RESEARCH OREGON 2006: FEATUREAlong the road to research excellence
Peter Kohler resigned his post as president of Oregon Health
& Science University in September. Before leaving office,
Kohler, who was one of the longest-standing presidents of a
medical center in the United States, took some time to talk to
Research Oregon about
the achievements of OHSU during his tenure and future
directions for Oregon research.
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The tram project has become a symbol for OHSU's expansion to Portland's South Waterfront district. Photo by Stuart Mullenberg |
As you look back over your 18-year tenure at OHSU, what are you
most proud of?
This has been a time of progressive change for the institution and it’s been accomplished by a lot of people working together to see things improve. When I started out here one of the first things I thought was really important was to improve our relationship with the rural areas. And my background lent itself to trying to stimulate the research growth that we’ve had here. I had a real advantage there in that my predecessor, Len Laster, got the Vollum Institute going. I use the term “seed pearl” for the Vollum and what it’s done for OHSU, building its national and international reputation. I was over at the laboratory for molecular biology at Cambridge about three years ago and they were talking about what was going on at the Vollum.
The dollar figure for
research funding went from $40 million when you started to $294
million for this year. That is pretty impressive.
I had hoped we’d hit $300 million before I retired. And
actually the way the National Institutes of Health (NIH) does
it, we may hit it yet, because they go through Sept. 30. They
have a new program for clinical research, a coordinated program
that we’re going to do with Kaiser and we’re going
to be one of the first six to be funded.
What will the program with
Kaiser look like?
We coordinate with them on clinical research projects. The
whole idea is to translate basic discoveries to the bedside
more quickly.
And what about the other
research initiatives at OHSU?
We have made pretty progressive growth in the research
programs. A lot of it has to do with building out new
facilities. You need to have places to put people — and
we are still in need of space. But now we can recruit people
who can be successful in bringing their grant money to OHSU. We
now get $37 million a year from the state. Compare that to our
research awards. Kind of a difference there. When I first
started, the amount of state support was greater than the
research funding — it will be a tenfold difference going
the other way before long.
Do you think the trajectory
for research funding will continue?
I do. I was part of the campaign to double the NIH budget over
five years. The population is aging. Congress is aging. They
want solutions to some of these problems that NIH can attack. I
also believe that our people are good enough — we
have in many ways the cream of the crop — so that
even when times are tight we should continue to get our share
of the funding.
What areas of research at
OSHU are the most exciting and growing the fastest?
There are several and if you name any of them, you run the
risk of leaving some out. But one of the very important recent
additions is the imaging facilities that we have here. We have
these MRI magnets that are world class. And we have a lot of
other exciting things. Our head of cardiology, for example, is
looking at diagnostic techniques using microbubbles. He’s
using them in ways that will be clinically very exciting in the
future. Gleevec [a cancer treatment] is our great discovery
here from Dr. Brian Drucker and we’re continuing to look
for examples like that in the cancer area. Our biggest programs
are in neuroscience and those are extremely strong.
Women’s health is very good. Our hearing center ranks No.
3 or 4 in the country in terms of funding. People want to see
scientific discoveries turned into things that will help them.
That’s what we hope to do here.
Is there a tension between
providing the care — especially to the rural areas
— and doing this cutting edge research?
Actually we have a bridging mechanism that was part of the
Oregon Opportunity. (By the way, two other landmarks —
becoming a public corporation and the Oregon Opportunity
— are two very important things for us.) Part of the
Oregon Opportunity, which was tobacco settlement money and $300
million in philanthropy to complement that, allowed us to
create a rural practice network: 26 practices around the state
that have a research component. That should enhance our ability
to quickly take these discoveries and test them where real-life
medicine is practiced. That has been a very successful
operation and we’ve been very proud of what goes on
there. I think it’s going to be a great example of making
research relevant to the rural areas.
Have you been involved at all
in the recruiting of new researchers who have come to OHSU
under the Oregon Opportunity?
Many of them.
How do you sell them on this
place and what preconceived notions do they have about
OHSU?
They see us as an institution on the rise. We’ve gone
from about
3 million square feet of space to about 6 million over the
last 20 years. They see a lot of exciting research come from
here and they see a very collaborative group of scientists at
OHSU and a pleasant place in which to live. So we don’t
have a lot of money, but we have a great environment in which
to do research. We’ve been very successful in recruiting
overall. We’ve got a lot of good people here and of
course they bring their money with them and that helps us too.
I think the quality of life here is attractive to many of the
scientists.
Is this perception of a
collaborative environment at OHSU something that you’ve
purposely fostered?
We don’t have that cutthroat intense type of competition
among our scientists that you do find some places. A lot of our
laboratories we’ve set up as a core lab to support things
going on here or at other institutions. There’s a lot of
interaction with Oregon State University, University of Oregon
and Portland State University.
Is there anything that you
didn’t get to during your tenure that you hope Dr.
Robertson will add to his list?
I had always wanted us to get to the very top echelon of
research universities. We are almost there.
How do you crack
that?
You need a marker. Part of it is reputation, and reputation
tends to trail performance by several years. But the easiest
way to measure this tends to be NIH grant support. From the
time I came here, I had hoped to get us into the top 20. Last
year, the medical school was 23rd in NIH grant support. Now
that we have some new buildings to put people in, it may be
this year or next year that we get into the top 20. It’s
very hard to move up in those rankings, but that kind of
movement helps our reputation and what we need to do now is
expand that so more people are aware of what’s going on
here. We almost go into that top group, but not quite. But I
think Dr. Robertson can take us there.
Those rankings can be so
important.
In the beginning it didn’t resonate that much with a lot
of the people here. There was this feeling that maybe
mediocrity is not so bad. But we were going for excellence and
I think that’s the attitude people have now, particularly
as they see progress.
The South Waterfront in
Portland development is emblematic of a lot of that progress
and OHSU’s growth. But the cost overruns of the tram and
some public opinion about the development have somewhat
tarnished the South Waterfront’s reputation. Is it
OHSU’s role to change people’s minds about that? Is
it important in your view?
I would like to change people’s minds. First of all, I
don’t think the cost overruns are our responsibility.
That’s the way it had to be done. The City of Portland
now has a process that will hopefully keep that from happening
again. Here we are building three buildings on time and on
budget. The tram is not. Now I grant you it’s a unique
transportation device, but there ought to have been a ceiling
on it as it was bid out. The tram shouldn’t have been the
bad-news story that it was. It’s going to be a very
valuable connection that allows us to move onto the waterfront.
It’s a far better way to move people than buses or cars.
I think it will prove its value, but I wish it hadn’t had
the bad news associated with it that it did.
What can OHSU do to speed
along a more positive perception?
You tell me. We’re asking ourselves that all the time.
There’s a feeling that most of the bad news is over
because the cost is set and the South Waterfront is continuing
to grow.
What does Oregon have to do
to recruit biomedical companies to come set up shop —
either at the South Waterfront or anywhere in the
state?
Coordinating all the activities better. The Genentech win was
good [Genentech will build a packaging facility in Hillsboro].
That’s starting out as packaging, but that’s sort
of the way Intel first got started, too. There will be a big
Genentech presence and it could lead to something more. There
are certainly other companies that are looking here. I’ve
gotten very involved recently with the Oregon Bioscience
Association — I’m going on their board and I may
even be chair — and I think OBA coordinating with the
city and the state and the Portland Development Commission can
do some of these recruitments. Right now, it’s getting
easier and easier to see that [South Waterfront] could be a
good place to be. Hillsboro also is going to be an attractive
site. We’re going to incubate some of our own little
companies out in Hillsboro on the OGI campus. And we’d
like to see another building come up on South Waterfront that
would be something we’re now calling an accelerator
— the term incubator is sort of passé — to
accelerate these spinoffs and provide a good setting with
sufficient support for these little companies to get started
successfully.
The merger of OGI and OHSU
brought engineering talent under the umbrella of a health and
science university. Do you think we’ve realized the full
potential of bringing those schools together?
Not yet. One of the big things that is happening now
— and it will be housed in the new Center for Health
and Healing building — is to get the biomedical
engineering program really up and running in its permanent
space. Getting them in that spot on the river and coordinating
with the other activities in that building will be very
important. That’s the big new program that came out of
the merger. The National Science Foundation-funded Center for
Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction that was announced
on Aug. 29 also came out of OGI. These are the kind of things
that can happen. Could they have happened without the merger?
Maybe. But I think they’re more likely now. The merger is
bearing fruit already and there is more to come.
Any new areas you can
mention?
We are looking at a retirement facility on the river close to
our Center for Health and Healing that would allow big IT
companies to test out devices that make living easier for
seniors. We have a relationship established with one already
through our geriatrics group.
In terms of collaboration,
you mentioned working with a large IT company. Do you find that
Oregon companies are generally willing to work with
OHSU?
It’s getting better and better. Companies can go
anywhere in the world and I think historically they tended to
do that. A lot of it is reputation. People are looking for the
best and sometimes if you don’t think the best is right
at home, you may look somewhere else. It’s the old joke
that the expert is the guy from out of town. The better we get,
the more they’re going to see what goes on here.
From your perspective, do you
think there’s a commitment to research excellence in
Oregon in general?
I believe there is now. There wasn’t 20 years ago, but I
do believe there is now. All the universities are part of it.
The ONAMI program is the kind of thing that’s very
exciting for the future. We have a proposal in for drug
discovery that we think will be exciting for the future. We
have a guy named Tom Scanlon coming to us from University of
California-San Francisco to head up a chemical biology program
that will be the synthetic part of discovery. If we had the
ability to make the drug that became Gleevec, the value of
Gleevec wouldn’t be where it is with Novartis now, it
would be with OHSU [Novartis developed the drug]. We’ll
not do that again. Scanlon is very interested is drug
discovery. He’s pretty entrepreneurial as are a lot of
our faculty now. We haven’t had that historically. Nor
have we had as much venture capital as the Bay Area or San
Diego or even Seattle has. What we need to do is attract the
interest of more venture capital people and have more
management training available for people to lead these little
companies.
Has a lack of that training
been a problem?
We had a very exciting possible drug and hired a guy from the
Bay Area to be president of the company. And what he did
ultimately, when they went through a round of funding, was to
move it the Bay Area. Our goal is to keep these things in
Oregon, not to populate the Bay Area with more companies. But
this was after the big bust and there was a lot of lab space
and the people with the money were down there and they like
keeping a close eye on what’s going on.
What can OHSU do to attract
more venture capital here?
Showcase our programs and make sure we handle technology
transfer well.
Is there room for improvement
in OHSU’s technology transfer program?
We’re making progress but we will continue working on
how to do that better.
Are there areas of research
that Oregon can really make a play to own or to have a
leadership position in, either at OHSU or beyond?
I keep thinking the organic food craze is something for OSU
more than OSHU, though there’s certainly a health aspect
to that. That seems to be a trend right now and it’s
interesting to me that genetic engineering is so hard for
people to accept. Research to see what can be done safely to
enhance quality of life really fits in with Oregon values and
we have a big role on that on the health side. And I come back
to the aging population: What can we do to help older people to
live better and healthier lives? That kind of research makes a
great deal of sense for the future. And it has a clinical
component to it but it certainly could be a place where the
engineering will show the value.
Have an opinion? E-mail feedback@oregonbusiness.com
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