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 Over the past several years, the Emory Transplant Center has marked extraordinary accomplishments in both the clinical and academic arenas, and as is our hallmark, in the integration of the two. Thanks to the generosity of the Carlos and Marguerite Mason Trust, our clinical programs now reside in a new multidisciplinary outpatient clinic which triples our outpatient capacity and provides long-awaited outpatient evaluation suites as well as a dedicated research space. Offering state-of-the-art care, patient and staff education facilities, natural lighting, a spacious waiting room with beautiful views of the campus and downtown Atlanta, our new clinic is allowing us to more effectively serve the transplant patients in our community.
Our adult clinical transplant programs are thriving, and at the same time, Emory Transplant Physicians and Surgeons continue to perform pediatric transplants at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, which as of May 2006 is the second largest pediatric transplant center in the US, ranking in the Top 5 for the sixth consecutive year. Moreover, for the past two years, Children's has ranked among the Top 3 pediatric kidney transplant programs in the country.
On the academic side, our program continues to show strong growth, despite declining federal funding trends. Our number of NIH awards has grown from 16 to 22 in just three years and our total program funding is now over $9.25 million (FY 06). This vitality stems from unparalleled collaborations among the Center's now 28 faculty. Our surgeons, nephrologists, pulmonologists, immunologists, pediatricians, nurses and many others work together clinically and academically to address the most pressing unmet needs in our field, continuing our focus on our central theme of developing new approaches to overcome the debilitating problems created by the toxicities of the drugs we use to prevent rejection.
The Emory Transplant Center has a clear opportunity to expand its clinical and research programs to achieve national leadership over the next five years. Given strong local and regional competition, the clinical program must continue to recruit key faculty for growth while ensuring continued differentiation through our basic, translational, and clinical research. Given the reality of constraints on the NIH budget, increased competition for shrinking research dollars is a reality. We must continue to submit competitive proposals at the federal level while also continuing to seek funding from philanthropic and other non-federal sources for sustained long-term success.
The achievements of the Emory Transplant Center are a shining example of what can happen when a diverse and dedicated team pursues a common goal of transforming health and healing. New challenges and numerous opportunities await us in the year ahead. I applaud the remarkable and collaborative work of all of the members of the Emory Transplant Center and am pleased and proud to present the outcome of our work for fiscal year 2006 in this Annual Report.
Christian P. Larsen, MD, DPhil
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