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Do IT this week: Layering
Founder of MIT center to be the first president of medical partnership
By Cheryl Powell
Beacon Journal medical writer
Published on Thursday, Aug 27, 2009
The founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center of Biomedical Innovation has been hired to boost the Akron region's medical research and development.
The BioInnovation Institute in Akron announced on Wednesday that it has selected Dr. Frank L. Douglas to serve as the group's first president and chief executive.
The initiative is a partnership launched last year by Akron Children's Hospital, Akron General Health System, Summa Health System, the University of Akron and the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.
In a telephone interview from Zurich, Switzerland, Douglas said on Wednesday that he was drawn to the Akron job by the rare level of collaboration he saw among the hospitals, universities, philanthropic organizations, the city and the county.
''What is being attempted here is really the Mount Everest of medicine,'' Douglas said. ''For me to be part of this is a privilege. It's not often you get a chance to participate in some
thing that is so profoundly important and transformational.''
Douglas, 66, officially joins the institute on Sept. 1.
The BioInnovation Institute's administrative offices temporarily will be housed on a floor of the United building, located at Market and Main streets in downtown Akron.
The institute was formed by the partners to attract more research dollars and spawn new biomedical companies by working together on medical education and research.
The initiative pulls together the university's polymer science research knowledge, the medical college's musculoskeletal expertise and the three hospitals' strengths in orthopedics.
Within a decade, the Akron-area partnership wants to create 2,400 new jobs and attract at least $50 million worth of investments annually in area health-care companies.
Douglas brings vast experience in the medical and pharmaceutical industry and numerous awards to the partnership.
He has served in executive and advisory roles at several pharmaceutical companies, including Aventis and Bayer Healthcare.
During his career, he led the discovery, development, market introduction or management of more than 20 drugs, including allergy medication Allegra and osteoporosis drug Actonel, according to a biography posted online by the Associated Black Charities after he won the national 2007 Black History Makers Award.
He also has served on advisory boards for the World Health Organization and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
''He has a track record that shows enormous success in terms of dealing with diverse organizations, diverse people, competitors, and getting them to put all those things on the sideline and focus on doing something that will make you distinctive,'' said BioInnovation Institute Chairman William Considine, president and chief executive of Akron Children's Hospital. ''Without a doubt, he's the one we had at the top of our list.''
Douglas has been serving as a senior fellow at the Ewing M. Kauffman Foundation, a foundation devoted to entrepreneurship; a senior partner at Puretech Ventures, which specializes in seed and early-stage investment in novel therapeutics, medical devices, and research technologies; and a chief scientific adviser for Bayer Healthcare AG, a health-care and medical products company.
He previously was a professor at MIT, where he founded the Center for Biomedical Innovation and served as executive director for two years.
Just as the Akron institute, the MIT center involves collaboration with partners, Douglas said. The MIT center, for example, included researchers from Harvard University.
The BioInnovation Institute will provide researchers from competing organizations a ''safe haven'' to work together on initiatives that will benefit all the partners and, most importantly, patients, Douglas said.
''If you keep the patient as the focus, then it actually focuses everyone around the importance of what we are doing,'' he said.
Douglas earned his undergraduate degree from Lehigh University and his doctorate in physical chemistry and medical degree from Cornell University. He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution and a fellowship in neuroendocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. A native of Guyana, Douglas will be relocating to Akron from New Jersey.
His contract to lead the BioInnovation Institute in Akron runs through the end of 2013. Financial details of his contract weren't disclosed.
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or chpowell@thebeaconjournal.com.
The founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center of Biomedical Innovation has been hired to boost the Akron region's medical research and development.
Get the full article here.
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Posted 09:58 AM, 08/27/2009
Impressive credentials.
Get 'er done!
