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Improving Lives

In North Texas, researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington are developing personal portable devices that will help disabled people stay in touch with the rest of the world.

In Houston, medical scientists at UT M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are focusing on new, highly individualized treatments that will allow cancer patients to survive longer, with a better quality of life.

In Austin, UT School of Law students and faculty members are pursuing claims by state penitentiary inmates who may be innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted.

This groundbreaking work, which has the potential to transform lives, is a small part of the $1.54 billion in research expenditures by the UT System's institutions in 2004. Together, the System's nine academic and six health institutions comprise a research powerhouse that ranks second in the nation; only the University of California System exceeds UT's research expenditures.

In the past four years, the UT System's research expenditures have expanded tremendously, from $1.04 billion in 2000 to the current $1.54 billion. This total, four-year increase of 48 percent represents an average annual increase of 11 percent.

"What these numbers tell us is that we are in the process of emerging as one of the country's great research universities," said Kenneth I. Shine, UT System's executive vice chancellor for health affairs. "This increase has allowed us to recruit and retain really outstanding scientists over the past decade. These scientists have been able to train younger people who have become outstanding scientists on their own."

Increases in funding from federal agencies have spurred much of the UT System's growth in research, Shine said. UT System's institutions have then aggressively leveraged federal funds as seed money to hire and train more researchers and attract more money from private philanthropists, industry and state government.

"For every dollar of federal funding, we are able to leverage five to 10 more dollars from other sources," said Gordon Mills, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of M.D. Anderson's department of molecular therapeutics. "Private philanthropy is important, because it allows you to do higher-risk studies that are more difficult to fund through federal grants."

In January, $5 million in funding from the Kleberg Foundation allowed Dr. Mills to establish the Kleberg Center for Molecular Markers. The new center will perform a series of pilot studies designed to determine "how best to develop personalized medicine in cancer management," Dr. Mills said. "We'll look at screening individuals who are at high risk for developing cancer, as well as selecting optimum forms of therapy. We hope to turn cancer into a manageable disease, with a good quality of life - similar to diabetes."

To learn more about the predictability and eventual treatment of individual tumors, these pilot studies will combine the efforts of more than 100 physicians and scientists, including medical oncologists, clinicians, radiologists, pathologists and engineers. "I'm aggressively bringing in people from different backgrounds," Dr. Mills said. "If you're going to succeed, you have to cross boundaries and learn from people who think differently from you."

Similarly, at UT Arlington, a $2.2 million grant from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is enabling computer science and engineering professor Farhad Kamangar to lead a project that combines computing, robotics, social work and communication technologies. Kamangar and his associates at UTA and the Dallas-based Center for Computer Assistance to the Disabled and SensorLogic are developing the personal portable devices, or PPDs. The devices are for specialized use by people whose physical disabilities, such as blindness or paralysis, now prevent them from using technology like cell phones and email.

"They could be used for different services - like reminding people to take their medicine or monitoring their blood pressure or heart rate," Dr. Kamangar said. "The PPDs will encourage independent living. Later on, they could be adapted for news, entertainment, the stock market."

At present, Dr. Kamangar and his associates are in the first phase of development of the PPDs. They have recently supplied 600 of the devices to handicapped people living in 14 Northeast Texas counties.

Along with their peers at other UT System institutions and universities around the world, these researchers confront many of the same problems. Even after research is funded and a good team assembled, theories may fail and years may elapse before successful experimental results are secured.

"It's like finding a needle in a haystack," said William P. Allison, director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at UT Law School and one of three law school faculty members supervising the new Actual Innocence Clinic. "Then, even when you find it - it's a hard needle to thread."

Funded by an Austin law firm, the Actual Innocence Clinic's 10 law students have already screened a haystack of 500 letters from Texas inmates. Of these letters, only a handful merited more attention. The law students are not only looking for prisoners who are innocent of the crimes they were convicted for; they are looking for prisoners whose innocence can be proven.

"Exoneration is a new area of law," Allison said. "We're working in an area that didn't exist before the '90s. Before then, courts ruled defendants were guilty or not guilty. They didn't have the ability to enter a finding of innocence."

The UT System's impressive growth in research expenditures "reflects the creativity and originality of the faculty," said Teresa Sullivan, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the System. "With more research funds, we're able to provide a richer environment for all of the students, especially our graduate students - because of the opportunity to participate in research."

With $1.54 billion in current research expenditures, the UT System isn't only creating a richer environment for its own students. William Allison, his colleagues and students are motivated to free an innocent person from prison. Gordon Mills and his researchers are seeking to make cancer a "manageable" disease. Farhad Kamangar and his colleagues are focusing on helping the disabled communicate better.

Across the UT System, these and other researchers are seeking to enhance others' lives. With funding increases, their odds of success - and society's - have gotten better.