HSC Champions

Michelle A. Thomas, assistant vice president of External Affairs for AT&T Service Inc., presents Wiliam L. Henrich, M.D., MACP, Health Science Center president, with the final installment of $5 million gift to the university.

Every donor makes a difference. The following are just a few of the many gifts that enable the UT Health Science Center to make lives better in San Antonio, South Texas and the world.

• The AT&T Foundation, under the leadership of Laura Sanford, foundation president, completed its $5 million “Virtual Campus” grant, which has touched each of the Health Science Center’s missions of education, research, patient care and community service. Over the past 10 years, the grant has supported the updating of the university’s information and communication networks and the development of educational tools for students. Most recently, it has funded research projects in the fields of regenerative medicine, cardiology and stem cell research through the Institute for Integration of Medicine and Science (IIMS), which is the cornerstone of the university’s Campaign for the Future of Health. The IIMS will be located in the new South Texas Research Facility, home of translational research and the prestigious Clinical Translational Science Award. Translational research aims to quicken the pace at which discovery at the laboratory bench improves health care at the patient bedside and makes lives better.

• A gift of $29,000 from the Laredo Rotary Club established the Laredo Rotary Club Scholarship Endowment to benefit students, especially those from Laredo and Webb Counties, enrolled in courses at the UT Health Science Center’s Regional Campus in Laredo. The gift was matched by the Kim and Rod Lewis Family Foundation, the President’s Council Laredo Excellence Fund and the School of Health Professions Dean’s Critical Needs Fund increasing the total endowment to $58,000. The endowment is the first scholarship endowment dedicated to support the Regional Campus in Laredo. Award recipients will be known as the Laredo Rotary Club Scholars.

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  Ronan T. Swords, M.D., MRCPI, FRCPath, the UT Health Science Center’s Oppenheimer Fellow, thanks Susan R. Oppenheimer for the generosity of the Oppenheimer Foundation, which is funding his research at the CTRC.

  Since 1991, the Jesse H. and Susan R. Oppenheimer Foundation has donated more than $400,000 to fund the Jesse H. and Susan R. Oppenheimer Fellowship in New Anticancer Drug Development. The fellowship supports an outstanding researcher each year at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center’s Institute for Drug Development who is dedicated to advancing new chemical treatments that benefit cancer patients worldwide. Dr. Swords was selected as the Oppenheimer Fellow in 2009. His research focuses on developing novel therapies for hematologic malignancies such as acute leukemias and chronic myeloid leukemia.

• Eight grants totaling $221,583 from the San Antonio Area Foundation have funded several research projects including studies of type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, Parkinson’s disease, pain management, frailty in the elderly, and glaucoma and retinal abnormalities.