School Readying for Downtown Move, Cain Says During Address

Cain, vice president for health sciences and medical school dean, delivered the address Jan. 16 at the UB Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

The medical school added 21 new faculty positions in 2014, bringing the total from 748 in 2013 to 769, Cain said.

He anticipates hiring another 60 to 70 new faculty over the next couple of years, he added.

The increase ensures that the school continues offering high quality medical education and training while meeting accreditation requirements when the medical school student body grows from 144 to 180 students in the class entering in 2017.

Construction of the new downtown medical school remains on schedule, Cain said.

“We are on track to open in a little over two years from now and have full occupancy for the summer of 2017.”

In the meantime, UB will help anchor the next addition to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus: the Conventus Building, a 350,000-square-foot center for collaborative medicine.

Schedule for the first phase of a tiered opening this summer, Conventus will house, among other tenants:

• 12 UBMD practice plans
• administrative offices for the departments of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology and the divisions of Pediatric Surgery and Child Neurology

The building’s covered walkways will provide coatless access to the new medical school, the UB CTRC, the UB Research Institute on Addictions, Gates Vascular Institute, Buffalo General Medical Center and the John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, which is under construction.

This arrangement will create easy access to primary and specialty care, Cain noted.

“I think all of us will appreciate having top-rate, multispecialty medical facilities a bridge away rather than miles or campuses away,” he said.

“This clinical venue has been organized and designed, from the start, as a collaborative effort with our hospital partners. It is an important venue for the training component of our clinical departments.”

With the medical school relocating downtown, UB’s South Campus will undergo “thoughtful reorganization” in the coming years to ensure that it remains a vibrant, vital academic environment, Cain said.

The schools of Dental Medicine, Public Health and Health Professions, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nursing, and the few components of the medical school that will stay on the South Campus will have access, if needed, to vacated space in the current medical school buildings if they require increased office, classroom or laboratory space.

UB continues to plan to relocate these other health science schools to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus after the year 2023.

Another aspect of the revitalization includes a two-phase plan to move several decanal units from the North Campus to the South Campus, he added, noting that all of these projects hinge on state funding.

UB faculty received more federal research dollars in 2014 than in the four previous years — this despite the lingering effects of the 2013 federal sequestration and the dwindling research funds available from the National Institutes of Health, Cain noted.

Last year, investigators were awarded 183 federal grants, excluding training grants and clinical trials and grants received by faculty at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Hauptman-Woodward Institute. That’s up from 175 in 2013 and 115 just five years ago.

UB faculty received $37.8 million in federal grant money last year, $1.4 million more than in 2013.

Clinical research trials submitted by faculty in all five health sciences schools increased dramatically last year, Cain said.

The total dollar amount of clinical research trials submitted was $8.5 million in 2014, up from $4.9 million in 2013.

Roughly 86 percent of proposals submitted last year originated in the medical school.

Of the health sciences schools’ proposals, UB received about $5 million for clinical trials expenditures in 2014, an increase of $1.5 million over 2013.

Clinical trials across the health sciences represented about 7 percent of all research expenditures in 2014, a 2 percent increase over 2014.

“It has been my desire since I came here a little over eight years ago to build clinical and translational research, but not at the expense of non-clinical research,” Cain said.

“We’re achieving that. We are increasing our number of clinical trials and experiencing an impressive uptick in clinical research.”

Cain commended Timothy Murphy, MD, senior associate dean for clinical and translational research, for fostering bench-to-bedside research in the medical school.

Murphy recently submitted the school’s third application for a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the NIH’s National Center for Research Resources.

If awarded, the school would receive $20 million over five years and an additional $9 to $10 million in matching institutional funding.

The money would help the medical school expand its research infrastructure development, become more competitive for pioneering research programs, collaborate with other institutions and enhance training for the next generation of clinical investigators.

The medical school’s clinical research efforts received a significant boost last year with the opening of the university-wide Clinical Research Office (CRO), Cain said.

Located in the CTRC, the office provides services to help UB faculty conduct clinical trials.

Nine full-time staff members conduct feasibility assessments, help write protocols and consents, assist with budget negotiations and approvals, and provide study coordinator support, among other services.

In addition, UB recently purchased a $1 million-plus clinical trial management software system that will greatly increase faculty’s clinical trial efficiency by streamlining and simplifying data collection and management.

More aspiring doctors are applying to the UB medical school, and more accepted students are choosing UB, Cain said.

The admissions committee received 4,201 applications from the prospective class of 2018, up from 4,090 the year before.

Of those applications, the committee sent only 311 acceptance letters to enroll the 144-member class.

“In this past, we’ve sent 400-some, 500-some or even 600 letters,” Cain said.

“We’ve become more selective and, once students receive the acceptance letter, they are accepting.”

For the first time since he’s been at UB, 100 percent of second-year medical students taking the USMLE Step 1 exam for the first time passed in 2014, Cain said.

UB medical students performed well above average on the clinical skills portion of the Step 2 exam and above average on the clinical knowledge portion, he noted.

In 2013-2014, fellows and residents in 28 of the school’s 60 graduate clinical training programs had a 100 percent pass rate on their respective board exam.

That’s a 10 percent increase over the previous year.

The school continues to foster a diverse environment for faculty, staff and students, Cain said.

In 2014, 14 percent of the school’s 119 PhD candidates were minorities underrepresented in the sciences — “an important and dramatic improvement from just a few years ago,” Cain said, when enrollment among such students was in the single digits.

A similar trend is taking place within medical school admissions: In 2012, underrepresented minorities comprised 7 percent of the medical school class; last year, they comprised 19 percent.

“We gone from being very underrepresented to being one of the leaders in the country,” Cain said.

A new office within the medical school, the Office of Inclusion and Cultural Enhancement, is helping shepherd these developments.

Led by Margarita Dubocovich, PhD, the office provides leadership awards to students, residents and faculty who champion the cause of diversity and hosts workshops and lectures that underscore the importance of inclusion and diversity in medicine.

Dubocovich is principal investigator on a federal grant, the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development, that funds the education of biomedical and behavioral scientists from from underrepresented groups.

She also is co-director of the Institute for Strategic Enhancement of Educational Diversity (iSEED), which provides funding to underrepresented students in STEM disciplines.

Another new unit within the school, the Department of Biomedical Informatics, is making impressive strides since its inception in 2013, Cain said.

Faculty have contributed to several major projects, including the $47.5 million Buffalo Institute of Genomics grant. They are collaborating with other departments to draft a proposal for the new UB Center of Excellence in Genomics and the Microbiome and have three NIH grants under review as well.

The department is developing academic program at all degree levels. In July it launched a fellowship in clinical informatics — one of only a handful of such programs in the country.

Chair Peter Elkin, MD, has submitted proposals to the State University of New York and the New York State Department of Education for master’s and PhD programs in biomedical informatics. He plans to start a bachelor’s degree program in five years.

Departmental faculty also have helped develop quality measures and quality improvements for the UBMD practice plans and Great Lakes Health. They are working with Great Lakes Health to create a common electronic health record, Cain said.

Chair searches beginning in 2015 include those for the departments of:

• Physiology and Biophysics
• Structural Biology
• Emergency Medicine

Steven D. Schwaitzberg, MD, who comes to UB from Harvard University this spring, is the new chair of the Department of Surgery, Cain announced.

Robert F. McCormack, MD, has been named interim chair of emergency medicine.

Alan J. Lesse, MD, has been serving as interim senior associate dean for medical curriculum since the death of Avery Ellis, MD, PhD.

A search to fill the position permanently will take place in 2015.

The search for a new chair of the Department of Biochemistry is nearly complete, Cain added.

The medical school’s comprehensive fundraising campaign to support capital projects and build endowment has raised $122 million as of November 2014, Cain said.

Of the total $200 million goal:

• $100 million will fund new faculty positions
• $75 million will fund the new medical school and the CTRC
• $25 million will support student scholarships.

The faculty and staff campaign raised has more than $1.2 million.

In other 2014 news, Cain reported:

• the UBMD practice plan increased revenue from $117 million in 2006 to $213 million in 2013 (the most recent audited data)
• increased NIH funding allowed the school to admit 15 candidates into the PhD Program in Biomedical Sciences (PPBS), two more than in 2013
• the school received accreditation for a new graduate program in forensic psychiatry
• the school’s website had 1.7 million page views as the Office of Communications continued bolstering recruitment efforts by writing 141 news stories, 800 mentions highlighting external media coverage and launching six new websites within the Departments of Medicine, Family Medicine and Neurology