NMU and Upper Michigan Brain Tumor Center form an alliance

MARQUETTE — Northern Michigan University and the Upper Michigan Brain Tumor Center have been working together for a long time. Friday, they made that collaboration official.

The Upper Michigan Brain Tumor Center was founded ten years ago by neurosurgeon Rich Rovin and Robert Winn. After all these years, the center has shown a lot progress and continued excitement.

“There are many things I am excited about in brain tumor research, we certainly understand now that the cells in the tumor that cause the tumor to recur or to come back, we are figuring out ways to target those cells so that is pretty exciting but for me the biggest excitement is to see the growth of our students,”, said Robert Winn.

So far, the partnership has been informal, but today Winn and Ed Banos, the CEO or UP Health System Marquette signed an agreement making it official. Having this kind of research is obviously good for the people who live in the area, but it’s also a great asset to students and faculty at Northern.

“It gives them real experience they can use and actually be involved in research in a real field side of the study. Which will open a lot of doors because a lot of students aren’t exposed to that…when they’re in undergrads and it really has opened a lot of doors for them to be interested in some of the fields going on,” said Ed Banos, the CEO of U.P. Health System Marquette. “The best thing for us is that it brings highly trained, highly qualified physicians that come up here because we also have a research capabilities that are available.”

The Brain Tumor Center is hosting the “Hope Starts Here” races tomorrow. The event includes a half marathon, five and ten–ks, a duathalon and a leisure walk. The proceeds from the races go to support research a the center.