, led by Dr. Donna Platt, professor of psychiatry and human behavior; and
  
  
• The Cardiovascular-Renal Research Center’s Hypertension and Cardiorenal Diseases Research (HCDR) Training Program, led by Dr. Joey Granger, Billy S. Guyton Distinguished Professor and professor of physiology and medicine, which received a Perfect 10 score from the NIH.

We also saw an increase in the quantity and quality of academic papers that our researchers published. In FY20, which ended June 30, 2020, UMMC researchers authored more than 1,000 peer-reviewed papers. Most years, we publish less than 800. The University of Mississippi, including UMMC, jumped up 36 spots to No. 348 in the 2020 Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities. We also rank in the top 300 for medicine and life sciences-related papers, which make up the bulk of UMMC’s academic projects. And in the national Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research rankings, which lists organizations that conduct National Institutes for Health-funded medical research, UMMC is in the top 8% in a ranking of all institutions and our Department of Physiology is #9 in a list of peer departments.

Clinical research also had a banner year. In FY20, we started 100 new clinical trials, up 35 percent from the 74 we started the previous year. At the midway point for this year, we were already at 57. This progress is due in part to our Office of Clinical Trials’ rollout of programs like the Velos Clinical Trials Management System, which streamlined the trial process for investigators.

COVID-19 gave our scientists an unexpected opportunity to innovate and expand their research programs in new directions. Dr. Charlotte Hobbs in the Department of Pediatrics has led multiple studies on the spread and impact of COVID-19 in Mississippi’s children. UMMC started and joined dozens of clinical trials, including one for the one-dose Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. We are also part of multiple community and population studies of COVID-19: one led by Dr. Caroline Compretta and Dr. Michael Hall, and another led by Dr. Leandro Mena and Dr. Adolfo Correa. On the innovation front, Dr. Charles Robertson from the Department of Anesthesiology developed a ventilator design built from hardware store supplies that received Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA (We are also very thankful that we maintained enough conventional ventilators that we never had to use this design on a patient!). Gurmit Singh and Kerry Marshall in DIS used the COVID-19 test-scheduling tool to build a vaccine-scheduling tool that was recently licensed to the South Carolina Department of Health for its use.

As we look toward the future, here are some of the research priorities we outlined in the most recent Strategic Plan update:

• Expand partnerships with key external affiliates
• Optimize use of research space
• Evaluate and update existing research funds flow
• Establish research faculty external funding goals

The MIND Center-Mayo Clinic Study of Aging collaboration is a great example of the first. We recently reached the halfway point of our $5 million fundraising goal for that project, which will allow The MIND Center to recruit new researchers and participants for the study. We’re also preparing to use our Clinical Research and Trials Unit for Phase 1 anti-cancer drug trials. The Office of Research is rolling out a new grant management system, Cayuse, which will help us track budget and other aspects of human research. And with the outside award numbers shared above, I’m feeling confident that we can aim high on our external funding goals.

The credit for all of these successes goes to the many committed staff who participate in the Medical Center’s various research activities: the faculty and graduate students, the laboratory staff, the animal care professionals and the departmental administrators. Thank you for what you are doing and the difference you are making in the delivery of medicine now and in the future. Your dedication to discovery is the key to building A Healthier Mississippi.