Every medical breakthrough begins with a question.
Why does one treatment work for one patient but not another? Can doctors identify disease earlier? Could a better understanding of pregnancy improve a child's health decades later? What can biological samples collected today teach researchers about treatments that have not yet been developed?
Behind laboratory doors throughout Loma Linda University, researchers spend their careers pursuing questions like these. Their work is rarely as visible to the public as a new hospital building or a lifesaving surgery, yet research provides the foundation on which many of tomorrow's treatments will eventually be built.
On August 30, Loma Linda University Health will give the community an unusual opportunity to step closer to that world.
The institution will hold its first annual Evening of Discovery, a special event celebrating 120 years of advancing health through research while introducing supporters, community leaders and healthcare professionals to some of the scientific work underway today. The event is scheduled from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Wong Kerlee International Conference Center, 11175 Campus Street in Loma Linda.
Rather than simply presenting research from a stage, the evening will offer participants opportunities to see how discovery happens.
One tour will take guests inside the Translational Research and Clinical Center, where Camie Neece, PhD, of the School of Behavioral Health will introduce research intended to improve outcomes for children and families. Visitors will see the research environment and learn how behavioral studies and interventions can be translated into meaningful changes in people's lives.
Another experience will bring visitors into the Perinatal Biology Research Lab at the Lawrence D. Longo Center for Perinatal Biology. Led by Sonnet Jonker, PhD, the interactive tour will include learning stations, research equipment and demonstrations while explaining how scientists study pregnancy, fetal development and their connections to lifelong health.
A third tour will explore a part of medical research many people may never have considered: biospecimens.
Under the direction of Hisham Abdel-Azim, MD, of the Children's Cancer Center, guests will visit the Biospecimen Laboratory to learn how biological samples are collected, preserved and used in research. Carefully maintained samples can give scientists valuable material for investigating disease, evaluating potential treatments and pursuing questions that may not even have been imagined when a specimen was originally collected.
For Loma Linda, the event is also an opportunity to tell a much larger story.
Research was not always a central part of the institution that eventually became Loma Linda University. During its earliest years, leaders were consumed with the enormous task of establishing educational programs in nursing, medicine and dietetics and ensuring the young medical school could survive. The university's own history describes the period from 1906 to 1922 as its "pre-research era."
As the institution matured, that began to change.
Faculty members increasingly recognized that a university devoted to teaching medicine could also contribute to the knowledge physicians were being taught. Research societies formed, faculty members pursued scientific questions despite limited resources, and eventually specialized research programs and centers began taking shape.
The results would help place Loma Linda on the international medical map.
In 1984, years of laboratory and surgical research preceded Leonard Bailey, MD's historic infant heart transplant work. In 1990, James Slater, MD, helped establish the world's first hospital-based proton treatment center, bringing a new approach to cancer treatment into a clinical hospital setting. Those achievements were not isolated moments. They grew from years of experimentation, collaboration and researchers willing to pursue ideas whose outcomes were far from guaranteed.
Today, that research environment is dramatically larger.
Loma Linda University reports approximately 2,000 researchers, $85 million in extramural awards and 695 peer-reviewed publications. The university also identifies itself as a Carnegie R2 high-research-activity institution focused on healthcare and life sciences. Students participate directly in research involving subjects ranging from chronic pain and pediatric leukemia to autism, oral cancer, stroke, nursing care and global public health.