Planning for great year
New Year's Resolutions for OMRF

From the January 12, 2009 edition of The Oklahoman
By Stephen Prescott, M.D.

My New Year’s resolution: Lower my golf handicap and reach Pilates level V.

My New Year’s resolution for the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: Deliver another 52 weeks like the ones we enjoyed in 2008.

Dr. JordanTang kicked off 2008 with a bang when an Alzheimer’s drug based on his discoveries at OMRF successfully completed human clinical trials, reducing the levels of the enzyme believed to cause Alzheimer’s by as much as 60 percent. Later in the year, the drug (known as CTS-21166) passed a second safety trial.

Based on these results, CTS-21166 will begin the second phase of human testing in 2009. With each stage we reach, the odds become better that this drug will reach the market — and offer the first real hope in battling a disease that robs too many of their memories, minds and, ultimately, their lives.

On the cancer front, OMRF made significant strides toward developing a treatment for glioblastoma, the brain cancer that took the life of Oklahoma baseball great Bobby Murcer and now afflicts Sen. Edward Kennedy. Working with an experimental compound, Drs. Robert Floyd and Rheal Towner have found that, in rodents, the drug significantly shrinks the tumors.

If the drug works the same way in humans, it would extend lives. And if it works really well, it might suppress the tumors indefinitely.

The compound has already been tested for safety in people, and it’s been found to be safe. The next step will be to initiate human trials for efficacy, something we hope to begin later this year.

Working with state-of-the-art imaging technologies, Drs. Philip Silverman and Margaret Clarke obtained the first visual evidence of a key step in how deadly superbugs spread antibiotic resistance. That work will help develop tools to combat a health threat responsible for an estimated 20,000 deaths in the United States each year.

OMRF scientists also made crucial breakthroughs in finding the genetic roots of autoimmune diseases such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile diabetes. They found new approaches for combating hearing loss. They developed a novel method for producing disease-fighting antibodies that could be a game-changer in creating new treatments for influenza, pneumonia, anthrax and hepatitis C.

Let’s be clear: These discoveries are not cures. But they are major steps forward in the never-ending race against human disease. And all were made possible by the generous support of Oklahomans.

To that end, we pride ourselves on being responsible stewards of the donations we receive. In 2008, OMRF once again earned a four-star ranking from Charity Navigator, marking the sixth consecutive year we’ve received the highest possible rating for fiscal responsibility from the nation’s largest charity ranking service.

Science is serendipitous, so I cannot predict the breakthroughs that lie ahead in 2009. But I can assure you that OMRF will continue to probe the mysteries of human disease. And if the past is any indicator, that work undoubtedly will lead to more effective treatments for deadly illnesses that affect Oklahomans and people everywhere.

Prescott is president of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.

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