OMRF Head to Toe

The Brain

The Ears

The Heart

The Lungs

The Joints

The Feet

Donor and Financial Information

2008 Publications

Okay, let’s try a slightly different formulation: One hundred trillion cells. And that, in a nutshell, captures the paradox that is the human body, something at once elegantly straightforward and staggeringly complex.

When Leonardo da Vinci sketched his Vitruvian man in 1487, physicians believed that the body was composed of four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. Sickness, they theorized, occurred due to an imbalance in the humors. Thus, when a patient fell ill, the physician would prescribe a regimen of therapy designed to restore the equilibrium.

Five hundred twenty-one years later, da Vinci’s drawing still stands as the model of the human form. Its observations about ideal human proportions (the armspan equals the height, the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows is one-third of the length of the face) have largely withstood the test of time. Meanwhile, you’d be hard-pressed to find a modern physician who treats feverish patients with blood-letting and purging.

Thanks to advances in medical research, we now know that the body of an average adult contains about 6.7 x 1027 atoms and is composed of 60 different chemical elements. And that non-steroidal anti-inflammatories are more likely to control a fever than a good leeching.

At the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, we work each day to unlock those mysteries. In these pages, you’ll learn about some of the remarkable progress we made in 2008.

At OMRF, scientists employ technology—DNA sequencing, cell sorting, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy—that would boggle the mind of a 15th-century physician. But our mission remains one with his: helping people live longer, healthier lives.