OMRF marks 75 years of discovery
Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and state officials held a ceremony to commemorate the acceptance of the land deed for OMRF on Oct. 3, 1947.
In 1946, a polio vaccine was still years away. DNA was just a group of letters. And no one had any idea cigarettes caused cancer.
But in Oklahoma, a group of citizens recognized that it wasn’t enough for physicians to work each day to treat illnesses like tuberculosis, heart disease and cancer. To make real headway against disease, medicine had to do more.
So, they created an institute where scientists could devote their entire careers to rooting out the causes of human disease: the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
Saturday marks OMRF’s 75th anniversary. On Aug. 28, 1946, Oklahoma’s Secretary of State granted the charter of the new foundation that would, in the words of an early fundraising brochure, conduct “scientific investigations in the field of medical research to attack killing and crippling diseases about which little is known by science.”
Construction of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation began in 1949.
“Oklahoma is a young state, so we sometimes find ourselves playing catch-up,” said OMRF Interim President Adam Cohen. “But when it came to creating an independent research institute, we were on the cutting edge.”
To fund the construction of OMRF, which would become one of only a handful of independent biomedical research institutes at that time, Gov. Roy J. Turner led a drive that spanned all 77 of the state’s counties. The state’s physicians organized one fundraising campaign, and pharmacists, dentists and nurses followed suit with their own efforts. When Turner declared a statewide “Research Week,” organizers held 137 meetings in 42 cities and towns over seven days.
Gov. Roy Turner, left, greets Sir Alexander Fleming, center, on his arrival to Oklahoma City in 1949. Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, came to dedicate OMRF's first building.
“This is one of the finest things we of Oklahoma ever have attempted,” said Grace Marlow of Shawnee in 1947, when she and her husband donated $26,000 to the new foundation in memory of their late son. “Such a wonderful movement cannot fail.”
All told, 7,000 Oklahomans gave more than $2 million to build the foundation. And what began as an 18-person scientific staff has since grown into an internationally recognized research institute.
OMRF now employs 450 staff members who study cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disorders and diseases of aging. Their discoveries have yielded hundreds of patents and three lifesaving drugs now available in hospitals and clinics worldwide. Most recently, Adakveo became the first targeted therapy approved by the Food and Drug Administration for sickle cell disease, which affects an estimated 100,000 Americans.
Sen. Inhofe’s office announces funding request for world-class Center for Biomedical Data Sciences at OMRF
On Aug. 23, the office of U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) announced a $1.9 million congressional funding request to establish a Center for Biomedical Data Sciences at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
The amount of data generated in biomedical research is expanding at an unprecedented pace. OMRF’s biomedical data center will bring greater cutting-edge analytic knowledge and support to hundreds of scientists at OMRF and across Oklahoma working to understand and treat conditions such as cancer, lupus, stroke and heart disease.
“OMRF has been involved in groundbreaking research for the past 75 years,” said Inhofe. “Since its founding, OMRF’s scientists’ discoveries have yielded hundreds of medical advancements used to improve — and even save — the lives of Oklahomans and individuals worldwide. We want to keep this research going — and to expand it. I am happy to support dedicated funding to help OMRF establish Oklahoma’s first Center for Biomedical Data Sciences.”
OMRF scientist Bill Freeman, Ph.D., is studying how to prevent age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia. Also a research scientist at the Oklahoma City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a single experiment in Freeman’s lab can generate a data set equivalent to a spreadsheet of 200 million columns and 3 billion rows.
“To make discoveries from these massive amounts of data, we need extensive computing resources, but also talented mathematicians, computer scientists and biologists,” said Freeman, a member of the committee of OMRF scientists developing the center. “The center is an investment in high-performance computing infrastructure as well as in recruiting, training and retaining talented data scientists right here in Oklahoma.”
The center will work with Oklahoma’s regional and research-based universities like Langston University (LU) to build partnerships and develop homegrown talent. This summer, OMRF welcomed its inaugural class of Langston Biomedical Research Scholars. Developed in partnership with LU, one aim of the program is to retain top scientific talent in Oklahoma.
“The demand for data scientists has never been higher,” said Freeman. “We want to provide the opportunities that will keep Oklahoma’s best and brightest in the state and at OMRF.”
The center will also serve as a hub for collaboration among scientists at OMRF and with partner research institutions in Oklahoma, including LU, OKC VA Medical Center, Oklahoma State University, OU Health and the University of Oklahoma.
Two data scientists will join OMRF in the fall as the center’s first staff members. The foundation is actively recruiting a center director who will lead its strategic development.
If awarded, OMRF will use the federal funds to renovate an underutilized wing of the Oklahoma City-based nonprofit biomedical research institute to house the world-class center. Additional funding for the center will come from private gifts, demonstrating OMRF’s commitment to using 100% of donations for research.
“Sen. Inhofe has a long-standing commitment to securing critical research funding for Oklahoma,” said OMRF Interim President Adam Cohen. “His decades of support for OMRF’s scientists have yielded discoveries that will change lives.”
OMRF scientists made crucial insights that paved the way for powerful protease inhibitors that transformed the therapeutic landscape for people with HIV/AIDS. The National Institutes of Health has designated OMRF an Autoimmunity Center of Excellence, one of only 10 in the country, for its work on conditions such as lupus, where OMRF researchers have played a role in identifying or confirming more than 60 genes involved in the disease.
OMRF has also taken on emerging challenges like the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s now serving as the lead clinical site for a nationwide clinical trial sponsored by the NIH to study why immunocompromised patients fail to respond adequately to Covid-19 vaccines.
“The goal of every medical researcher is to make discoveries that improve people’s lives,” said Rodger McEver, M.D., OMRF’s vice president of research. “OMRF scientists have done that, and they’re continuing to do so.”
OMRF’s founding donors could not have foreseen the advances their gift would make possible. Still, said McEver, “I hope they’d be proud.”
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