October 23, 1998
Cheung's research focuses on the role of the stomach and intestines in patients who suffer from overwhelming infection and multiple organ failure, which are the leading causes of death in patients in surgical intensive care units. His research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for the past 21 years, and he has published more than 160 papers in gastrointestinal physiology and pathophysiology.
The Chancellors Club, established in 1977 by the Kansas University Endowment Association, is KU's major-donor organization. The $5,000 annual Chancellors Club Research Award honors a KU Medical Center researcher whose work has led to significant scientific discoveries. Cheung will receive the award tonight at the 21st annual meeting of the Chancellors Club at the Lawrence Holiday Inn Holidome.
"I'm extremely honored by this award," Cheung said. "The KU medical school has been a wonderful place to do my work. Any credit for my success has to include the administration who support me and the people who work for me."
Candidates for the award are nominated by colleagues at the Medical Center and students and alumni of the KU School of Medicine. In nominating Cheung for the award, Paul R. Schloerb, M.D., professor of surgery at KU, wrote that Cheung proved that it was possible to successfully fulfill several roles at the Medical Center.
"Dr. Cheung is an excellent example of a 'physician scientist' who, although having administrative responsibilities for a major clinical department, other institutional activities, leadership roles in national and international organizations, as well as editorial duties, has been able to maintain a conspicuous presence in research here," Schloerb wrote.
The studies that Cheung conducted in his first 10 years of NIH funding provided fundamental knowledge concerning two of the most important defense mechanisms of the stomach against acid-induced injury. He was one of the first investigators to demonstrate that it is impairment of those defense mechanisms -- rather than hypersecretion of acid, as previously believed -- that usually causes acute stress ulcers.
For the past 10 years, Cheung and his research team have studied the role of the stomach and intestines in the multiple organ failure that leads to the death of more than half of the patients who die in surgical intensive care units.
These patients are not necessarily in the intensive care unit because of a major operation, but may be there after an automobile accident or because of an overwhelming infection. Cheung explained that the stomach and intestines react to the trauma or the infection, initiating a systemic inflammatory response that contributes to multiple organ failure.
Cheung said that though his research may only focus on a small part of a major clinical problem, it is the cumulation of knowledge from many laboratories that eventually leads to advances in medicine. "The more significant the problem you are studying, the longer it takes to get answers and the more investigators are contributing," he said.
Cheung has received two NIH grants that have provided a total of $2.24 million in research funding. His research team includes four technicians, one Ph.D. faculty member and one surgery faculty member.
Cheung joined KU's faculty in 1986 as chair and professor of surgery. He earned his bachelor's and medical degrees from the National Defense Medical Center in Taiwan, which has since honored him as a distinguished alumnus and granted him an honorary degree in 1997. He completed his internship and residency at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, then served 18 months on the Utah faculty. In 1977, he became professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he taught until joining the KU faculty.
He is on the board of directors of the American Board of Surgery, and he is past chair of the American College of Surgeons' Scientific Program Committee and Committee for Undergraduate Education. He is a member of the editorial boards of five journals, including Scientific American Surgery, the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery and Surgical Rounds. He has been recognized in each publication of the Best Doctors in America since its inception in 1992, and he has received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Chinese American Physician Association.
Cheung's wife, Li-Mon, earned a master's degree in economics from KU. They have three children: Marsha Christine, 24, a medical student at Harvard; Lawrence Neal, 20, an undergraduate at Yale; and Caroline, 12, who is in the seventh grade at Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City, Mo.
The KU Endowment Association is an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management foundation for the University of Kansas. Founded in 1891, it is the oldest foundation of its type at a public university in the United States and one of the largest.
Story by Val Alexander Renault, (785) 832-7400