New Medical School Explores Innovative Approaches to Research

Steve Adubato goes on-location to the Seton Hall Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine to speak with the Chairman of the Department of Research at Hackensack University Medical Center, Dr. Robert Korngold. Dr. Korgold explains their innovative approaches to research, not only helping students in their studies but also helping the state of New Jersey.

3/14/17 #2020

Excerpt:

"We're at the Seton Hall, Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine scheduled to open in July of 2018. I'm Steve Adubato. We're talking to researchers, scientists, clinical professionals, folks who are part of this extraordinary operation that's going to have an impact, not just in New Jersey and the region, but in the nation. We're talking to Dr. Robert Korngold who is in fact the chairman of the research department at Hackensack University Medical Center. Doctor, let me ask you. We're here in this lobby. It is a little ways away from the opening. What do you believe the school of medicine will mean? Well, for research it gives us a great opportunity to develop our research program for Hackensack Meridian in collaboration with the medical school and we're planning on really forging ahead and developing three major institutes here on the campus of the medical school. The first would be regenerative medicine, the second would be related to host defense against disease. That involves immunology, infectious disease, and cancer research and the third would be an institute devoted to multiple myeloma research. These are all intended to be very translational. What does that mean, translational? Well, researchers take their discoveries from basic science and are at the stage where they want to move that into the clinic so that it benefits patients as soon as possible and obviously that involves working very closely with the clinicians to develop the clinical trials around these discoveries and it's a difficult part of research and science but this is where we want to focus. Doctor, let me ask you this. You have said the innovation will in fact drive medicine for the foreseeable future. What do you mean by that? Well, we know that that's an absolute fact, so all the technology advances recently in genetic sequencing and understanding how disease develops and understanding many different ways of analyzing the disease allows physicians to really develop personalized medicine for their patients. That is to really get to the finite cause of what's going on in that individual patient and that helps them cater to different approaches that treat that patient, and obviously we're looking for better outcomes. One of the things that's so interesting whether it's this school of medicine or schools of medicine across the nation is that there are some folks that say that their needs to be a new paradigm. A new way of teaching students who are going into medicine, so I ask you, the roll of research as it relates to the new curriculum to teach the physicians of the future, describe that. Well..."