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A University of Nebraska Medical Center physician had a special desire to forge a bond between UNMC and a medical school in China.
He attended that medical school, which is in his hometown of Tianjin.
“It's really a dream I had three years ago,” Dr. Kai Fu said of the partnership between UNMC and Tianjin Medical University.
The two institutions formally entered the partnership Oct. 20.
“I think that Kai was probably the impetus for it,” said Donald Leuenberger, UNMC's vice chancellor for business and finance who signed the agreement in Tianjin.
Leuenberger said this kind of partnership validates UNMC's standing as an academic medical center doing important work on an international level.
Calling Tianjin (pronounced TEA-an-JIN) a “town” is a misnomer. With a population of close to 10 million, the industrial port city is one of the largest in the world.
Fu attended medical school at Tianjin Medical University and met his wife, Sharon Hou, there. Hou, who has a medical degree, is a researcher at UNMC.
Fu said Tianjin's Dr. Huaqing Wang approached Dr. Dennis Weisenburger of UNMC several years ago at a conference in San Francisco. Wang was interested in tapping into UNMC's expertise in lymphoma diagnosis and treatment.
Weisenburger told Wang that UNMC had a scientist from Tianjin, and Wang and Fu then established a relationship.
Fu said the cancer specialists at Tianjin Medical University don't have access to all the lymphoma testing technology that UNMC has. There are more than 60 types of lymphoma.
Correctly diagnosing the type is crucial, said Dr. Julie Vose, chief of hematology and oncology at UNMC. “The individual types of lymphoma are treated very differently,” Vose said.
Vose said one benefit from the collaboration is that UNMC and Tianjin will be able to pool information from clinical trials and research.
Among other activities, Tianjin will occasionally send physicians to UNMC for further training in clinical skills and diagnosis, and Tianjin will send tissue samples from tough cases to UNMC to determine whether they contain lymphoma and if so, what kind.
Fu said UNMC already has examined tissue samples from three Tianjin patients. Tianjin ships the tissue samples in wax blocks. The tissue then is thinly sliced and examined under a microscope. UNMC charges the Chinese institution $350 per case, Fu said.
Fu said it's excellent for the world to recognize UNMC as a top-notch lymphoma center. It's also nice, he said, to do some good for his hometown.
Contact the writer:
444-1123, rick.ruggles@owh.com
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