Imagine you are an established medical researcher at an internationally renowned institution. You’re invited to join a new program that’s not exactly a medical school yet, with no buildings, no accreditation, and no guarantees. Would you take that leap? Fortunately for Brown, many such researchers did take that chance and moved their careers just as the Medical School was getting started. As part of our ongoing series celebrating 50 Years of Medicine at Brown, we look at some of the research milestones in the Division of Biology and Medicine, from its inception to where it is headed in the future.

1960

The NIH awards Rhode Island Hospital a grant for postgraduate training, increasing the hospital’s ability to support young physicians in their pursuit of clinical research.

1965

The Division of Medical Science is replaced by the new Division of Biological and Medical Sciences, administered by an executive council led by Paul F. Fenton, PhD, a cancer researcher. Mac V. Edds, PhD, is appointed director of medicine, and Herman B. Chace, PhD, is named director of biology. This organization was something of an experiment, designed to bring biological investigation closer to the realm of medicine, where the findings could be applied. When the Pembroke Record asked Edds and Chace whether this approach had worked elsewhere, Chace “admitted that it has never before been tried. Dr. Edds conjectured that ‘many would like to try it, but won’t dare or can’t.’”

1967

Lewis Lipsitt, PhD, establishes the Child Study Center, which he directed until 1991. His studies follow individuals for decades, and he gives particular attention to those who experienced learning disabilities as young children.

1967

Fiorindo A. Simeone ’29 ScM’30, MD, a nationally known researcher in the areas of circulation and shock, becomes the first chair of surgery and surgeon-in-chief at The Miriam Hospital, which is building a new research facility.

1967

Henry T. Randall, MD, whose research made crucial contributions to the understanding of surgical physiology and metabolism, fluid, and electrolyte balance, joins the Brown faculty and Rhode Island Hospital as head of the Division of Surgical Research. His appointment is one of several made jointly with Brown over the next several years to stimulate research at the hospital.

1968

Pierre Galletti, MD, PhD, is appointed chair of the Division of Biology and Medicine. During his career at Brown, he not only assisted at the birth of the medical school and shepherded it through its first two decades, but he continued to break new ground in research in physiology and biophysics and helped establish Brown as a center for biomedical engineering and translational research.

Cancer

Dating back to 1962—when a new collaboration between the cancer labs and the cardiovascular surgery lab began studies on techniques of whole body and regional perfusion in chemotherapy at Rhode Island Hospital—cancer research has flourished from the basic science level to clinical trials.

One of the early leaders in oncology, Paul Calabresi, MD, joined the Brown faculty in 1968. Based at Roger Williams Hospital, he continued the pioneering oncology research he had been pursuing since the 1950s. He made major advances in understanding the way the body processes and metabolizes chemotherapeutic agents, and was a visionary proponent of combining chemotherapeutic agents as well as of combining therapies—surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy—to optimize safety and effectiveness. Earning the title “Statesman of Oncology,” Calabresi left his mark not only in research but also in establishing oncology as an important subspecialty and guiding the creation of oncology training programs around the nation. Another pioneer, Charles McDonald, MD, founding chair of the Department of Dermatology, advanced the concept of using chemotherapies for other diseases besides cancer. He went on to be the only dermatologist to serve as president of the American Cancer Society.

To coordinate local clinical cancer research, Brown and its affiliated hospitals founded the Brown University Oncology Research Group in 1994. BrUOG helps launch clinical trials, recruit participants, and collect and analyze data. For decades, the group has offered Rhode Islanders the chance to access the latest therapies, without having to travel to Boston, New York, and beyond. Studies often target hardto-treat cancers like adenocarcinoma of the esophagus, glioblastoma, and pancreatic, rectal, and anal cancers. One such study became the standard of care for pancreatic cancer.

In 2002, Rhode Island Hospital received its first National Institutes of Health COBRE (Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence) grant of $8.2 million to establish the Center for Cancer Research Development. Center investigators conduct multidisciplinary basic science research on the cellular and molecular pathways leading to cancer, with the goal of applying that knowledge to generating new approaches to diagnosis and treatment—an issue of pressing importance in a state with significantly higher cancer rates than the US average. In 2009, the center won an $11.2 million renewal grant.

With the arrival of Wafik El-Deiry, MD, PhD, in 2018, a Joint Center in Cancer Biology was established between Brown and Lifespan. He has worked to build new research collaborations across the Medical School and its affiliated hospitals with a particular focus on the types of cancer most prevalent in Rhode Island, including lung, breast, and bladder cancer. In 2021, the Cancer Center at Brown (which was founded the previous year) received $25 million from Pablo and Almudena Legorreta P’21. The gift is accelerating researchers’ efforts to turn basic science into treatments, and bringing the renamed Legorreta Cancer Center much closer to National Cancer Institute designation—the highest federal rating a cancer center can achieve.

1985

1986

1998

1999

2000

Brain Science

Brown’s longstanding excellence in brain science began in 1978, when the Center for Neural Sciences was established to support research collaboration among faculty in psychology, linguistics, engineering, physics, applied mathematics, and the biomedical sciences. In 1984, Brown and Rhode Island Hospital concluded a joint study of the future of the neurosciences in the state with a commitment to build a multi-institutional, University-affiliated program.

In 1999, the Brain Science Program was created, led by neuroscience chair John Donoghue PhD’79, P’09, P’12MD’18. Under his direction, the program became the Brown Institute for Brain Science in 2008, where researchers ask: “How do we see? How do we learn and remember? How do we interact with the world? How do we communicate? How do we repair the damaged brain? How do we crack the neural code?”

With a $100 million gift, Robert J. Carney ’61 and Nancy D. Carney named the Carney Institute for Brain Science in 2018. Neuroscientist Diane Lipscombe, PhD, was appointed the Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Director of the institute, which unites more than 180 faculty and their research groups across 23 Brown departments and its affiliated hospitals.

2002

2003

2004