Continuing a tradition of generosity: grateful family’s gift supports scleroderma research

March 09, 2020
Carol Feghali-Bostwick in her lab
MUSC researchers in the lab of Carol Feghali-Bostwick, Ph.D., SmartState® and Kitty Trask Holt Endowed Chair for Scleroderma Research, have identified a key protein that may be able to slow or even reverse fibrosis.
Margaret Plowden 
Margaret Plowden

Margaret Rowland Plowden waged a courageous and inspiring battle against a terrible disease, scleroderma. When she passed away at 93 in January of 2019, she left behind a tradition of generosity to the MUSC Department of Medicine. Now her children, Louise Burns and Earle Rowland, have continued that tradition with generous gifts in memory of their mother.

Plowden made a generous gift to the MUSC Division of Rheumatology in 2011 to advance scleroderma research. The recent gifts from her children will support both the Richard M. Silver, M.D., Chair in Rheumatology and Immunology and will also establish the Richard M. Silver, M.D., Scleroderma Research Fund. The funds will be used to further the Medical University of South Carolina’s research efforts to find a cure for scleroderma and lung fibrosis. In addition, MUSC is designating one of its research labs as the Margaret Rowland Plowden Scleroderma Research Lab, in honor of Plowden and in grateful appreciation of the generous gifts from her children.

Philanthropy has played a tremendous role in the success of MUSC’s nationally recognized scleroderma research program.

Plowden’s generous donation in 2011, along with those of the family of Kitty Trask Holt and many other generous benefactors, enabled the establishment of the SC SmartState® Center for Inflammation and Fibrosis Research. This funding enabled MUSC to recruit internationally renowned researcher Carol Feghali-Bostwick, Ph.D., professor and SmartState® and Kitty Trask Holt Endowed Chair for Scleroderma Research, along with her outstanding team of junior faculty members and research technicians. The Feghali-Bostwick lab has identified a promising peptide that may be able to slow, even possibly reverse, fibrosis. The peptide is now in clinical development and may one day be shown to be an effective treatment for patients with scleroderma.

“Margaret was an inspiration to all who knew her and I feel fortunate to have had the privilege of serving as her physician. A research laboratory dedicated to her memory will be just one of her many legacies.”
-Richard Silver, M.D.