Changing the course: from growing organs for transplants to using new types of imaging technology to find tumors, the center fights to advance humankind.

At Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, we believe that when an academic medical center has innovation as a guiding mission, the very course of humankind can be changed. Discoveries made through research or patient encounters can make life-and-death differences and affect millions of people around the world.

Consider the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The center's director, Dr. Anthony Atala, was the first in the world to implant laboratory-grown bladders into patients. Children and teens with spina bifida were spared kidney failure as a result. Now, the institute is working to grow more than 20 other types of tissues and organs in the laboratory and is one of the largest centers in the world dedicated to regenerative medicine. The overall goal is to help solve the critical shortage of organs for transplant.

Wake Forest Baptist fosters innovation by encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration among its faculty, recruiting some of the top minds in science and medicine and providing them with the most advanced technology, thus creating an environment that generates ideas.

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In another advance, Wake Forest Baptist's Department of Radiation Oncology is the first in the country to house two distinct types of imaging, permitting physicians to plan radiation therapy more effectively for cancer patients. This helps doctors define not only the size of the tumor but surrounding tissue that may harbor cancer cells. Called the Bioanatomic Imaging and Treatment Program, the approach combines CT scans that reveal tumor anatomy with technologies such as positron emission tomography that show metabolic, biochemical and functional activity, allowing doctors to provide radiation treatment in ways never...