The Campaign for Kansas John Fitzmorris is learning a foreign language – the language of cancer. He has just been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He is afraid. He feels like he has entered a strange new country. He needs a translator – ...someone to help him make sense of what is happening to him; ...someone to give him the tools with which to fight; ...someone to ease him through the difficult journey; ...someone to turn hope into reality. Translating complex science into cures is what we do every day at The University of Kansas Cancer Center. We take horrible diseases and we break them down into molecules. We decipher the disease, and then we crack the code to unlock the best, most targeted treatment. We launch that target straight for the tumor. We render would-be killers helpless. We are the top cancer center in the world in advancing new cancer drug therapies all the way from the scientist in her lab to the patient in the fight of his life. We translate ideas to innovation in order to improve health. Translational medicine at The University of Kansas Cancer Center speeds the number and quality of new drugs, medical devices and drug-medical device combinations to patients, so we can save more lives, more quickly. Which means John Fitzmorris doesn’t have to learn the language of cancer. He has a team of translators working relentlessly so that John’s conversations focus on his future – not his cancer.
Translate (trans-leyt): to explain in terms that can be more easily understood; to move from one place to another; to transform or convert, as in: to translate hope into reality. See also: construct, decode, explain, simplify.
The Drug Hunter in Translational Medicine Translational Medicine Assay Development Lab - $1.5 Million Ross Stein, PhD
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oss Stein, PhD is what’s known as a “drug hunter,” an expert in drug discovery. Dr. Stein is co-inventor of Velcade®, one of the most successful anti-cancer agents to obtain FDA approval in the past 20 years. Success breeds success. With the accomplishments of our program to date and the expertise in drug discovery and development assembled at KU Cancer Center by Dr. Roy Jensen over the past six years, we were able to recruit one of the top drug hunters in the U.S. Dr. Stein recently came to KU Cancer Center from the Boston area, bringing with him approximately 30 years of experience in the
pharmaceutical industry as well as a track record of directing drug discovery efforts at Harvard University. Dr. Stein works alongside our cancer biologists, guiding practical applications of basic, laboratory research while turning biology into drug targets and identifying new ways of attacking cancers. Philanthropic support of $1.5 million is required to establish a laboratory at The University of Kansas Medical Center, under Dr. Stein’s leadership, to develop drug target assays which are critical to discovering new anti-cancer agents as well as identifying new anti-cancer uses for approved and abandoned drugs.
Collaborating for Cures
Translational Medicine Innovation Funds - $8 Million
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he search for cancer cures doesn’t happen in isolation, which is why KU Cancer Center creates unique partnerships internationally, nationally, and much closer to home. By leveraging our expertise with that of leading scientists around the country – at places like the National Institutes of Health, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics and the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy - together we are accomplishing what normally takes more
than a decade and billions of dollars in a large pharmaceutical company. The bottom line: it takes a village to discover and develop a new drug. We know that collaboration is the key to curing cancer. We know that using each other’s strengths is what moves us closer to lifesaving treatment. At The University of Kansas Cancer Center, we establish the right partnerships with the right experts to create the right therapies more quickly and more efficiently than ever before.
R aymond Perez, MD
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r. Ray Perez is an expert in early phase clinical trials. first-in-human trials of new drugs. He’s also an insider. There is a difference. As an Dr. Perez’s work benefits from the foresight of Johnson insider, Perez has direct access to firsthand information County voters who demonstrated their support about cancer drugs so new they don’t even have names for KU Cancer Center through the yet. As an expert, he translates that approval of a one-eighth advanced knowledge to cent sales tax in 2008. “We are the place cancer patients who However, additional aren’t ready to quit that does the best clinical trials. We are philanthropic their battle and the envy of other researchers and the support is essential makes sure they hope for patients.” to build the team receive the most of researchers who, promising new cancer -Ray Perez, MD focused on drug discovery and drugs. Like a Navy Seal leading his development, work closely with Dr. Perez to bring squad into unknown territory, Perez seeks out and finds new therapies to patients suffering from solid tumor cutting-edge therapies for patients years before those cancers such as osteosarcoma. drugs become widely available. Dr. Perez’s calling is to find new treatments to give cancer patients hope when Additional support for faculty recruitment in the they need it the most. Mission accomplished. amount of $5 million over the next five years will support junior research faculty members and Through community philanthropy and financial postdoctoral students in our MD/PhD program support from the Kansas Bioscience Authority, to support Dr. Perez and his work in translating KU Cancer Center was able to recruit Dr. Perez science into medicine. These faculty recruits will be from Dartmouth Medical School, where he instrumental in establishing a culture of clinicians served as associate professor of medicine and who have a strong commitment to translational pharmacology and toxicology and a member of research and moving discoveries from the basic the Norris Cotton Cancer Center team. Perez has made his mark in translation conducting science laboratory into the clinic.
The University of Kansas Cancer Center Translating Science into Cures First-in-Human Trials Fund - $5 Million Scott Weir, PharmD, PhD
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n a given day, you might find Scott Weir, delivering new drug therapies to patients in less PharmD, PhD in Washington, DC, working than three years, at a development cost of less on collaborative cancer projects with world-class than $3 million. researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Two examples of our success: by partnering with The The next day he’s in Wichita speaking to a group Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), the Ontario of blood cancer survivors and advocates about Cancer Institute and Beckloff Associates, IAMI what it’s like to move a drug, once approved to helped advance a promising new leukemia therapy treat toe fungus, through the lab with lightning into patients in just 13 months. And thanks to our speed to treat leukemia patients. Wherever he collaboration with LLS and the National is, Dr. Weir is innovating the way Institutes of Health, it took just new drug therapies make two years and $1 million it from the research for us to begin treating bench to the patient’s “This model is the new role bedside. His expertise of academia in cancer drug discovery.” a leukemia patient in Kansas City with a combined with the -Scott Weir, PharmD, PhD drug first approved more more than 200 years of than 25 years ago to treat industry experience that arthritis. his elite squad at the Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation (IAMI) possesses Part of the reason for our success is that each means The University of Kansas Cancer Center is able to offer encouraging new therapies to patients organization involved in discovering and developing new drugs for patients also has a financial stake in when time and hope are in short supply. the project. Research naming opportunities range from gifts in the amount of $250,000 to $1 million Discovering and developing new drugs for cancer patients simply takes too much time and costs and provide support that allows us to replicate these too much money, commonly spanning 12 to 17 successful collaborations by investing, along with years and consuming more billions of dollars. other disease-specific philanthropies, governmental This is why the Institute for Advancing Medical disease organizations or academic institutions, to Innovation (IAMI) has become a leader in innovate new uses for existing drugs to treat rare and creating unprecedented collaboration of resources neglected diseases. While we are pleased with the - to move new therapies through the pipeline progress we have made, we see endless opportunities to patients with record speed. Thanks to our for applying our successful collaborative model of innovative approach and partnerships, we are efficiency to the benefit of patients.
The Basic Science of Translational Medicine The Cancer Biology Fund - $7.5 Million Danny Welch, PhD
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anny Welch, PhD is the brilliant mind behind a new, groundbreaking, collaborative effort to find the genes responsible for shutting down cancer metastasis in order to have the greatest survival rate for individuals facing a diagnosis that was once considered terminal. An internationally renowned researcher, Dr. Welch joined KU Cancer Center from The University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he was director of the National Foundation for Cancer Research Center for Cancer Metastasis Research and the Leonard H. Robinson professor of pathology. His research focuses on understanding how tumors spread. Dr. Welch’s mission: to build at KU the
leading cancer biology research program in the nation. This is not a mission impossible for a scientist of Dr. Welch’s caliber. Of the 30 genes known to suppress the spread of tumors that researchers around the globe have discovered, Dr. Welch - as a team leader - discovered six. Over the course of the next five years, Dr. Welch, in close collaboration with Dr. Roy Jensen, will need to deploy $7.5 million, ($1.5 million annually) to build the department of cancer biology. Our leaders will accomplish this through the recruiting of faculty and the funding of novel pilot project biology research.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.� -Albert Einstein
Stephanie Grinage Vice President for Medical Development Office (913)588-5552 Home (913) 825-1727 Mobile (913) 626-9776
KU Endowment Association KU Endowment Building Suite 300 4125 Rainbow Boulevard Kansas City KS 66160 www.kuendowment.org
SGrinage@KUEndowment.org
Shawn McDaniel Development Director-KU Cancer Center Office (913) 588-5239 Mobile (785) 550-9496 SMcDaniel@KUEndowment.org
Becky Schieber Associate Development Director Office (913) 588-5961 Home (913) 441-4786 Mobile (913) 221-8722 bschieber@kuendowment.org
Stephanie Carani Associate Development Director - IAMI Medical Development Office (913) 588-5230 Mobile (573) 823-4668 SCarani@KUEndowment.org www.kucancercenter.org/give