William S. Pierce, M.D.
Evan Pugh Emeritus Professor of Surgery
Pennsylvania State University
"We started an artificial heart and circulatory assist program at the Penn State College of Medicine in 1970 and allied ourselves with the College of Engineering there. We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to raise funds. It was difficult to get money.
One thing that was the biggest help to me was the Whitaker funding.
It's hard to believe, but in 1970 there was no bioengineering program at Penn State. But because of the association with the engineering school at the main campus and the medical people at Hershey, we developed a cadre of people who were interested in using their talents to work on the heart project, and within a couple of years a graduate program in bioengineering was established at the main campus.
The device that we developed remains today the only device that can be used to support the main pumping chamber [left ventricle] or lung pumping chamber [right ventricle] or both in patients who await heart transplants.
It has a significant usefulness and most every group in the world that has a heart transplant program has our pump, which has its roots in our Penn State lab and the Whitaker funding.
We've been very proud of that, and there have been a lot of lives saved as a result."
Pierce received the foundation's first research grant in 1976 to support his work to develop a heart assist pump. Versions of the pump are now used worldwide as both a bridge to transplant and a permanent therapeutic device. Over the last 30 years, Pierce has helped build Hershey Medical Center and Penn State into one of the world's foremost centers for research and development in heart assist pumps and total artificial hearts."
Annual Report 2002
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