Annual Reports

 The foundational history of the MUSC Department of Surgery was laid in the eighteenth century a ta time when Charleston shared the scientific and medical aspirations of the American Enlightenment with Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. David Ramsay, M.D., a member of the Continental Congress who served as a military surgeon during the Revolutionary War, was among the founders of the Medical Society of South Carolina.When MUSC was founded in 1824, James Ramsay, M.D., the son of David Ramsay, M.D., became the first Professor and Chair of Surgery. Ramsay was followed in the Chair’s role by many notable surgeons, including Julian John Chisolm, M.D.,author of "A Manual of Military Surgery" and inventor of a chloroform inhaler used for battlefield anesthesia, and Robert Kinloch, M.D., President of the Medical Society of South Carolina and a founder of the American Surgical Association, the oldest surgical society in the United States.

Over the next two centuries, as the college continued to grow and evolve, the Department of Surgery was fortunate to be led by exceptional leaders and innovators. Sustained by our dedicated surgical visionaries, our clinical divisions are now home to numerous NIH-funded, internationally renowned investigators, master clinicians, and award winning researchers and educators who are leaders in their specialized fields of surgery.We have achieved remarkable medical breakthroughs, including the first successful kidney transplant in the state, the first heart transplant in South Carolina, the invention of an instrument to allow the first successful heart valve operation, the first robotic mitral valve surgery in SC, and much more.Today, the Department of Surgery is recognized nationally and internationally for its faculty, clinical care, basic research, and education quality.

“The Department of Surgery has experienced unprecedented clinical growth in our post-Covid era. Our cutting-edge clinical and research prowess provides a depth of expertise unparalleled in many academic medical centers."-

Prabhakar Baliga, M.D.

R. Randolph Bradham, M.D., Endowed Chair in Surgery

Chair, MUSC Department of Surgery

With ten state-of-the-art da Vinci Xi robots, and one da Vinci SP robot, we now have one of the most comprehensive robotic programs in the country and the only hospital in the state offering robotic surgery in all applicable surgical specialties. Several clinical specialties have enhanced patient care with new robotic surgery certification and expertise in novel robotic procedures.In August of 2024, we added two new da Vinci 5 (DV5) systems,da Vinci's most advanced and integrated robotic surgical system.DV5 has 10,000x the computing power of the da Vinci Xi.MUSC Health is one of three medical centersin the world who have been allocated a dual console da Vinci 5 system as a limited release.

Message from the Vice Chair

What a great year of listening and learning! It has been fascinating to consider the novelty and diversity of research interests among our growing faculty cohort, further amplified by their peer collaborations and resident mentor activities. As evidenced by the exciting discussion at the Research session of the Early Career Development Program in the spring of 2024,investigator interests expand well beyond animal models and national databases. Thus, aiming to create programming that would appeal to the breadth of investigators was clearly a fool’s errand.Preparing for our next academic year, initiatives will focus on like-minded researchers sharing opinions, ideas, and experiences,to the benefit of junior and senior faculty alike.

Building on the success of the Surgery Seminar Series coordinated by Hongjun Wang, Ph.D., the Surgical Outcomes Research and Innovation Nucleus (SORIN) is being re-launched by David Taber, PharmD, to engage health services researchers as well as clinical trial principal investigators. As Director of Research Administration, Morgan Overstreet, MS, will play a major role in this endeavor, particularly with expansion of the clinical trial opportunities. We were also excited to welcome Chris Steffen, MBA, as the new Grants Administrator and a key part of our pre-award team.

The Basic and Translational Researchers welcomed a new lab in Surgical Oncology led by William Hawkins, M.D., and Dirk Spitzer, Ph.D., thereby expanding the scientific acumen of the department. Several surgical faculty members were also recipients of the inaugural Schiller Institute Surgical Innovation Awards Competition to facilitate artificial intelligence applications in health services research.Resident research continues to be a priority and the Surgeon Scientist Pathway, which assisted three residents to connect with terrific mentorship teams for the 2025 academic year, willbe transitioning to leadership with Kate Engelhardt, M.D., MS,and Dirk Van der Windt, M.D., Ph.D. Additional individual achievements are highlighted below.

Jean Marie Ruddy, M.D.

The Department of Surgery ranked number 35 nationally for the most funds awarded to a surgery department by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2023, according to the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research (BRIMR). According to the NIH’s reporting for the federal FY 2023, the MUSC Department of Surgery received $5.3M in NIH grants, the largest amount of NIH funding for the Department of Surgery in the past ten years recorded in the BRIMR database.

Out of 710 researchers that achieved national ranking:

◼ Hongjun Wang, Ph.D., ranked in the top 10%

◼ Shikhar Mehrotra, Ph.D., ranked in the top 21%

◼ Nancy Klauber-DeMore, M.D., ranked in the top 22%

ADVANCING PANCREATIC CANCER CARE THROUGH INNOVATIVE AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH

William Hawkins, M.D., is a surgical oncologist and researcher focusing on improving outcomes for pancreatic cancer patients. As the newly appointed Deputy Director at Hollings, Dr. Hawkins aims to promulgate collaborative team science and multi-disciplinary exchanges on a larger scale with the goal of impacting additional cancers. Before joining the Hollings Cancer Center, he was a member of the Senior Leadership for the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University in Saint Louis.His research focuses on systematically developing and testing novel strategies for treating pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Dr. Hawkins serves as Director of Washington University Pancreatic Cancer NCI Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) Program, one of only three SPORES in the nation. In the past five years, his team successfully launched more than 50 pancreatic cancer clinical trials and accrued 1,254 patients while improving minority accrual from 8% to 15.4%. With Hawkins’ move to MUSC, he and his team have recently expanded their collaborative science to include a new site. This strategic expansion is a testament to their commitment to growing the research program and improving survival for patients with pancreatic cancer.

PROMINENT RESEARCH SCIENTIST FROM THE WILLIAM HAWKINS LAB JOINS MUSC

Since 2008, Dirk Spitzer, Ph.D., has worked in the William Hawkins Lab at Washington University in Saint Louis. His research led to the development of targeted TR3 therapeutics for cancer biomarkers mesothelin and MUC16. These biomarkers are well-characterized and are highly present on the surface of several human cancers, including pancreatic and ovarian cancers. This technology provides much-needed anticancer therapeutics for these cancers. Now, at MUSC and continuing his work with Hawkins, Spitzer can align his research with the Hollings Cancer Center, where he says he will have more opportunities to develop his research on the various drug platform technologies closer to clinical application.

Arman Kilic, M.D. has been awarded a $1.9M NIH R01Grant to Improve the Heart Transplant Process with Artificial Intelligence

Arman Kilic, M.D., Surgical Director of MUSC’s Heart Failure and Heart Transplant Program and Director of the MUSC Harvey and Marcia Schiller Surgical Innovation Center, has been awarded a$1.9M NIH R01 grant for his proposed work to help shrink this chasm between heart transplant demand and supply. Kilic and his team, including Angel Jordan University Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University Tuomas Sandholm, Ph.D., and the AI scientists at the Schiller Surgical Innovation Center, plan to use AI and machine learning to help optimize heart transplantation, hopefully saving lives in the process.

Clinical Trial of "Purified" CAR-T Cell Therapy Awarded $3.2M NCI Grant to Expand

A clinical trial at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center that has shown success with the first two patients has now received $3.2 million in funding from the National Cancer Institute to expand. Brian Hess, M.D., and Shikhar Mehrotra, Ph.D., who is the co-scientific director of the Center for Cellular Therapy (CCT), have partnered on a project to develop “purified” CAR-T cells to treat people with certain B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas who have already tried other therapies. By engineering the CAR-T cells locally, in the MUSC Center for Cellular Therapy, the Hollings team can eliminate the need to freeze and transport the product, which reduces viability, and can lower the cost of the treatment.Mehrotra is a highly funded researcher, with 7 NIH grants that includes a conventional R01, and SBIR/STTR R41 & R42, is in the Just in Time process for another NIH/NCI R01. He is co-leader of the Cancer Biology and Immunology research program, a professor of surgery and the Cecilia and Vincent Peng Endowed Chair in melanoma and cutaneous oncology.

Hongjun Wang, Ph.D., Receives Several Significant Awards in FY24

Hongjun Wang, Ph.D., is a basic and translational scientist whose research focuses on pancreatic islet cell biology and transplantation immunology in the treatment of type 1 and type 2 diabetes and chronic pancreatitis. She is the co-scientific director of the Center for Cellular Therapy. In FY24, Wang receivedtwo significant awards to support her research endeavors: a VA Clinical Science Research and Development(CSR&D) Merit Grant for a pain study using autologous bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells and an NIH STEMCAP-1 pain study for chronic pancreatitis patients to evaluate the safety and efficacy of an infusion of donor derived mesenchymal stem cells to relieve chronic pain.Wang is a highly funded researcher, and currently has 5 federal grants, including 3 R01’s, 1 UG3 that transitions to a $1.5 M UH3 in FY25 and 2 VA Merit Awards, including the VA CSR&D Merit Grant. She is in the Just in Time process on another NIH grant that shows promise for funding in FY25.

AT A GLANCE

PROGRAM GROWTH AND EXPANSION

Our residency and fellowship programs offer an unparalleled training experience focusing on clinical excellence and patient-centered care. 

We offer a robust career development and mentorship program, integrated into Surgical Grand Rounds, didactics, journal clubs, and research opportunities.

◼ Vascular Surgery I-6 with Research Track: First Match

◼ CT Surgery I-6 & General Surgery added a designated Research Track for FY25

◼ Surgical Critical Care Fellowship Complement Increase

◼ New Pediatric Surgery Research Fellowship

◼ Plastic Surgery Integrated Resident Program Complement Increase

◼ ACGME International Surgical Rotation Approved; expands to 4residents for 2 months each per year.

Douglas Cassidy, M.D. Leads Simulation Curriculum in the Department’s New Simulation Space

Douglas Cassidy, M.D., is the newly appointed Director of Surgical Simulation for the MUSC General Surgery Residency Program. He is passionate about incorporating surgical simulation into a general surgery residency curriculum. He says simulation-based training cannot only improve technical skills, but also enhance communication skills, situational awareness, and inter professional team dynamics to optimize patient safety.Cassidy is exceedingly well-trained in surgical and simulation education. He joined MUSC in October, and the timing could not have been more perfect. The department was planning a significant renovation, including remodeling the general surgery resident education space.The upgrades included a brand new state-of-the-art Surgical Simulation Center, which features surgical trainers in laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery, endoscopy, and microscopic surgery, as well as surgical equipment to practice open surgical skills and techniques. The main OR da Vinci Simulator is also in this simulation space.The skills lab serves as our residents’ SAGES FLS and FES testing center and will be utilized for classroom and small-group learning. The Center is adjacent to the resident workspace, making it accessible to the residents on a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week basis.

Curtis P. Artz MUSC Surgical Society Offers Fellowship and Support

The Curtis P. Artz MUSC Surgical Society, an organization for alumni of the MUSC Department of Surgery, was founded in 1974. As many know, Dr. Artz was a renowned trauma and burn surgeon who joined the faculty at MUSC in 1965. Known widely as a beloved teacher, scientist, and surgeon, he served as professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery until his untimely death in 1977. Since 2010, H. Biemann Othersen, Jr., M.D., has been Chair of the Curtis P. Artz MUSC Surgical Society. The Society was established to maintain fellowship, friendship, and a sense of unity, provide a means to communicate surgical achievements,celebrate distinguished alumni, and support our current residents throughout their training.During this year’s graduation dinner, as we welcomed our graduates into our alumni family, we paid tribute to Dr. Othersen, who has served MUSC for nearly 60 years and for the past 14 years as our Chair the Curtis P. Artz Society MUSC Surgical Society, where his passion has been cultivating an enduring relationship among the trainees, students, and faculty of the Department of Surgery.Dr. Othersen officially retired from this role in June, and we are pleased that Aaron P. Lesher, M.D., MSCR, Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics, has assumed this leadership role. Dr. Lesher is a proud graduate of the MUSC General Surgery Program and has been on faculty for the past 10 years.