Press Release

Research visionaries strive to transform care with bold thinking, diligence and perseverance

Original approaches for preventing Alzheimer’s dementia, enhancing medical practice with 3D printing, and restoring cardiac muscle after heart attacks are gaining momentum at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Wayne Lewis October 14, 2024
Headshots of Chuck Murry, Summer Decker, and Hussein Yassine

From left: Chuck Murry, MD, PhD; Summer Decker, PhD; Hussein Yassine, MD (Photo/Steve Cohn, Eden Dozier, Richard Carrasco)

When Summer Decker, PhD, started designing a 3D-printed swab, she wasn’t planning on touching lives around the globe or winning awards. She was just looking to do her part in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic asserted itself in the U.S.

Decker saw a problem — the shortage of equipment to test for the coronavirus — and a way to address it with the tools she had at hand. Working with a virology team, they made a prototype the next day and a finalized version for testing before the week was out.

That swab would ultimately outperform hospitals’ usual stock, at less than half the price. The blueprints and method were shared free for a year so that health care facilities all over the world could tackle testing demand. Decker’s design has been used to test over 150 million people for COVID-19 at last estimate, and earned the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s 2023 “Patent for Humanity” recognition.

“You can always use the technology in different ways that no one has ever thought of. It allows you to move faster and be more resilient in coming up with innovative solutions.”

Summer Decker

Applying technology in brand new ways is no novelty for Decker, who joined the Keck School of Medicine of USC as professor of clinical radiology, surgery and pathology in 2024. For more than a decade, she has helped shepherd the use of 3D printing in medicine. Today, her precise anatomical reproductions reduce the degree of difficulty for complex surgeries while educating patients and medical trainees alike. Tomorrow may bring unprecedented opportunities for real-world impact with ala carte medical implants and regenerative medicine.

“You can always use the technology in different ways that no one has ever thought of,” Decker said. “It allows you to move faster and be more resilient in coming up with innovative solutions.”

An exemplar of igniting discovery with bold thinking and a commitment to making a difference for human health, Decker is far from alone at the Keck School of Medicine in that regard. She joins other research visionaries who take on major problems and dream up approaches for solving them that few or no others are pursuing. Among them are endocrinologist Hussein Yassine, MD, who is pushing for advances in Alzheimer’s prevention via the disease’s connection to metabolism, and pathologist Charles (Chuck) Murry, MD, PhD, who is deploying stem cells in a bid to repair currently irreparable cardiac damage after heart attacks.

The reason I get up in the morning is because I want to push this frontier back, because I think we know how to rebuild the heart after it’s failed.”

Chuck Murry

The questions that the three scientists explore may be disparate, but they share a certain dissatisfaction with the status quo.

“I don’t think we have to just accept the fact that heart disease will continue to be the number one killer,” said Murry, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the Keck School of Medicine (USC Stem Cell). “I think we can change that. The reason I get up in the morning is because I want to push this frontier back, because I think we know how to rebuild the heart after it’s failed.”

Said Yassine, a professor of neurology and of physiology and neuroscience at USC’s medical school: “Breakthroughs happen when people decide to look into something that is not typical or anticipated, not what the crowd is usually following. We have to keep an open mind.”

“Breakthroughs happen when people decide to look into something that is not typical or anticipated, not what the crowd is usually following. We have to keep an open mind.”

Hussein Yassine