Cain’s Annual Address Highlights School’s Enhanced Profile, Prestige

This was the message of Michael E. Cain, MD, vice president for health sciences and medical school dean, during his 10th annual state-of-the-school address, Jan. 29 at the UB Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

In 2015, the school’s faculty ranks grew to 778 — 90 more than just four years ago, Cain said.

“Our departmental chairs have been remarkably successful in bringing a number of extremely talented individuals to our school,” he noted.

To accommodate the plan to expand the medical school class from 144 students to 180, the school will increase full-time faculty numbers to approximately 860 by the year 2020.

Construction of the downtown medical school is steadily continuing, Cain said.

A temporary roof has been installed on the building's fifth floor, allowing crews to work on the first four floors in inclement weather.

Come spring, crews will remove the temporary roof and resume construction on the top floor, the eighth, progressing down to the fifth floor, the last to be completed.

The fourth floor of the Conventus Building — a 350,000-square-foot-center for collaborative medicine on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus — will open this October. It will house 12 practice plans with the UBMD physicians group, Cain said.

“This new space will allow our full-time faculty clinical faculty to make a major leap forward in integrating administrative processes and clinical services,” he said. It also will allow our clinicians to see more patients — between 1,500 and 2,300 per day.

Conventus’ fifth floor will house administrative offices for:

• pediatrics
• obstetrics and gynecology
• child neurology
• surgery

Through a system of covered walkways, Conventus will be linked to the new medical school, the new John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, the CTRC, Gates Vascular Institute, Buffalo General Medical Center and the Research Institute on Addictions.

“This will allow for the ‘coatless society’ we have spoken about and dreamed about for years,” Cain said.

The medical school is already reaping “positive, palpable” benefits of the $15 million Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) it received from the National Institutes of Health in August, Cain said.

The award makes the Buffalo Translational Consortium one of only 64 centers in the national CTSA Consortium, which works collectively to speed the translation of research discovery into improved patient care.

The CTSA has helped increase the amount of money available for, and the infrastructure to support, pilot studies for clinical and translational research, Cain noted.

The CTSA, together with resources also provided by UB and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, enables $600,000 a year to be available for pilot studies.

Eight of 73 proposed pilot studies received funding in November; the second round of accepted proposals will receive funding come April.

Cain praised Timothy F. Murphy, MD, senior associate dean for clinical and translational research, for leading the effort to secure the prestigious award.

The CTSA also supports a mentoring program designed to train investigators from diverse backgrounds and develop the next generation of leaders in translational research.

Since the first call for applications to the KL2 Mentored Career Development Program in September, two scholars have been selected and funded, Cain said. A second call for applications will take place early this year.

Cain highlighted a new health sciences initiative — GEM — that will result in additional money for pilot studies.

In May, UB committed to investing $25 million to establish three “Communities of Excellence,” including GEM — short for Genome, Environment and Microbiome. GEM works to further the science of genomics and the microbiome while making UB a national model for promoting and increasing genomic literacy.

“The GEM Community of Excellence has resulted in a new source of funding — approximately $200,000 — available to our faculty for innovative pilot studies that allows them to gather preliminary data that could be converted to a larger, more sustainable grant from the NIH or another funding organization,” Cain said.

The school’s sponsored-program research expenditures have steadily increased, Cain noted.

In 2015 they totaled almost $51 million, divided nearly equally between clinical and basic science departments. That figure represents an $8 million increase over the past three years. It does not include research expenditures for faculty at Roswell Park, Hauptman-Woodward Institute and the Buffalo VA Medical Center.

Collectively, sponsored research expenditures across UB’s five health science schools totaled $79 million in 2015, up from $74 million in 2014.

The medical school has become increasingly selective and attractive to prospective students, Cain said.

“The number of those applying to matriculate in 2016 is higher than last year and may be a record high in the history of UB,” Cain noted.

In 2015, 4,362 candidates applied to the medical school, 3.8 percent more than in 2014. Of those applicants, 604 were selected for interviews.

“We required only 314 offer letters to fill the class of 144 students,” Cain said.

Forty-two percent of the freshman class hails from Western New York.

Their overall undergraduate GPA was 3.7.

The school’s performance in graduate medical education continues to improve, Cain said.

In 2014-2015, these programs met or exceeded requirements of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 75 percent of the categories measured, Cain said — up 8 percent since 2012-2013.

Retention of graduating residents and fellows was also on the upswing in 2015. Of 229 graduates, 81 elected to remain in Erie County, up from 62 last year.

New graduate programs in pediatric infectious disease, interventional cardiology, clinical informatics and surgical critical care are currently seeking accreditation, Cain added.

Faculty received recognition for a wide range of achievements in 2015, Cain noted.

Faculty honored at SUNY and UB levels included:

• John M. Canty Jr., MD, chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, named a SUNY distinguished professor
• Ralph H. Benedict, PhD, professor of neurology, recipient of a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for excellence in scholarship and creative activities
• Peter G. Bradford, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology, recipient of SUNY Chancellor’s Award for excellence in teaching
• David Dietz, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology, honored as a UB Exceptional Scholar in the “young investigator” category
• Norma J. Nowak, PhD, professor of biochemistry; Chester H. Fox, MD, professor of family medicine; and Noreen Williams, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology, all UB Exceptional Scholar Awardees for sustained achievement
• Anthony A. Campagnari, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology and medicine, recipient of an award for excellence in graduate student mentoring

Two medical school faculty members will receive graduate student mentoring awards in 2016: Mark R. O’Brian, PhD, professor and chair of biochemistry, and Margarita L. Dubocovich, PhD, professor and chair of pharmacology and toxicology.

“This is particularly impressive when you consider that the university gives out only three of these awards each year,” Cain said.

The medical school’s comprehensive fundraising campaign has raised nearly $170 million of its $200 million goal, Cain reported.

The campaign has more than 9,000 donors. This includes 22 who have committed at least $1 million — the largest of these donations being last summer’s historic $30 million gift from Jeremy M. Jacobs, his wife, Margaret, and their family.

Faculty and staff have made more than $4 million in commitments since the beginning of the campaign, Cain said.

The Department of Biomedical Informatics, chaired by Peter L. Elkin, MD, has made impressive strides in recruiting, research, education and service, Cain noted.

Launched in 2013, it now boasts 30 faculty, including prestigious recruits from inside and outside UB.

Among its research accomplishments, the department played an important role in UB winning the CTSA award and the $47.5 million state award to support the Buffalo Institute for Genomics and Data Analytics.

It was also named an approved site for the fellowship training program in big data science, a program launched by the Department of Veterans Affairs in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute.

The department’s recently approved master’s and PhD programs will begin classes this fall. Its fellowship program in clinical informatics is expanding to two fellows per year.

The Office of Inclusion and Cultural Enhancement has launched new initiatives to further the school’s commitment to support diversity and inclusion in education, research and clinical care, Cain said.

These include recruiting faculty diversity and inclusion advocates to encourage departmental cross-cultural interactions and community engagement.

Thus far, 18 faculty advocates representing 16 departments have volunteered for this role.

These volunteers:

• serve as departmental liaisons to the Office of Inclusion
• develop department website diversity statements
• participate in search committee dialogues
• facilitate collection of data on departmental diversity and inclusion initiatives — information needed for the dean’s report to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education

In 2015, the Office of Communications bolstered recruitment efforts by writing 125 news stories for the school’s website and publishing 450 mentions showcasing external media coverage, Cain said.

A newly created  “latest news” tab links these stories and mentions to the respective faculty member’s online profile, underscoring their achievements for prospective students and others interested in the school.

Additionally, the office launched new websites for the:

• Division of Nephrology
• Nephrology Fellowship
• Department of Microbiology and Immunology
• Department of Family Medicine
• Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship

In other 2015 news, Cain reported:

• new chairs were appointed to the departments of Biochemistry, Emergency Medicine, Physiology and Biophysics, Structural Biology and Surgery
• the UBMD practice plan increased revenue from $117 million in 2006 to $227 last year
• UB continues to refine interprofessional education and has established five core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice