March 1, 2004
Surgical strike | Dr. Owen Pickus hopes his $1 million grant will help raise the University of New England's profile
By Sean Donahue
Dr. Owen Pickus knows there aren't many better ways to get attention than by writing a big check, which is why last month he and his wife, Dr. Geraldine Ollila-Pickus, pledged to donate $1 million toward a $6 million biomedical research center planned for the University of New England's College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford.
Pickus isn't trying to get attention for himself, though. He's hoping his million-dollar grant ˆ and the proposed 35,000-square-foot building that will house laboratories for five to eight medical researchers and their support staffs ˆ will help draw attention from local residents and the national medical community to the work being done at UNE's medical school.
Pickus, an oncologist who is president and CEO Maine Centers for Healthcare, a 14-practitioner outpatient clinic in Westbrook that covers everything from cancer treatment and cardiology to family care, is a longtime UNE faculty member and trustee. The research center would help put the 24-year-old medical school "on the map" among health care institutions in the state and region, he says, by giving the school a tool to attract and retain top quality faculty, who in turn would attract research grants from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health.
Most important, the new facility would provide a venue for potentially groundbreaking medical research, such as work currently being done at UNE by Dr. Edward Bilsky and Dr. Ian Meng on a new, non-opiate-based pain medication. "If this drug is proven to work, UNE could become known as a premier pain management center in the country," says Pickus. "That would lead to practical, commercial applications in terms of drug research and drug production being generated out of Maine."
The Pickus' million-dollar donation ˆ a matching grant intended to inspire other physicians and UNE alumni to donate a little of their own money ˆ is a combination of personal funds and money from the Robert Wallace Trust, a fund established by one of Pickus' former patients in recognition of the cancer care he and his wife received from Pickus in the late 1980s. As the sole trustee of the fund, Pickus has helped it grow from $600,000 to more than $1.5 million, and has used it to give several gifts to UNE over the years.
Throughout his career, Pickus has been at the forefront of various initiatives within Maine's medical community. A graduate of Michigan State's medical school, he came to Maine in 1979, a year after UNE's medical school was founded, to teach the program's introduction to oncology course. Due to an initial shortage of teachers, though, he ended up teaching classes in everything from internal medicine to cardiology.
At the same time, he was also building his own cancer-treatment practice, which placed him in the middle of the biggest medical story of the 1980s. Pickus diagnosed the first case of HIV in Maine in 1984, and has treated most of the HIV and AIDS cases in the state since then.
Despite those career accomplishments, Pickus says that as a doctor of osteopathy he still feels like an "invisible man" in the state due to public misperceptions about osteopaths and the broader medical industry's bias against the discipline, which focuses on interrelationships between the body's systems and functions, and employs muscular "manipulation" as one method to treat illness. He's heard more than one state official incorrectly say that there is no medical school in Maine ˆ which why another of his goals for the new research center is to help raise the school's profile here in Maine.
"A biomedical research facility could be the lynchpin in changing people's perception of the school," says Pickus. "People may begin to recognize the value that's already here, and the potential for even greater value in the future."
Pickus isn't trying to get attention for himself, though. He's hoping his million-dollar grant ˆ and the proposed 35,000-square-foot building that will house laboratories for five to eight medical researchers and their support staffs ˆ will help draw attention from local residents and the national medical community to the work being done at UNE's medical school.
Pickus, an oncologist who is president and CEO Maine Centers for Healthcare, a 14-practitioner outpatient clinic in Westbrook that covers everything from cancer treatment and cardiology to family care, is a longtime UNE faculty member and trustee. The research center would help put the 24-year-old medical school "on the map" among health care institutions in the state and region, he says, by giving the school a tool to attract and retain top quality faculty, who in turn would attract research grants from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health.
Most important, the new facility would provide a venue for potentially groundbreaking medical research, such as work currently being done at UNE by Dr. Edward Bilsky and Dr. Ian Meng on a new, non-opiate-based pain medication. "If this drug is proven to work, UNE could become known as a premier pain management center in the country," says Pickus. "That would lead to practical, commercial applications in terms of drug research and drug production being generated out of Maine."
The Pickus' million-dollar donation ˆ a matching grant intended to inspire other physicians and UNE alumni to donate a little of their own money ˆ is a combination of personal funds and money from the Robert Wallace Trust, a fund established by one of Pickus' former patients in recognition of the cancer care he and his wife received from Pickus in the late 1980s. As the sole trustee of the fund, Pickus has helped it grow from $600,000 to more than $1.5 million, and has used it to give several gifts to UNE over the years.
Throughout his career, Pickus has been at the forefront of various initiatives within Maine's medical community. A graduate of Michigan State's medical school, he came to Maine in 1979, a year after UNE's medical school was founded, to teach the program's introduction to oncology course. Due to an initial shortage of teachers, though, he ended up teaching classes in everything from internal medicine to cardiology.
At the same time, he was also building his own cancer-treatment practice, which placed him in the middle of the biggest medical story of the 1980s. Pickus diagnosed the first case of HIV in Maine in 1984, and has treated most of the HIV and AIDS cases in the state since then.
Despite those career accomplishments, Pickus says that as a doctor of osteopathy he still feels like an "invisible man" in the state due to public misperceptions about osteopaths and the broader medical industry's bias against the discipline, which focuses on interrelationships between the body's systems and functions, and employs muscular "manipulation" as one method to treat illness. He's heard more than one state official incorrectly say that there is no medical school in Maine ˆ which why another of his goals for the new research center is to help raise the school's profile here in Maine.
"A biomedical research facility could be the lynchpin in changing people's perception of the school," says Pickus. "People may begin to recognize the value that's already here, and the potential for even greater value in the future."
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