In the past year alone the school has attracted many new researchers who are studying everything from how the trace mineral selenium staves off disease to the impact of crystal meth on brain function and the rise in infectious diseases.

In turn the researchers are bringing in money for high-powered laboratories and other researchers, giving even more substance to the growing assemblage that will be moving into new laboratory space in Kaka'ako eight months from now.

Cutting-edge research leads not only to health solutions for Hawai'i residents but also is a boon to the state's economy. The state Legislature and former Gov. Ben Cayetano's commitment of $150 million in tobacco money to back a UH bond issue to build the school was a leap of faith, a belief that the Kaka'ako development will jump-start what could become a thriving biotech industry.

New minds, fresh ideas

Even before the medical school's first building — the Education Building — opens in the next three months, the new Kaka'ako facility has lured a critical mass of research, federal money and extraordinary minds. Hawai'i's medical school appears to be coming of age, able to draw prestigious researchers into a system that is also inspiring collaborations across disciplines.

"We can be in the top 50 medical schools in five years," says Cadman, formerly chief of staff of Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital, professor of medicine at Yale and senior vice president of medical affairs for Yale-New Haven Hospital and Health System.

Seven faculty members were added this year; six more researchers are expected in the coming year, and another six the following year to bring a 50 percent increase in faculty since 1999.

"I was tremendously impressed by what was happening here and the incredible sense of collaboration and community," said Marla Berry, a molecular biologist who left Harvard to join the UH team. She has a

$3.2 million grant to look at the anti-oxidant qualities of the mineral selenium and how it may help prevent disease.

"Only since Ed Cadman has the research vision been encouraged," said Dr. David Easa, the medical school's associate dean for clinical research. "And Kaka'ako has inspired a sense of pride and accomplishment."

"There's a snowball effect," said Dr. Linda Chang, who came to UH from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Chang, a professor of Family Practice and Community Health, has just landed a $3 million federal grant to look at how drug abuse affects the brain and changes in brain chemistry as a result of ice abuse. "Additional people are being attracted to come and work with us."

Drawn by the energy

One of those people is Dr. Kenneth Ward, chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Kapi'olani Medical Center and a professor of ob-gyn at the medical school. He was recruited away from the University of Utah two years ago where he had built a large laboratory group to solve problem pregnancies. He says on a visit to UH back then he wasn't all that interested in moving to the middle of the ocean — "but then I felt the excitement and the energy with the newness of it."

"It's really the chance to establish a better way of doing things because there aren't all the old ways that have to be taken apart."

Ward has a new $10.9 million grant for UH to look into infant mortality rates and problems with early labor, major issues for those of Filipino and Native Hawaiian ancestry.

"We know there are many ethnic differences," he said. "This was a great opportunity to do human genetic research as well as high-risk pregnancy work.

"By the end of the year, we'll have hired our 10th new faculty person in ob-gyn," said Ward. "A lot are specialists taking care of complicated pregnancies and other complicated women's health problems."

Ward said that while Native Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian babies make up 16 percent of the births at Kapi'olani, they represent 32 percent of the admissions to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit "because there are a number of pregnancy problems."

"Diabetes in pregnancy is one. Pregnancy-induced anemia and hypertension are extremely common in the Native Hawaiian population, with the highest rate in the country."

By looking at such issues as part of the grant, Ward hopes to reduce infant mortality rates in many of Hawai'i's ethnic subgroups.

Hawaiian health focus

Another newcomer is Dr. Marjorie Mau, who with a new $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and a 50/50 partnership with The Queen's Medical Center, is about to spend the next five years assessing why heart failure hits Native Hawaiians and Pacific islanders five to 10 years before it hits Caucasian and Asian groups.

At the same time, Mau hopes to give community health centers better tools to diagnose heart failure sooner by spreading training and equipment for echo-cardiogram screening to Hawai'i's small health centers.

Working in tandem with Queen's cardiologist Dr. Todd Seto, medical director of the Center for Best Health-Care Practices at the hospital, Mau hopes to discover why heart failure is hitting Native Hawaiians in their 30s and 40s rather than a decade or two later as is more common in other ethnic groups.

"In the heart failure clinic at Queen Emma they tend to see a lot of ice-induced heart failure occurring at young ages," said Mau. "And 50 percent of the people seeking treatment for ice are of Native Hawaiian ancestry."

The linkages between ice use and heart failure are fascinating, said Seto, but much more work has to be done.

"No one knows why the link," he said. "Our study is going to look at whether ice causes heart failure, and to establish whether ice is a more common cause than other things.

"It's gotten to the point where if we see a young person in the hospital with heart failure, often we consider (whether) ice is the cause of it."

But Native Hawaiians with heart disease often have a constellation of other health problems associated with heart failure including diabetes, hypertension and obesity, said Seto.

"They actually have more medical problems that cause heart failure," said Seto. "Maybe they're younger (when heart disease strikes) because they have more of these other problems."

Seto and Mau hope to find out — and find ways of diagnosing those lurking heart problems earlier in community health centers — so people can live better, healthier lives.

"We're trying to make diagnosis more accessible and have it done at the clinics," said Seto.