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Published in the University of Florida Digest,
Independent Florida Alligator
October 21, 1998

The UF Brain Institute: Not Just A Campuswide Program But A Facility With A Truly International Focus

William G. Luttge
Director, UF Brain Institute
Professor of Neuroscience

 With this week’s dedication of the new 210,000-square-foot, $60 million building to house key research and educational facilities of the UF Brain Institute, it is a good time to reflect on why we have made this effort and the promise it holds for our entire campus.

 We begin with the observation that the human nervous system - including the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, neurohormonal regulators and special senses - is our most complex organ system. It regulates our bodies and provides us the ability to communicate, learn, sense, solve problems, dream and remember.

 However, because of the complexity and importance, malformation, disease or injury to the nervous system can have devastating consequences on both personal and societal levels.

 In hard numbers, brain and spine-related disorders are the No. 1 source of health problems in the United States today, with one in five Americans struggling with one of these disorders at any point in time. The sad fact is that each of us is likely to struggle with one of these disorders at some time in our life. As a nation, the total cost of addressing these problems - medical treatment, rehabilitation and loss of wages - is more than $0.5 trillion each year.

 Clearly, the subject is important.

 To respond to this challenge, in the spring of 1992 UF - through its Health Science Center, College of Medicine and the closely affiliated campus hospital Shands at UF - made a strategic decision to create a campuswide program to harness and enhance the multidisciplinary research, clinical care and educational skills of the university and thus maximize our ability to confront the awesome challenges brought on by nervous system disorders.

 We called this program the UF Brain Institute to signify our unprecedented goal of true campuswide involvement. Today this collaborative spirit is represented by more than 250 faculty from 50 different academic departments participating in the institute.

 To the best of my knowledge, there is no other academic program anywhere with this breadth and magnitude of multidisciplinary talent focused on the central nervous system. Additional collaborators at more than 65 universities in the United States and in 15 foreign countries make ours an international research center.

 While the largest group of faculty participants in the UFBI come from the College of Medicine, fully 40 percent come from other colleges, including nearly 20 percent from outside the Health Science Center. For example:

• In physics, Professor Dave Reitze heads an international team working to perfect a new light-based imaging system known as optical coherence tomography. The system will enable physicians and scientists to examine living tissues such as the eye and brain cortex with a resolution 20 to 50 times better than is possible with other available imaging tools.
• Faculty in chemistry, such as professors Robert Kennedy and Weihong Tan, are working to develop new analytical tools, including capillary electrophoresis and near-field scanning optical sensing microscopy, to measure extraordinarily small amounts of biochemicals inside or released from individual living nerve cells.
• Faculty in mathematics, physics and electrical and computer engineering, such as professors Gang Bao, Zongan Qiu and Jose Principe, are working to develop new computational methods to decipher the meaning of the brain’s electrical activity.
• Faculty in materials science engineering, such as Professor Chris Batich, is working to develop new products for implantation into the nervous system to provide a controlled release of growth factors and guidance molecules to augment treatments of disease or traumatic injury.

Many additional faculty from the main campus are participating in UF Brain Institute studies. All of them can be aided in their efforts to work on biomedically significant problems because of the opportunity to work on teams involving faculty and graduate students from the Health Science Center colleges - medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, health professions and veterinary medicine.

Thus, as we reflect on the opening of our new building, what you will hear about most in speeches and news coverage is the magnitude and sources of the fiscal investments to date and of the spectacular technical capabilities of the new research and educational instrumentation - some of which is unique in the world.

But the most important promise of the UF Brain Institute, in my view, is our commitment to promoting a spirit of campuswide collaboration and, in doing so, to harness the true power of a comprehensive research university.

As we prepare to conclude the "Decade of the Brain" and embark on the adventure of the "Millenium of the Brain," please consider this an open invitation to all interested UF faculty and students to help us fulfill the campuswide promise by joining the UF Brain Institute team. For further information on the UFBI, including how to join, please access our Web site at: http://www.mbi.ufl.edu.