Nov. 20, 2015
MEDICAL UNIVERSITY of SOUTH CAROLINA
Vol. 34, No. 12
New research and development center will fast-track innovations By J. RyNe DANIelsoN Public Relations For doctors, losing a patient is one of the hardest parts of the job. Most deal with their grief privately, striving to maintain some semblance of a clinical detachment or by throwing themselves into caring for their other patients. Every doctor does his or her best to learn from the experience and to better care for patients in the future. All doctors wish they could do more. Not all doctors use their experience to transform health care for the benefit of all patients. But, then, not just any doctor is Sunil Patel, M.D., chairman of MUSC’s Department of Neurosurgery, who founded the Zucker Institute for Applied Neurosciences to do just that. On Nov. 18, MUSC formally dedicated the Zucker Institute for Applied Neurosciences (ZIAN), which grew out of the patient–care experience between Patel and the late Jerry Zucker, a Charleston inventor and businessman. Patel met Zucker, who would soon become his patient, in 2006. Zucker approached Patel looking for help with a family member who had suffered a spinal cord injury in a fall. “By the time I met Jerry, he had already become quite knowledgeable about spinal cord injuries,” Patel said. “I was amazed that someone from the business world had acquired so much medical knowledge so quickly.” Patel took the initiative, organizing a symposium in Atlanta on spinal cord
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injuries. But, both men quickly grew frustrated with the failure of medical research to produce tangible innovations in patient care. This feeling only grew when Zucker himself was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2007. “Thankfully, we already had such a wonderful relationship with Dr. Patel,” said Zucker’s son, Jonathan. Faced with the prospect of knowing he was going to die, yet not being able to try potentially life–saving technologies, Zucker saw the need for a closer link between research and patient care. Patel agreed. “Jerry was very frustrated with health care,” Patel said. “He saw a lot of dollars going into research but very little coming out, at least at a pace that satisfied him. This was a man who spent much of his life taking scientific discoveries and applying them very quickly to improve lives. He wanted results.” “My father wanted not just translational research, but transformational – being able to transform not just patient lives, but to transform institutions like the Medical University,” Jonathan Zucker said. When Zucker died in 2007, his wife Anita met with Patel to talk about ways they could work together to treat neurological diseases like the one that claimed her husband’s life. That discussion led to the family’s decision to fund Patel’s institute in memory of Jerry Zucker. “In Judaism it is said, if you save one
iH NSurANcE cHANgES EAltHliNkS Studentpatients volunteers connect patients MUSC affected and families to community resources. LIKE US
photos by Anne Thompson, Digital Imaging
Lauren Zucker, from left, with her husband Jonathan Zucker, Anita Zucker, Dr. Sunil Patel, and MUSC President David Cole.
President Cole spoke at an event honoring the Zucker family, whose philanthropy has been instrumental in making ZIAN a reality, he said. ZIAN is a research and development institute aimed at fast-tracking the creation of new medical treatments and devices.
See ZIAN on page 11
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