A Symbiotic Relationship

By Amy O. Williams | The Daily News | Wednesday, May 30, 2007

University of Memphis undergraduate Candice Smoots soon will be using about $200,000 worth of high-tech medical equipment that belongs to the InMotion Musculoskeletal Institute.

Smoots, a senior biology major, works in the Integrated Microscopy Center (IMC) at the U of M, and is exactly the type of student the equipment was meant for when InMotion decided to place it at the university, said Sharon Frase, associate director of the IMC.

"It is really exciting that we have gotten this equipment," Frase said. "It was great of them to think of us."

The histologic equipment, which will allow lab technicians to produce slides much faster and easier, had been donated to InMotion by Warsaw, Ind.-based DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. Richard "Dick" Tarr, resident and executive director of InMotion, worked as DePuy's vice president of worldwide research and emerging technologies until he retired in 2005 after 20 years.

When he learned DePuy was eliminating some of its research facilities and getting rid of equipment, he suggested the company donate it to InMotion. The institute offered the equipment to the U of M as a way to expand what both the university and researchers at InMotion do, Tarr said, and also for InMotion's researchers to use the resources at the university.

”It is the ideal collaborative, and it has worked out great," Tarr said.

Partnership in motion

The equipment landed at the U of M as the result of a partnership between InMotion and the university that began almost two years ago when Tarr was named president and executive director of InMotion.

U of M president Shirley Raines is a board member at InMotion and helped select Tarr for his current position.

A few months after Tarr arrived in Memphis in 2005, Raines invited him to a Tigers basketball game and the two discussed working together in the future.

"This is a perfect example of our partnership," Tarr said.

Raines agreed. She said the relationship the university has with InMotion is typical of the types of partnerships that are important to the U of M and to Memphis.

"I want to know how the university can be involved for the sake of our graduates and our faculty," Raines said.

Another facet of InMotion's relationship with the U of M involves a joint position. A posting appeared last week on both the U of M's and InMotion's Web sites for an orthopedic biomechanicist the two institutions would share. He or she would serve as a professor in the U of M's Department of Biomedical Engineering and as the director of biomechanics at InMotion.

As a result of the partnership between to the two entities, students like Smoots, 25, will benefit directly by having the opportunity to practice what they learn on the most up-to-date equipment available.

Smoots is excited to see how the new devices will work, she said. She will use the three pieces of equipment to make slides of tissue samples from lungs, kidneys, muscles and more so they can be studied under a microscope. What Smoots does is called histology - the study of tissue - and it is an integral tool in biological research. Researchers depend on slides to analyze tissue on a microscopic level.

Speeding the process

Frase said the equipment will help the IMC move closer to developing a histology training program, which Frase said is desperately needed to meet the growing demand for these services in the biomedical industry.

Because the samples must be sent out to a small number of laboratories in the country that do this type of work, it can take three to four months to have the tissue put onto a slide. With the InMotion equipment housed at the U of M, that work can be done in a matter of weeks, Tarr said.

In addition to its partnership with the U of M, InMotion also has formed partnerships with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), Southwest Tennessee Community College and private industries such as the Campbell Clinic Foundation, the Plough Foundation, Smith & Nephew Inc. and Medtronic Inc.

In addition to Raines, several members from Memphis' academic community and industry sit on InMotion's board of directors, including Dr. James Beaty, chief of staff of the Campbell Clinic, Dr. Peter Heeckt, chief medical officer for Smith & Nephew, and J.R. "Pitt" Hyde III, former chief executive officer of AutoZone Inc. Hyde also is the founder of Memphis Tomorrow, a group of chief executive officers of Memphis' largest enterprises, which works to bring top business leaders together with government and civic leadership.