University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern or UTSW) is a

UT Southwestern in Dallas has the largest medical residency program in the United States.^[8] In 2016, UT Southwestern began providing additional care through Southwestern Health Resources, a network combining the systems of Texas Health Resources and UT Southwestern. The network comprises 31 hospitals, 300 clinics, and more than 3,000 physicians and caregivers.^[9]

History

Establishment

Under the leadership of Edward H. Cary and Karl Hoblitzelle, a group of Dallas citizens organized Southwestern Medical Foundation in 1939 to promote medical education and research in Dallas and the region. When Baylor University moved its school of medicine from Dallas to Houston in 1943, the foundation formally established Southwestern Medical College as the 68th medical school in the United States. Founded during World War II, the medical school was initially housed in a handful of abandoned barracks.

Affiliation with University of Texas

When a new state medical school was proposed after World War II, leaders of Southwestern Medical Foundation offered the college's equipment, library, and certain restricted funds to the University of Texas System, provided the university would locate its new medical branch in Dallas. The Board of Regents accepted this offer, and in 1949 the college became Southwestern Medical School of The University of Texas. In 1954 the name was changed to The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. The present campus site on Harry Hines Boulevard was occupied in 1955 upon the completion of the Edward H. Cary Building. This placed the medical school faculty next to the then-newly built Parkland Memorial Hospital.

In November 1972 the name and scope of the medical school were changed with its reorganization into The University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas. This provided for coordinated but separate medical, graduate, and undergraduate components.

Addition of Howard Hughes Medical Institute

In 1986 the Howard Hughes Medical Institute opened a research facility on the campus. Its investigators also hold faculty positions in the basic science departments of the Medical School and Graduate School.

Name change

In October 1987 the UT System

Since the late 1960s the university has added more than 6 million square feet of new construction. The 60-acre South Campus includes 20 buildings housing classrooms, laboratories, offices, the extensive

Also in 2008, UT Southwestern acquired the Exchange Park site and renamed it the Paul M. Bass Administrative and Clinical Center on the North Campus. The center was named in honor of Mr. Bass, chairman emeritus of the Southwestern Medical Foundation, who served in that role until 2008. With this property, the campus grew to 9 million square feet of laboratory, clinical, educational, and administrative space, covering 387 acres.

In 2009, the $186 million Biomedical Research Building (NL Building on the North Campus) opened. The building is the largest LEED (

Major affiliations:

• Parkland Memorial Hospital (The primary teaching institution of UT Southwestern, whose faculty is responsible for caring for the hospital's patients, this 2.1 million-square-foot acute care facility has 882 single-patient rooms, and more than 1 million patient visits each year).
• Children's Medical Center Dallas (The primary pediatric teaching hospital for UT Southwestern, this hospital is licensed for 490 beds, has more than 50 pediatric specialty programs, and is the only pediatric hospital in North Texas with a designated Level 1 trauma center).

  

• William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital (Opened in December 2014 and was expanded in December 2020 as the centerpiece of UT Southwestern's main campus. Together with the hospital's Zale Lipshy Pavilion, the 875-bed facility includes 124 adult ICU rooms, 63 emergency treatment rooms, 56 operating rooms, 42 inpatient rehab beds, 30 neonatal ICU rooms, 30 women's services suites, 23 inpatient psychiatric beds, 15 infusion rooms, and two nuclear medicine rooms, and it is a Joint Commission-certified advanced comprehensive stroke center).
• Dallas Veteran Affairs Medical Center (The
  U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
  ’ second largest health care system, it serves 38 Texas counties and two counties in southern Oklahoma, providing primary, tertiary, and long-term care. The 822-bed system has a Spinal Cord Injury Center, Domiciliary Care Program, and Community Living Center with a dedicated hospice unit).
• Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas (Part of the Texas Health Resources (THR) system, this 888-bed, acute-care facility was the first hospital in Dallas to receive Cycle IV Chest Pain accreditation from the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care, and it is also accredited for emergency stroke care by The Joint Commission. In 2016, UT Southwestern and THR launched a clinically integrated health care network, Southwestern Health Resources to provide increased access to primary and specialized care to North Texas residents, from preventive measures to advanced interventions).
• Richardson Regional Medical Center
• Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children
• John Peter Smith Hospital of Fort Worth

Clinical services

Annual patient visits to the Medical Center's clinics average 400,000 a year, up from 50,000 annually 15 years ago. This includes affiliated patient care facilities such as the UT Southwestern University Hospitals.

The Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center.^[16]

UT Southwestern is an Advanced Comprehensive Stroke Center, the highest level of certification. It is the only Joint Commission-certified Advanced Comprehensive Stroke Center in North Texas, one of only three in Texas.

UT Southwestern is home to an NIH Alzheimer's Disease Center and is a Network of Excellence in Neuroscience Clinical Trials Center.

The Doris and Harry W. Bass Jr. Clinical Center for Heart, Lung, and Vascular Disease is a collaborative effort between UT Southwestern faculty and community physicians.

The center's transplantation programs for heart, lung, kidney, and liver have been certified by the federal government's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Academics

UT Southwestern is governed by the UT System

The Medical School's curriculum emphasizes clinical experience and electives from the first year on. The curriculum comprises three periods:

• Pre-Clerkship
• Clerkship
• Post-Clerkship

The UTSW curriculum focuses on providing a foundation in

• M.D./
  biomedical science
  , leading to the Ph.D., along with clinical studies, leading to the M.D.)
• M.D./
  UT Dallas focuses on giving future physicians the skills for integrating medicine and business
  )
• M.D./
  university degree
  in each field at the end of their four-year M.D. program)
• M.D./M.S. (In Clinical Science. This program combines didactic training with a mentored clinical research project. The program concludes with submission and defense of a
  master's thesis
  )

With an enrollment of more than 1,000

About 340 students are enrolled in UT Southwestern's School of Health Professions. The school confers a doctoral professional degree in Physical Therapy and master's degrees in Clinical Nutrition, Physician Assistant Studies, Prosthetics-Orthotics, and Rehabilitation Counseling. The school also has a baccalaureate certificate program in Radiation Therapy.

The

The Peter O'Donnell Jr. School of Public Health is UT Southwestern's newest school. The school was established in 2022.[19]

Rankings

Leadership programs

UT Southwestern Medical Center is one of seven health systems in the United States being recognized for its leadership development initiatives to internal employees.^[33]

Library

The Health Sciences Digital Library and Learning Center supports the information needs of UT Southwestern's research, educational, and clinical activities. The Library and Learning Center maintains a large collection of electronic information resources, print archives,

UT Southwestern had a total

In 2011, the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) was established as a joint venture between Children's Health System of Texas and UTSW.^[36] Located on the UTSW campus, CRI is home to an interdisciplinary group of scientists and physicians pursuing research in regenerative medicine, cancer biology and metabolism.

UT Southwestern established the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine in 2014 for research on fundamental mechanisms of tissue formation and repair, and to develop transformative strategies and

Research at UTSW's Texas Institute for Brain Injury and Repair focuses on brain injuries and conditions, including traumatic

Other research currently underway at UT Southwestern includes studies on:

• Aging and
  Alzheimer's (Steven McKnight and colleagues identified a compound (P7C3) and demonstrated that it preserves newly created brain cells and boosts learning and memory
  . The study has led to further investigations into the mechanism by which P7C3 protects cells from dying and whether the compound might have any protective effect for various neurodegenerative diseases).
• tumor
  with the best current therapies).
• Stem Cells (A team led by Sean J. Morrison at CRI has identified the environment in which blood-forming stem cells
  survive and thrive within the body, an important step toward increasing the safety and effectiveness of bone marrow transplantation).
• heart attack
  . Olson's lab has also used CRISPR/Cas9 methods to cure Duchenne muscular dystrophy in mice as a proof of principle for human gene therapy).
• Cholesterol (UT Southwestern researchers have identified nearly 30 disease-causing genes, including in 1983 the gene responsible for familial hypercholesterolemia, an inherited condition that causes extremely high levels of cholesterol and heart attacks at an early age. That discovery by Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein contributed to the pair winning the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research uncovering the underlying mechanisms of cholesterol metabolism).
• Diabetes/Obesity (Philipp Scherer's discovery of adiponectin, a hormone produced by fat, has helped transform the scientific concept of fat as an inert storage depot to that of an endocrine “organ” that exerts control over multiple organs. His studies have revealed adiponectin's potent anti-diabetes effects of blocking glucose production in the liver and improving insulin sensitivity in muscle. Because adiponectin levels fall as fat levels rise, drugs that increase adiponectin may be effective in fighting diabetes and other obesity-related diseases).
• Human Genetics (Helen Hobbs and Jonathan Cohen are among the world's leading experts on the genetic factors associated with lipid disorders. Their work, for which Hobbs received the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
  , has led to the development of a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs, PCSK9 antibodies, for patients who do not tolerate or respond adequately to statins).
• Innate Immunity (Scientists led by Zhijian “James” Chen are exploring the mechanisms of signal transduction, namely how a cell communicates with its surroundings and within itself. They are focused on investigating how a cell detects harmful or foreign threats and mounts an appropriate response to restore homeostasis. Chen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, for work including the cytoplasmic DNA sensor cGAS and its product cGAMP, a novel cyclic dinucleotide second messenger involved in innate immune response. Bruce Beutler received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
  for his discovery that the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is the membrane-spanning component of the mammalian lipopolysaccharide receptor complex that senses microbial infection and triggers septic shock. Beutler continues to identify components of the mammalian immune system through large-scale mouse mutagenesis screens conducted in the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense, which he leads).

Seven UT Southwestern alumni or faculty members have been awarded

• Michael Stuart Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein, in 1985, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the basic mechanism of cholesterol metabolism. Goldstein is Chairman of Molecular Genetics at UT Southwestern, and Brown directs the Erik Jonsson Center for Research in Molecular Genetics and Human Disease
• Johann Deisenhofer, Professor of Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at UT Southwestern, shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for using X-ray crystallography to describe the structure of a protein involved in photosynthesis
• Alfred G. Gilman shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of G proteins and the role they play in the complex processes by which cells communicate with each other. Gilman, a Regental Professor Emeritus who died in December 2015, was Dean of UT Southwestern Medical School
• innate immunity
• Thomas C. Südhof, Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience and former chair of the department at UT Southwestern, shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with two other scientists for discoveries about cellular transport systems. Südhof, now at Stanford University School of Medicine, was recognized for his pioneering work at UT Southwestern on synaptic transmission^[14]
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an Affiliate Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington

Faculty

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2024)

• Robert Lenkinski, Professor in Medical Science at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.^[37]

Alumni

• Jim C. Barnett (M.D. 1949) (deceased 2013), Member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1992 to 2008^[16]
• Linda B. Buck, (Ph.D. 1980) 2004 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine for work on olfactory receptors, currently an HHMI investigator at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
• Robert Cade, (M.D. 1954) (deceased 2007) professor of medicine and nephrology at the University of Florida, formulated Gatorade
• Daniel W. Foster, (M.D. 1955) (deceased 2018) UTSW chairman department of medicine, holder of the UTSW John Denis McGarry, Ph.D., Distinguished Chair in Diabetes and Metabolic Research
• Richard Gaynor, MD specializing in hematology-oncology, educator, drug developer, and business executive.
• United States Assistant Secretary for Health and admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
• Joseph L. Goldstein, (M.D. 1966) currently Chairman of the Department of Molecular Genetics at UTSW
• Malcolm Perry, (M.D. 1955) (deceased 2009) while a surgery resident attended to John F. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital on November 22, 1963, chief of vascular surgery New York-Cornell Hospital 1978 to 1988, professor of surgery Texas Tech University, professor emeritus UTSW
• Stuart Spitzer (M.D. 1971?), incoming Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 4
• Richard Warshak, (Ph.D. 1978) clinical and research psychologist; expert in divorce, child custody, and parental alienation; served as a White House consultant on family law reform
• Xiaodong Wang (Ph.D.), biomedical researcher, member of the National Academy of Science 2004, Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine 2006, Director National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing
• Kern Wildenthal (M.D. 1964) president of the Children's Medical Center Foundation in Dallas, President Emeritus and Professor of Medicine Emeritus UTSW, president UTSW 1986–2008

Notes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

• Official website