Page 1                             June 1998     U Cancer Center scores major triumph     Cancer Center's bright future    Polla on biomed engineering's future  Media watch

Back Home

University of Minnesota’s Cancer Center building on East River Road. — (inset) U Cancer Center director John Kersey  announces Center’s National Cancer Institute designation, a $5.4 million boon to cancer research. Behind him (l to r): Frank Cerra, VP for Health Sciences, Cancer Center leaders Les Robison, Tucker LeBien, David Rothenberger, Norma Ramsay, Stephen Hecht, Philip McGlave, James McCarthy, Mary Sumpmann, and U President Mark Yudof. Not pictured: Jean Forster, Yoji Shimizu, Brian VanNess. (Photos by Jack Hayes)
 
 
An effort to achieve NCI designation in the 1970s failed in part because the U could not demonstrate sufficient cooperation between scientific disciplines on cancer research. Approximately 100 faculty members from all seven schools and colleges of the health sciences now contribute to the work of the Cancer Center.

To win the designation this time, Kersey, his administrative team, researchers, and other supporters have worked diligently since 1991 to meet the NCI’s rigid cancer center criteria. They’ve recruited faculty with national reputations for cancer research and treatment, raised $30 million in private contributions to get the center off the ground and build the picturesque, state-of-the-art Masonic Cancer Center Research Building on East River Road, and demonstrated considerable expertise through research and publication of hundreds of articles in scientific journals in the last five years alone.

The effort reached a peak when NCI evaluators paid a visit to the center several months ago.

“I was here for part of that inspection, and it struck me as somewhat like an inquisition,” said U President Mark Yudof at the news conference, referring to the intensity of the evaluation process. The NCI designation is “frosting on the cake” of what will be a $100 million investment by the University on molecular and cellular biology programs, he said. That initiative was helped along considerably by a $35 million appropriation by the state legislature for preliminary work on a new Molecular and Cellular Biology Institute Building.

“This is a time of great celebration,” Yudof added. “I think we’re really clicking now.”

The University has been active in cancer research for decades and is a national leader in the areas of blood and
 marrow transplantation and cancer prevention.

“We performed the first successful bone marrow transplant, and we continue to advance the technique as a cancer therapy,” Kersey said before the conference. “One of our unique areas of expertise is cancer prevention. In the 1960s, scientists here first discovered that certain vegetables can protect against cancer. Others began the fight against tobacco use by contributing to the landmark 1964 surgeon general’s report on the health hazards of smoking. Since then, faculty and their colleagues have shown nicotine to be addictive, have developed ways to reduce teenage smoking and have created strategies to help hard-core smokers quit.”

Faculty receive more than $40 million a year in cancer research funding. The Cancer Center has research programs in cancer prevention, chemoprevention and carcinogenesis, cancer etiology and risk assessment, cancer genetics, immunology, cell biology and metastasis, and transplant biology and therapy.

—Jack Hayes
 
 

 
 And away we go!

New designation catapults
Cancer Center into bright future

With an expression of jubilation made famous by the late comedian Jackie Gleason, U of M Cancer Center director John Kersey announced on May 27 that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has at long last conferred its cancer center designation on the U’s cancer research program.

“How sweet it is!” the normally reserved Kersey exclaimed at the start of a press conference covered widely by local media.

Perhaps sweetest of all is the $5.4 million in federal grant money that NCI will award the center over five years for general support of interdisciplinary cancer research. That award and the designation will lend financial stability to the center and make it easier to secure future grants, said Kersey, a leukemia expert and bone marrow transplant pioneer.

The center’s new status makes it one of 57 other cancer centers around the country, including the Mayo Clinic, which have received the blessing of NCI, one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
 

 

 

Polla unveils future of biomedical engineering
Future vision - Program from the Biomedical Engineering Institute's May 28 Vision Forum.
   

Bioartificial arteries, artificial tissues, and miniature devices that monitor and even maintain cardiovascular health are a few of the health care innovations that engineers, scientists, and biomedical companies can realize by working together.

That’s the essence of the message Dennis Polla, new director of the Biomedical Engineering Institute, delivered at a vision forum titled “Imagine what BMEI can do,” held at the Basic Sciences and Biomedical Engineering building on May 28.

To achieve these goals, Polla outlined a five-year plan for expanding interaction with industry, forming multidisciplinary University-industry research teams focused on both health and manufacturing issues, creating B.S. and B.S./M.S. degree programs to meet the growing need for biomedical engineers, and hiring five to seven new faculty members.

Polla also announced completion of BMEI’s $12 million endowment campaign, which was co-chaired by Earl Bakken and C. Walton Lillihei, who developed the pacemaker at the University in the 1950s. Lillihei was in attendance at the forum. Forty Minnesota companies comprised the core group of contributors to the capital campaign.