This morning’s announcement that the Pennington Biomedical Research Center will be home to a major bariatric and metabolic surgery center headed by the top bariatric surgeon in the nation—Dr. Phil Schauer—is a win for the state, the city and the medical community for several reasons.
On a purely economic level, the new facility, which will open in the first half of 2020, is expected to have an economic impact of more than $100 million in its first four years of operation. It will bring 55 new researchers and clinicians, who are part of Schauer’s team at the Cleveland Clinic, to Baton Rouge, where they will relocate and not only contribute to the local economy but bring federal research dollars with them.
Nearly 50 additional permanent jobs are expected to be created, not including construction jobs related to renovating facilities to accommodate the new center.
On the scientific and medical level, the center is significant because it will make Pennington—which already is recognized for its expertise in research related to diabetes, obesity and nutrition—one of the foremost treatment centers for obesity in the world.
“This is the number one bariatric surgeon in the world,” says Pennington Executive Director John Kirwan of Schauer, who pioneered laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery and has led research in the reversal of Type II diabetes. “Under his leadership, we will be able to do more surgeries, we will be able to do them better and, perhaps most important, this is the person surgeons all over the world refer their patients to, so the most difficult cases in the world will be coming here now.”
Kirwan estimates in its first four years of operation, the annual number of gastric bypass and gastrectomy sleeve surgeries performed locally will increase from around 120 to more than 1,000.
Finally, for Pennington, which has long been recognized for its primary research but has struggled for years to build on and monetize the basic research done by its scientists, the center will be a significant expansion of its mission and mark the first time the center is actually involved in doing clinical treatments.
“You will see revenue streams coming into Pennington,” Kirwan says. “But this is also an opportunity for us on the discovery side to identify a new treatment for diabetes and that is something we could have IP around, licensing opportunities and, again, more revenues.”
The deal has been in the works since early this year, according to Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was on hand today to celebrate the announcement as a major win for the state. It is the result of a public private partnership involving several players, including the state LED, LSU Health Sciences Center, and Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, in addition to Pennington.
OLOL will play a key role in the center by performing the surgeries at its Essen Lane campus. With the recent opening of OLOL’s Children’s Hospital, the hospital has an entire wing available to serve bariatric patients. That space will be extensively renovated at a cost Kirwan estimates to be near $5 million.
Other funding for the deal, which altogether will cost nearly $15 million, will come from LED, which put up $5.9 million in grants and incentives, Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation, which put up $2.5 million, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which put up $600,000, and LSUHSC, which is sharing some of the cost of salaries, though the exact amount could not be ascertained in time for publication.
(Editor’s Note: This story has been updated and clarified from an earlier version to correct the amount contributed by LED and to include funding contributed by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. )
