Our Legacy of Discovery
A Legacy of Discovery: Biomedical Research at Meharry Medical College
Anil Shanker, M.S., Ph.D.
For 150 years, Meharry Medical College has advanced discovery in service to humanity,
scientific excellence, and better health for communities too often left at the margins.
Origins in Service and Public Need
Established in 1876, Meharry Medical College is a globally recognized academic health sciences center
of learning and research founded with a singular mission: to serve communities long excluded from
quality health care and educational opportunity. Born in the harrowing aftermath of the Civil War and
Reconstruction, Meharry emerged in response to the crushing burden of disease and the severe lack of
medical care available to newly emancipated people. At the time, Nashville had one of the highest
mortality rates in the nation, making it a crucible of public health crisis. Meharry rose to meet that
challenge, determined to transform despair into hope and inequity into action.
The origins of Meharry Medical College trace to the philanthropic vision of the five Meharry brothers—
Samuel, Alexander, Hugh, David, and Jesse—Irish immigrant merchants associated with the Methodist
Episcopal Church. The institution’s founding story begins near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, where
Samuel Meharry’s wagon broke down and he was assisted by a formerly enslaved family. In gratitude,
Samuel vowed that, if ever given the opportunity, he would contribute in a meaningful way to the
advancement of their people. Years later, the brothers fulfilled that promise by donating funds to the
Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, enabling the establishment of the medical
department at Central Tennessee College in Nashville in 1876. That department would later become
Meharry Medical College.
Early Pioneers and Scientific Courage
In 1893, Georgianna Ester Lee Patton, born into slavery, made history as the first Black woman to
graduate from Meharry Medical College and to receive a license to practice medicine and surgery in
Tennessee. Her father died shortly before her birth, and her mother was sent away by their enslaver. Yet
she persisted. Determined to make a difference, Dr. Patton traveled to Liberia, where she treated local
communities and conducted some of the earliest epidemiologic observations in the region, identifying
anemia and dropsy as major health concerns among the indigenous Kru people of Monrovia.
In 1910, the Flexner Report recommended the closure of many medical schools across the country, with
especially devastating consequences for institutions serving African American students. Meharry
Medical College and Howard University emerged as the only two historically Black medical schools to
remain operational. Their survival proved essential to the training of generations of physicians, dentists,
and biomedical scientists from historically excluded communities throughout the twentieth century.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Nashville became a hotbed of poorly understood diseases. One such
disease was pellagra. Although it affected both Black and White communities, Tennessee health
officials in 1910 made a rush-to-judgment claim that “the Negro is the reservoir of disease in the South.”
It was against this backdrop that Meharry physician and Chair of Pathology Dr. Arthur Melvin
Townsend conducted groundbreaking research demonstrating that pellagra was a nutritional disorder
caused by niacin deficiency. His work, published in The Journal of the National Medical Association,
directly rebutted those false claims and marked one of Meharry’s foundational contributions to
evidence-based public health research.
A National Role in Education and Workforce Development
For nearly 150 years, Meharry has stood for education and research in the service of better health, with
enduring impact among those too often left at the margins. As one of the nation’s largest private
historically Black academic health sciences centers, Meharry is home to a vibrant learning community
in which students, faculty, and researchers from African American, Native American, Hispanic,
European, Asian, and other backgrounds come together to strengthen the health professions workforce
and generate critical knowledge about disease mechanisms, risk factors, and exposure pathways.
Meharry has trained 40% of African American dentists, 8% of African American physicians, and 17%
of African Americans with Ph.D.s in biomedical sciences nationwide. Its graduates have played vital
roles in expanding access to care and professional education, particularly in regions where such services
were historically limited. Their work contributed to broader national efforts to modernize health systems
and expand biomedical education during a transformative era in American history.
Building the Research Enterprise
Founded in 1938, Meharry’s School of Graduate Studies became a cornerstone of scientific discovery
and advanced biomedical sciences. The school cultivated an academic culture in which innovation could
flourish. Faculty in other schools frequently held joint appointments in the graduate school and
collaborated across disciplines. One notable example of this spirit of innovation was the invention of the
Meharry Shade for dentures in 1946 at the School of Dentistry. Developed through collaborative
research in oral biology and prosthodontic materials science, the Meharry Shade was designed to match
the natural dentition of African American patients, whose tooth coloration was not adequately
represented in standard dental shade guides.
A 1949 Meharry medical graduate, Dr. Theresa Greene Reed is regarded as the first Black woman
epidemiologist in the United States. She advocated for pharmacokinetic and efficacy studies to identify
interethnic variability in drug response, laying important groundwork for what would later be
recognized as pharmacogenetics.
The Harold D. West Era
In 1952, Meharry appointed its first Black president, Harold D. West, Ph.D., a distinguished biochemist
and passionate researcher. Dr. West was the first to synthesize the essential amino acid threonine,
pioneered the use of radioactive silver tracers in cancer research, and pursued studies in vitamins,
nutrition, metabolism, and carcinogen detoxification. He also established a cancer research initiative
focused on poor health outcomes among African Americans, funded by the American Cancer Society.
Under his leadership, Meharry expanded its research infrastructure and funding and built a durable
legacy in the basic sciences. Sponsored research grew from $80,000 to $1 million, and the College’s
endowment doubled to $7 million. He also established the Meharry Biological Research Fund to support
Black scientists nationwide.
A Renaissance in the 1970s
The early 1970s marked a renaissance period for the College under President Lloyd C. Elam. In 1972,
Meharry was accredited to confer Ph.D. degrees in biomedical sciences and received its first National
Institutes of Health-funded Minority Biomedical Research Support grant. This era brought major
enhancement of the College’s research programs. Meharry established the Division of Genetics and
Molecular Medicine—an initiative well ahead of its time—and recruited a cohort of world-class faculty
in biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, neuroscience, medical genetics, and immunobiology.
These scientists included Drs. Joseph Galley and Thomas Shockley, trained respectively in the
laboratories of Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Edward Tatum, as well as geneticists James and
Shirley Russell and E. Wesley McNair. Together, they launched interdisciplinary studies into the
molecular basis of keloid formation, a condition prevalent among people of African descent. Other
notable recruits included biochemists Joel Trupin, Donella Wilson, Joel Blatt, Henry Moses, Lynn
Stewart, Salil Das, and Ifeanyi Arinze. Meharry further broadened its scientific base by recruiting
biophysicists Donald Mickuleky and Alan Zelman, molecular biologist Eddie Moore from the
laboratory of Nobel laureate Howard Temin, microbiologist Henry Patthey, and neuroscientist James
Townsel. These exceptional scientists came to Meharry because they believed in its mission and wanted
to advance it. Notably, Dr. Salil Das became the first Meharry faculty member to receive an NIH R01
award.
President Elam’s collaborative ethos also led to the formation of the Nashville University Center, an
academic exchange network involving Meharry, Fisk University, Peabody College, Scarritt College
(now the Scarritt Bennett Center), and Vanderbilt University.
Global Engagement and Disease-Focused Programs
In 1971, Meharry expanded its global footprint with the creation of the Maternal and Child
Health/Family Planning Training and Research Center, funded by the Agency for International
Development of the U.S. Department of State. This center engaged in community-based training
programs across 11 African nations, including Kenya, Zaire, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia, and
Ethiopia. It was designated one of seven World Health Organization Collaborating Centers worldwide.
When President Richard Nixon signed the Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act in 1972, Meharry launched
its Sickle Cell Center, one of the first ten in the nation, through funds appropriated by the Tennessee
legislature. Investigators from multiple disciplines, including J. K. Haynes, Alan Zelman, Katherine
Shaffer, Salil Das, and P. K. Adikary, joined forces to provide sickle cell education, screening,
counseling, and research. Their studies focused on pain management, stress, and vascular complications
in African American patients. The center continues to serve as a gateway to care for newborns identified
with sickle cell disease, thalassemias, and other hemoglobin disorders across 40 counties in Middle
Tennessee.
D. B. Todd Jr., M.D., the first African American cardiovascular surgeon in Nashville, performed the
first open-heart surgery at Meharry in 1972. He is also the namesake of Dr. D. B. Todd Jr. Boulevard in
North Nashville, the mailing address of his alma mater, Meharry Medical College.
Research Leadership and the Centers of Excellence Model
In 1978, President Elam’s call for greater accountability, decentralization, and competitiveness led to the
appointment of Charles W. Johnson Sr., M.D., as Meharry’s first Vice President for Research. Vice
President Johnson pioneered the College’s thematic Centers of Excellence model to build research
strength in emerging areas through federal programs. He founded Student Research Day at Meharry in
1956, an enduring tradition that continues to inspire generations of researchers and now proudly bears
his name. Through his book, “The Spirit of a Place Called Meharry: The Strength of its Past to Shape
the Future”, he thoughtfully captured the resilience, struggle, and triumph that define Meharry’s place
in the biomedical community.
His successor, Dr. Fred Jones, who assumed the role in 1982, continued this momentum. Their work
culminated in Meharry’s receipt of a Research Centers in Minority Institutions grant from the National
Center for Research Resources in 1985. That award fueled the recruitment of additional investigators,
including Drs. George Hill, James Townsel, Gautam Chaudhuri, and Fernando Villalta, who helped
build programs in molecular parasitology, neurobiology, immunology, and tropical disease biology.
Dr. Dolores Shockley—the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1955—made history
again in 1988 as the first Black woman to chair a pharmacology department in the United States. At
Meharry, she established a pioneering drug addiction research program funded by the National Institute
on Drug Abuse.
That same year, in 1988, Dr. George C. Hill became Vice President for Research. While he expanded
molecular parasitology programs, Dr. James G. Townsel advanced the neuroscience studies. These
efforts led to the recruitment of Manuel Valenzuela, Raju Ramasamy, Clive Charlton, Sukhbir Mokha,
and Sanika Chirwa, among others. Vice President Hill’s vision also led to the establishment of a
National Symposium on Molecular Parasitology at Meharry, supported by NIH funding, and a hands-on
summer molecular methods course led by Gautam Chaudhuri for high school and undergraduate
students across the country.
Clinical Reach, Public Health, and Community Impact
During this period, President David Satcher initiated the use of Meharry’s Hubbard Hospital by the City
of Nashville in 1988, laying the groundwork for the integration of Hubbard Hospital with Metropolitan
Nashville General Hospital in 1994, when the latter relocated to Meharry’s campus. This development helped facilitate the creation of a Clinical Research Center supported by NIH and Department of Defense funding awarded to Salil Das for studies on the effects of physical stress in patients with sickle cell disease. Meharry also established some of the earliest structured residency opportunities available to Black physicians in the United States. Through Hubbard Hospital and other clinical training sites, generations of physicians received training in surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics, and public health practice.
President Satcher went on to serve as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and
later as the 16th Surgeon General of the United States. His leadership helped shape national policy on
public health, prevention, and health promotion, reflecting Meharry’s enduring influence on American
health leadership.
Matthew Walker Sr., M.D., a 1934 graduate of Meharry Medical College, became one of the first
African American neurosurgeons in the United States. Practicing in Nashville, he performed some of the
earliest neurosurgical procedures in the American South and later founded the Matthew Walker
Comprehensive Health Centers in Middle Tennessee. His career represented a major milestone in the
advancement of specialized surgical care and biomedical research on wound healing, peritonitis, and
adrenocortical response. In 1944, he was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as Surgeon in the
Reserve of the United States Public Health Service. At the time of his death in 1978, he was widely said
to have contributed to the surgery education of roughly half of Black physicians in the United States.
Population Health and Translational Research
Population-based studies conducted through Meharry’s collaborations with Nashville General Hospital,
the Veterans Administration, and community clinics helped establish early evidence of populationspecific
differences in blood pressure regulation, salt sensitivity, and end-organ damage. Meharry
investigators found that African Americans often responded better to certain classes of antihypertensive
medications, such as diuretics and calcium channel blockers, and might be less responsive to ACE
inhibitors when used alone. These findings contributed to Joint National Committee hypertension
treatment guidelines, especially JNC 6 (1997) and JNC 7 (2003), which emphasized population-specific
considerations in hypertension management.
In 1999, Meharry forged a partnership with Vanderbilt University through a supplement to the
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute. Under the
leadership of Meharry faculty member Samuel Adunyah and then-VICC Director Harold Moses, this
collaboration led to one of only two U54 NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center Partnership grants awarded
in the nation in 2001. The partnership continues today and was expanded in 2011 to include Tennessee
State University, under the leadership of Baqar Husaini, to strengthen community outreach in cancer.
In 2009, NIH awarded the Meharry Translational Research Center grant to establish a national model for
clinical and translational research focused on disproportionate health outcomes in infectious diseases,
including HIV/AIDS, and in women’s health. This effort was led by James E. K. Hildreth and Ayman
Al-Hendy. Since then, Meharry’s global footprint has expanded further through the President’s
Emergency Plan Fund for AIDS Relief, supporting HIV/AIDS care in Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda.
The program resulted in dramatic 98% reductions in mortality among HIV-infected mothers and infants.
Precision Medicine, Data Science, and Global Health
Long before the rise of large-scale global health programs in the twenty-first century, Meharry Medical
College had already established an international presence through medical training, public health
outreach, and research collaborations. Faculty and graduates frequently participated in medical missions
and public health initiatives in Africa, the Caribbean, and other regions where access to medical training
and care was limited. These early international engagements emphasized disease surveillance, maternal
health, infectious disease control, and capacity building in biomedical research. The experience gained
through these global programs laid important groundwork for Meharry’s later leadership in global health
research and genomics.
Responding to President Barack Obama’s 2015 Executive Order that elevated precision medicine as a
national priority, President James Hildreth shifted Meharry’s research emphasis toward precision and
personalized medicine. Guided by the Meharry 2026 Sesquicentennial Strategic Plan adopted in 2016,
the College undertook a bold transformation. President Hildreth described this as a “proactive posture
for adaptation and innovation.” The plan integrated biomedical, clinical, community health, and policy
research to help realize a healthier future for all.
Investments were made in high-throughput genomics, proteomics, imaging, bioinformatics, and data
science. Meharry researchers now pursue multi-omics and systems biology approaches to connect
molecular mechanisms with genetics, epigenetics, lifestyle, and environmental factors that shape health.
This integrated approach aims to move symptom-based intuitive medicine toward highly specific,
personalized, evidence-based care.
In 2018, Meharry launched the Data Science Institute, which was elevated to the School of Applied
Computational Sciences in 2021 under the leadership of Dean Fortune Mhlanga. In 2023, Meharry also
established the Institute for Global Public Health, later accredited as the School of Global Health under
the leadership of Dean Daniel Dawes.
In the twenty-first century, Meharry Medical College has continued to shape national public health
leadership. Under President James E. K. Hildreth, the institution became a respected voice in national
conversations on infectious disease, vaccination, and biomedical innovation during the COVID-19
pandemic. Meharry’s leadership helped inform public understanding and scientific dialogue during one
of the most consequential global public health crises of the modern era.
A Contemporary Platform for Innovation
Today, Meharry is a national resource at the intersection of science and health. Its research enterprise is
rooted in a historic mission and an inspired culture, now amplified by modern tools, global reach, and
unwavering purpose.
Meharry Medical College continues to expand its research initiatives to address unmet health needs. Its
national and international research and training partnerships include:
• NIH AIM-AHEAD Southeast Hub, advancing artificial intelligence and machine learning
capabilities to improve health outcomes
• Center for Genome Research, funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute
• NSF Innovation-Corps Mid-South Hub, promoting biomedical entrepreneurship
• Chan Zuckerberg Initiative partnership to accelerate precision health research at HBCUs
• Dry January USA, a public health initiative promoting healthier relationships with alcohol in rural
and urban communities
• Beacon of Hope, funded by Novartis, Sanofi, and others to strengthen clinical and translational
research
• Equitable Breakthroughs in Medicine Development (EQBMED), funded by the Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America, to diversify clinical trials
• The Diaspora Human Genomics Institute (DHGI), a nonprofit chartered by Meharry Medical
College to improve the quality of the human condition and its environment, with particular focus on
people of African ancestry
• Together for CHANGE (T4C), a biopharma-supported initiative governed by DHGI to build a
reference genome resource for African ancestry populations and expand STEM pathways
• Meharry DNA Learning Center, in collaboration with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, exposing K-
12 students and educators to DNA biology
In recognition of its global public-private research collaborations and commitment to improving health
outcomes, Meharry Medical College was named a member of the United Nations Academic Impact for
contributions aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals related to health and reduced inequality.
The Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, a peer-reviewed academic journal owned
and edited at Meharry, focuses on contemporary health issues affecting medically underserved
populations in the Americas, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and dispossessed indigenous
communities worldwide. It is recognized as one of the leading health policy journals in the United States
and is designated a core journal for public health practice by the Medical Library Association.
Meharry Vice Presidents for Research
- Charles W. Johnson Sr., M.D. (1978 –1982)
- Fred Jones, Ph.D. (1982 –1998)
- George C. Hill, Ph.D. (1998 – 2002)
- Maria F. Lima, Ph.D. (Interim) (2002 – 2005)
- Lee E. Limbird, Ph.D. (2005 – 2007)
- James G. Townsel, Ph.D. (Interim) (2008 – 2009)
- Russell E. Poland, Ph.D. (2009 – 2015)
- Maria F. Lima, Ph.D. (2017 – 2019)
- James E.K. Hildreth, Ph.D., M.D. (Interim) (2019 – 2020)
- Anil Shanker, Ph.D. (Interim) (2020 – present)
Selected References
Townsend, A. M. “Report of Commission for Study of Pellagra.” Journal of the National Medical
Association, vol. 11, no. 2, 1910, pp. 252-264.
Johnson, C. W. The Spirit of a Place Called Meharry: The Strength of Its Past to Shape the Future. Hillsboro Press, 2000.