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NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE AWARDS $14
MILLION TO UC DAVIS CANCER CENTER, RENEWS CENTER’S DESIGNATION
Designation benefits patients, cancer research,
region’s economy
August 2, 2005
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.)
— The National
Cancer Institute, the nation’s top cancer research organization,
has renewed its designation of UC
Davis Cancer Center for five years. The distinction comes
with $14 million in new federal funding through the year 2010
to support the cancer center’s rapidly expanding research
program, now comprising 179 scientists at work on 317 cancer projects
on three campuses.
“It’s like winning the Pulitzer twice in a row,”
said Ralph
W. deVere White, director of the UC Davis Cancer Center and
an internationally respected prostate cancer researcher. “It’s
enormously gratifying to receive this national recognition of
our unique scientific strengths and potential to impact on cancer
care here at home and worldwide.”
The hard-won renewal follows an exhaustive scientific and administrative
evaluation of UC Davis Cancer Center programs by a 23-member NCI-appointed
review panel made up of directors and scientists from top cancer
centers around the country.
California has nine NCI-designated
centers. Only two are in Northern California, at UC San Francisco
and UC Davis. UC Davis Cancer Center serves the Central Valley
and inland Northern California, a region the size of Pennsylvania.
Besides driving cancer research, an NCI-designated cancer center
is an engine for regional economic growth, said Oleg Kaganovich,
chief executive officer of the Sacramento
Area Regional Technology Alliance. “This funding and
designation is of enormous importance to our region as the greater
Sacramento area continues to grow into a Northern California life
science hub,” Kaganovich said.
But the impact of NCI designation is greatest on the more than
8,000 patients every year who depend on UC Davis Cancer Center
for state-of-the-art treatment and access to clinical trials.
Penny Rosner, 51, a Redding nurse, had advanced lung cancer and
was considered terminally ill four years ago. She was referred
to UC Davis Cancer Center, where she enrolled in a clinical trial
of a new molecularly targeted drug, Iressa. The trial was designed
by the director of clinical research at UC Davis Cancer Center,
one of the first lung cancer specialists in the nation to see
Iressa’s potential for treating Rosner’s relatively
rare form of lung cancer, known as broncheoloalveolar carcinoma.
Today Rosner’s cancer has retreated and remains stable.
She is working, traveling with her husband of 34 years, skiing
with her family and watching her three grandchildren grow up.
“I have been living life to the fullest,” Rosner says.
“I so appreciate every day.”
In addition to caring for individual patients, it is the mission
and obligation of NCI-designated cancer centers to improve the
health of communities. NCI funding has allowed UC Davis Cancer
Center to lead a national effort to reduce cancer in Asian Americans.
UC Davis researchers will use similar strategies in other ethnic
groups, with a goal of making the Sacramento region the first
in the nation to eliminate ethnic disparities in cancer. UC Davis
is also partnering with county government, other health-care systems
and community organizations to reduce the cancer mortality rate
in Yuba County. Yuba County’s age-adjusted death rate for
all cancers is 236.1 per 100,000, the highest rate of any county
in California.
The NCI, a component of the National Institutes of Health, was
established under the National Cancer Act of 1937 as the federal
government's principal agency for cancer research and training.
The National Cancer Act of 1971 broadened the scope and responsibilities
of the NCI and gave rise to the NCI’s Cancer Centers Program.
The program supports 60 NCI-designated cancer centers throughout
the United States to sustain broad-based, coordinated, interdisciplinary
programs in cancer research. According to the NCI, designated
institutions “are characterized by scientific excellence
and capability to integrate a diversity of research approaches
to focus on the problem of cancer.”
UC Davis Cancer Center first achieved NCI designation in July
2002. That designation came with a $3.9 million grant over three
years. The cancer center’s research partnership with Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, the first of its kind in the
nation, was a key factor in winning designation. In that partnership,
physicians and scientists work to turn technology developed for
the defense industry into new cancer therapies, detection methods
and prevention strategies.
In addition to its main facility on the UC Davis Medical Center
campus, UC Davis Cancer Center has affiliate cancer centers in
Marysville (Fremont-Rideout
Cancer Center) and Merced (Mercy
UC Davis Cancer Center) and an infusion center in Roseville.
The UC Davis Cancer Center research program brings together scientists
from 17 schools, divisions and programs on three campuses —
the UC Davis Medical Center campus in Sacramento, the main UC
Davis campus in Davis and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in Livermore. This blend of institutions and disciplines gives
the research program a unique personality and the potential to
contribute to the national cancer agenda in important ways.
In Sacramento, the research program draws investigators from the
UC Davis School of Medicine as well as the California Department
of Health Services and the National Science Foundation-sponsored
Center
for Biophotonics, Science and Technology. In Davis, it draws
scientists from the world-renowned UC
Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, the College
of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the departments
of nutrition,
chemistry
and biomedical
engineering, among others, as well as the USDA
Western Human Nutrition Research Center. At Livermore, home
of the world’s fastest computer and most powerful laser,
40 scientists are actively engaged in cancer research through
the UC Davis Cancer Center research program.
UC Davis
Health System has invested $90 million in the cancer program
over the
past 15 years, recruiting 65 new research scientists and building
a 52,000-square-foot Cancer Center and 50,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art
cancer research facility. A 7,000- square-foot expansion of the
Cancer Center’s radiation oncology clinic was recently completed.
Another $15 million has been committed for additional new research
and clinical space.
Since first gaining NCI designation in 2002, the Cancer Center’s
achievements include:
- increasing funding for cancer research by
48 percent, from $43.5 million to $64.4 million
- offering more than 350 clinical trials,
41 of them originated by UC Davis Cancer Center physicians
- recruiting 30 new scientists to the cancer
research program
- adding an associate director for cancer
disparities and a director of outreach research and education,
to build on cancer awareness, prevention and early detection
efforts throughout the region, especially in underserved areas
- joining the Healthy Yuba County project,
to address the cancer mortality rate in Yuba County, which is
the highest in the state
- winning a $5.5 million grant to spearhead
a national effort to address cancer disparities affecting Asian
Americans
A list of specific research accomplishments is
available by request.
The $14 million grant accompanying NCI designation renewal is earmarked
for support of UC Davis Cancer Center administration and core research
operations, called shared resources, over the next five years. Shared
resources provide sophisticated technical services to researchers
throughout the cancer program. |
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