KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? A nationally known heart researcher is the latest scientist to leave the Kansas University Medical Center, and his departure is raising questions about the effectiveness of the school’s ties with KU Med, the independent hospital with which it is affiliated.

Patrice Delafontaine, who has received about $10 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, plans to leave KU Sept. 15 for Tulane University in New Orleans. He was at KU only 2 1/2 years.

“I’ve enjoyed my time at KU,” Delafontaine said. “I think KU has potential. I’m excited about the opportunity to build a strong research and cardiovascular program out at Tulane.”

Delafontaine, who came to KU from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, plans to work with Darwin Prockop, who does stem cell research, to determine whether the cells can be used to repair a damaged heart. Most of Delafontaine’s research focuses on the molecules that stimulate the growth of new heart muscle.

“There’s very significant expertise at Tulane in cutting-edge research for hearts,” he said.

‘Structural difficulties’

While he said there were better opportunities for research at Tulane, Delafontaine acknowledged his departure also related to concerns about the current operating agreement between the KU school of medicine and KU Med.

“In order to keep the university moving forward, there are structural difficulties relating to the hospital-university relationship that need to be addressed,” Delafontaine said.

He declined to comment further on those structural difficulties.

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But other sources at KU said Delafontaine’s departure was related to KU Med’s recruitment of about 25 cardiologists from St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., a move that came only a few months after Delafontaine arrived.

The researchers contacted by the Journal-World declined to be identified for this story.

The sources said Delafontaine wanted the cardiologists at the KU Medical Center campus to be more academic- and research-oriented, and that the hospital was too focused on making money.

Barbara Atkinson, executive dean of the school of medicine, agreed that the heart research at KU was becoming more clinically oriented and less about basic research. But she said she thought the arrangement with the new cardiologists, known as Mid-America Cardiology, was working.

“We have great strength in our cardiology vision as a whole,” she said. “I think things are working really well. I do think the cardiology arrangement is in a state of evolution. But it’s good for the school and good for the (hospital).”

She said Delafontaine’s departure was part of the usual ebb and flow of being an academic medical center.

“I’m sorry he’s leaving,” she said. “But we have a lot of research going on in a lot of areas, and we’ll continue to work in less basic research that’s more of a clinical nature.”

Medical school fading?

Another researcher said downplaying the effect of Delafontaine’s research would be wrong. Delafontaine is working on a four-year, $1.5 million project from the National Institutes of Health. His team of eight scientists — who will move with him to Tulane — will make five presentations to the annual convention of the American Heart Assn. later this year.

“He’s a superstar, an absolute superstar,” the researcher said.

Concerns about the hospital-university structure also have been expressed by some other researchers who have left KU in the past two years. Those have included kidney researchers Billy Hudson and Thomas DuBose and reproductive biology specialist S.K. Dey. Michael Welch, a stroke and headache researcher who also was vice chancellor for research, recently left, as did Deborah Powell, executive dean of the school of medicine.

KU Med became a separate entity from the university in 1998, and has its own governing board. It’s a complex system that allows some university-employed physicians also to work in KU Med’s clinics, and some hospital employees also teach in the school of medicine.

Hospital officials have said the change allowed them to use operating revenues for hospital construction instead of turning over money to the state.

Atkinson said she thought the medical school’s relationship with the hospital was working fine.

But one of the researchers said that without a school of medicine administrator overseeing the hospital — as is common in most academic medical centers — KU might continue to lose top researchers.

“If your medical center isn’t interested in academic teaching excellence, you’ve got a problem,” the scientist said. “The hospital’s doing fine, but the medical school is going to fade away underneath.”