Monthly Archives: September 2013

How Personalized Will Medicine Get?

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Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Predicting The Future.

About Nina Tandon's TEDTalk

Wouldn't you rather test to see if those cancer drugs you're going to take are going to work on your cancer?

- Nina Tandon

Call it extremely personalized medicine. Tissue engineer Nina Tandon explains how in the future, we'll be able to grow replacement organs from our very own cells. In the future, that same technology will help develop custom designed drugs.

About Nina Tandon

Nina Tandon studies ways to use electrical signals to grow artificial tissues for transplants and other therapies, with the goal of creating "spare parts" for human implantation and disease models. After receiving a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cooper Union, Tandon worked on an electronic nose used to "smell" lung cancer as a Fulbright scholar in Rome. She studied electrical stimulation for cardiac tissue engineering at MIT and Columbia, and now continues her research on electrical stimulation for broader tissue-engineering applications. Tandon was a 2011 TED Fellow and a 2012 Senior Fellow.

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How Personalized Will Medicine Get?

Valley medical school progress ‘reason to celebrate'

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BROWNSVILLE Graduation ceremonies are just six years away for the first class of students from the Rio Grande Valley's long-awaited medical school, University of Texas Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa pledged Friday.

The year 2018 will be a very special year for all of us, Cigarroa said at a news conference at UT-Pan American in Edinburg, site of the medical research component of what's currently the three-campus Regional Academic Health Center.

As has been the case for hundreds of students since the gala opening of the RAHC in Harlingen in 2002, future doctors will spend their first two academic years at the University of Texas Health Science Center and third and fourth years completing clinical training in the Valley.

The key difference is that students will, from the outset, have applied to a dedicated South Texas admission track. Hopes are high their diplomas will carry the UTHSC-South Texas name.

While key questions remain, such as accreditation and funding for the estimated $40 million to $50 million in annual expenses, Cigarroa said by then the RAHC will have become a more independent entity.

We are beginning the transition of the UT Health Science Center-San Antonio Regional Academic Health Center known as the RAHC into an independent, free-standing, comprehensive and research-intensive regional medical school, with its own president and structure for South Texas, he said.

Plans for a full-fledged medical school for the Rio Grande Valley have been in the works since the early 1990s, when state Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, began documenting how the Valley's fast-growing and historically underserved region needed to better recruit physicians likely to commit to the area.

In addition to previous infrastructure investments by the Texas Legislature and UT System, the Legislature contributes about $11 million annually to support the RAHC's medical and research divisions. In 2011, UT regents invested an additional $30 million for faculty recruitment, a clinical simulation facility, programs in obesity and diabetes, and education in the sciences. In May, the regents endorsed new medical schools for Austin and South Texas.

By committing to graduating students by 2018, UT has given everyone in South Texas reason to celebrate, Lucio said Friday.

I do see a lot of light at the end of the tunnel, he said. For the first time, I feel confident we can accomplish our goals in the next five years.

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Valley medical school progress ‘reason to celebrate'

Valley medical school progress hailed

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BROWNSVILLE Graduation ceremonies are just six years away for the first class of students from the Rio Grande Valley's long-awaited medical school, University of Texas Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa pledged Friday.

The year 2018 will be a very special year for all of us, Cigarroa said at a news conference at UT-Pan American in Edinburg, site of the medical research component of what's currently the three-campus Regional Academic Health Center.

As has been the case for hundreds of students since the gala opening of the RAHC in Harlingen in 2002, future doctors will spend their first two academic years at the University of Texas Health Science Center and third and fourth years completing clinical training in the Valley.

The key difference is that students will, from the outset, have applied to a dedicated South Texas admission track. Hopes are high their diplomas will carry the UTHSC-South Texas name.

While key questions remain, such as accreditation and funding for the estimated $40 million to $50 million in annual expenses, Cigarroa said by then the RAHC will have become a more independent entity.

We are beginning the transition of the UT Health Science Center-San Antonio Regional Academic Health Center known as the RAHC into an independent, free-standing, comprehensive and research-intensive regional medical school, with its own president and structure for South Texas, he said.

Plans for a full-fledged medical school for the Rio Grande Valley have been in the works since the early 1990s, when state Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, began documenting how the Valley's fast-growing and historically underserved region needed to better recruit physicians likely to commit to the area.

In addition to previous infrastructure investments by the Texas Legislature and UT System, the Legislature contributes about $11 million annually to support the RAHC's medical and research divisions. In 2011, UT regents invested an additional $30 million for faculty recruitment, a clinical simulation facility, programs in obesity and diabetes, and education in the sciences. In May, the regents endorsed new medical schools for Austin and South Texas.

By committing to graduating students by 2018, UT has given everyone in South Texas reason to celebrate, Lucio said Friday.

I do see a lot of light at the end of the tunnel, he said. For the first time, I feel confident we can accomplish our goals in the next five years.

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Valley medical school progress hailed