MAY / JUNE 2006
FEATURES
New foundation to spur research opportunities for Gulf Region scientists
Gulf Region scientists seeking to advance their careers will have new incentives to look to Dubai for those opportunities, as a result of the establishment of the <"a href="http://www.dhfmr.hms.harvard.edu" target="_blank">Dubai Harvard Foundation for Medical Research (DHFMR). The Foundation will focus on developing scientific leaders who will build a life sciences research infrastructure in the region. Ultimately the Foundation’s leadership hope that its program will help lead to groundbreaking discoveries that change the way medicine is practiced not only in Dubai and Gulf Region, but throughout the world.
The Foundation represents the third pillar of Dubai Healthcare City’s (DHCC) vision to become a globally recognized center of excellence for health care delivery, medical education, and research. Through its strategic collaboration with HMI, the emirate has already made significant progress in advancing these objectives. DHCC has attracted world-class health care organizations to its growing community, and made an indelible mark on health care quality in the Gulf Region. The Harvard Medical School Dubai Center (HMSDC) Institute for Postgraduate Education and Research, launched in 2004, has provided numerous opportunities for physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals to develop their skills and knowledge.
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Founder Members join President Lawrence Summers to visit His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Al Rashid bin Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai, also a Founder Member, at the Zabeel Palace, Dubai, Monday, March 27th. From left to right: Founder Members Abdulrahman Falaknaz, Hind Bahwan (representing her father, Suhail Bahwan), Ali S. Al-Shehri, and HH Sheikh Mohammed; President Summers, Ruth & Pamela Summers, and Dr. Joseph Martin, Dean of Harvard Medical School; and Founder Member Abdulaziz Al-Ghurair. Not present: Founder Members HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Saeed Al-Fahim. |
The formal launch of the Foundation was commemorated by two days of events in Dubai. A scientific symposium provided local faculty and scientists with an overview of the kinds of cutting-edge research that the Foundation will enable. On the second day, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, United Arab Emirates Vice-President and Prime Minister, and Ruler of Dubai, hosted a meeting with Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed’s pledge of $13.6 million has helped to launch a major fundraising effort with the goal of creating an endowment fund to support the Foundation’s programs.
Also present were the Founder Members—the Foundation’s first donors—including Abdulrahman Falaknaz, Hind Bahwan (representing her father, Suhail Bahwan), Ali S. Al-Shehri, and Abdulaziz Al-Ghurair. Summers was the keynote speaker at a luncheon to honor the Founder Members and talk about the future of scientific research in the region. Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, head of the Kingdom Holding Company in Saudi Arabia, has pledged an additional $5 million, but was unable to attend the luncheon.
“The Dubai Harvard Foundation for Medical Research offers philanthropists in the Gulf Region the opportunity to create positive and sustainable change by investing in its human capital,” said Summers. “I am confident that the partnership between Harvard and Dubai, and the region’s participation in the Foundation’s efforts, will foster a fertile environment for scientific discovery and academic progress.”
The Foundation will establish both Dubai Harvard Foundation Centers of research and collaborative research programs that enable scientists in the Gulf Region both to build regional programs and to participate in state-of-the-art research at world renowned research institutions, including Harvard Medical School. The Foundation’s programs will be implemented through Harvard Medical School in Boston and the Harvard Medical School Dubai Center Institute for Postgraduate Education and Research (HMSDC).
His Excellency Humaid Mohammad Obaid Al Qutami, the UAE Minister of Health, opened the proceedings at the launch, and praised the efforts by Harvard and the UAE to create a sustainable community of physicians, scientists, and students and to make health care of the highest international standard available to the people of this region. “The goal is to build the Gulf Region’s prominence as an international center for scientific inquiry and discovery,” he said.
Joseph B. Martin, MD, PhD, dean of Harvard Medical School, said that the contributions of the Founder Members are part of a long tradition of philanthropy in health care and medical education, of which Harvard Medical School is a noteworthy example. In 1906, leading philanthropists of the time helped pave the way for the construction and development of the modern HMS quadrangle, the core buildings that still house Harvard Medical School today.
“The benefactors who helped to usher Harvard Medical School into the modern era saw in the school an opportunity to do some lasting and pervasive good. A similar opportunity exists in Dubai, and I have been privileged to meet many people here who are eager to participate,” said Martin.
Membership in the Foundation offers philanthropists the opportunity to drive biomedical research in a number of critical disease areas, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurological disease.
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From left to right: HMS faculty members Peter Howley, Eugene Braunwald, Nancy Andrews, Joseph Martin, and Mohammed Sayegh at the symposium “Today’s Science, Tomorrow’s Cures.” |
Robert L. Thurer, MD, chief academic officer of HMSDC and executive director of the Foundation, said that although the Foundation’s programs are open to all comers, he anticipates that it will become a vehicle for attracting locals who would otherwise seek opportunities elsewhere. “We are looking for people who will return to the Gulf in order to continue their careers, and we hope that most of these people will be from the Gulf. We want them to develop science here in the region,” he said.
This is good news for people like Ali Hilal, a 29-year-old scientist from the United Arab Emirates who looked to the United Kingdom and U.S. when confronted with the lack of opportunity right at home for Gulf Region scientists. “I am very happy and glad to hear about the Dubai Harvard Foundation. I think it will help to sustain medical education and create scholarship and fellowship programs like the one I am going to at Harvard,” he said. “Here in the UAE, we are just consumers of medical research. But why can’t we be producers of this kind of research? Why can’t we work towards creating a bioartificial liver here? Or creating methods of testing, or of solving a mathematical problem? We could be producing knowledge that would be for the benefit of humanity.”
Copyright 2006 Harvard Medical International
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Pioneering cardiologist Eugene Braunwald |
In the past decade, the image of the lone scientist, hunched over his microscope on the hunt for a cure to disease, has had to accommodate a second image, one of a team working together toward that cure. Today scientists and physicians collaborate across disciplines, specialties, and between institutes in pursuit of new therapies and techniques aimed at speeding up the process of taking bench research and converting it into an advance in medicine at the patient bedside. This approach, known as translational research, is at the core of the research initiatives that will be supported by the Dubai Harvard Foundation for Medical Research. Harvard and Dubai marked the Foundation’s launch with a scientific symposium entitled “Today’s Science, Tomorrow’s Cures,” featuring top scientists from Harvard Medical School. The symposium’s title reflects the role of translational research in taking new knowledge from the laboratory and translating it into drug discovery, clinical trials, and ultimately, clinical practice.
“Translational research strives to understand the basic mechanisms of disease, and then apply that understanding to the design and development of real-life medical solutions. Current treatments in many disease areas tackle only the symptoms. Translational research seeks cures that strike at the cause of the disease,” said Joseph B. Martin, MD, PhD, dean of Harvard Medical School and professor of neurobiology and neuroscience. “This kind of undertaking requires that basic scientists and clinical investigators work shoulder to shoulder, sharing sophisticated equipment and techniques in order to speed the process from discovery to clinical application.
Among the featured speakers at the symposia were leading scientists whose research seeks to create a paradigm shift in the way a disease is managed. The group included Peter Howley, MD, head of Harvard’s Department of Pathology, who is part of a group of scientists who are attempting to translate their understanding of how cancerous cells gain a foothold in the body into the development of a new anti-viral vaccine. This work is leading to new therapies which may ultimately prevent lethal forms of cervical cancer. Similarly, the research efforts of Mohammed Sayegh, MD, who directs the Transplant Research Center, a joint collaboration of Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital, seek to capitalize on the study of the body’s immune system to improve the success of organ transplantation.
Nancy Andrews, MD, PhD, dean of basic science and graduate studies at HMS, presented a capsule of some of the important discoveries that have emerged in HMS laboratories in just one month. And Eugene Braunwald, MD, one of the world’s most accomplished cardiologists, gave an inspiring presentation that traced the advances in knowledge and practice in cardiology in previous decades, and looked forward to new discoveries on the horizon.
Robert L. Thurer, executive director of the Foundation and chief academic officer of HMSDC, said, “The scientific research presented at this symposium provided a glimpse of the kinds of collaborative research initiatives that we hope to stimulate and support through the Dubai Harvard Foundation for Medical Research. We have the opportunity to bring scientists from the Gulf Region into interconnected teams of researchers pursuing new knowledge that will have a significant global impact on medicine.”