The University of Minnesota Medical School began in 1888 when three of the private medical schools in the
Twin Cities in Minnesota merged their programs to form the University of Minnesota Medical School. A fourth school was integrated in 1908. As a consequence of these mergers, the school is one of two in the state, the other being the
Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in
Rochester, Minnesota. The University of Minnesota Medical School's older buildings include the Mayo Memorial Building (1954) and Jackson Hall (1912). Jackson Hall was built as the home of the Institute of Anatomy and is still the site of
anatomy instruction for students.
Surgical operations At the hospital, John Lewis,
Walton Lillehei, Richard Varco, and others performed
open-heart surgery in 1952. The first portable
cardiac pacemaker was created by
Earl Bakken with the help of Walton Lillehei and Richard Varco in 1957. The first
pancreas-kidney transplant by Richard Lillehei and William Kelly and another first
intestinal transplant by Richard Lillehei were performed in 1966. The field of Medical Oncology was pioneered by
B.J. Kennedy later in 1972. The first total
pancreatectomy and
islet auto-transplant (T-PIAT) was performed in 1977. At the hospital, a bone marrow and cord blood transplant was performed by John Wagner and Jakub Tolar in 2007, and a
cord blood transplant aimed at curing
leukemia and
HIV/AIDS was performed in 2013. In 2014, with the support of Governor
Mark Dayton and the
Minnesota legislature, the University of Minnesota Medical School created Medical Discovery Teams (MDT) to promote the medical school. ==Academics==