Full Circle: Spring 2022 O'Neal Cancer Center Magazine (Select Pages)

FULL CIRCLE CANCER CENTER CELEBRATES

GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY

THE BIG C

FIFTY YEARS IN THE EVOLUTION OF CANCER TREATMENTS

18

SPRING 2022

Welcome to the 50th anniversary edition of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center magazine. This year, we celebrate the golden anniversary of our National Cancer Institute designation, which has defined our cancer center as a national leader in cancer research and care for five decades.

Fifty years of scientific discovery and clinical excellence have gotten us to this special moment, one we don’t take for granted as we emerge from the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenges of the recent past, our outstanding providers, researchers and staff have continued to pursue the achievements that set us apart, all in pursuit of our mission to advance our understanding of cancer to improve prevention, detection, treatment and survivorship for all people.

I am honored to lead our outstanding team of clinicians and investigators, all of whom came to UAB with the same goal: to shape the current and future state of cancer care. However, we recognize that none of today’s achievements would be possible without the foundational work and lasting contributions of those who came before us, beginning in 1968 when John Durant, M.D., was recruited to lead the university’s initial cancer efforts. In 1972, Durant was at the helm to receive the designation from the National Cancer Institute that recognized us as an NCI-Designated Cancer Center. A year later, we were named an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center— one of the first eight nationwide.

Today, we are still Alabama’s only NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. It’s the word “comprehensive” that defines us. It means that we have a mandate to investigate and develop novel therapies for our patients and that we must also share our knowledge with the community for the benefit of those within our state and beyond. Whether we are seeking to reduce cancer disparities or improve cancer survival rates, it is a mandate that we have pursued in a variety of ways, many of which you will learn more about in the pages of this magazine.

Every five years, we are required to reapply for our NCI designation. In this renewal process, we must demonstrate that we are deserving of this prestigious recognition and the critical funding it provides. We are judged by the same stringent criteria as the nation’s other comprehensive cancer centers, which now total 52. I am pleased to share that last year we scored higher on our NCI core grant application than ever before.

We have many exciting plans in our future as we pursue our vision of life without cancer. Meanwhile, please join us as we celebrate the best of our efforts from our first 50 years.

Sincerely,

Barry Sleckman, M.D., Ph.D.

Director, O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center

HEERSINK SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Senior Vice President for Medicine and Dean • CEO of UAB Health System • CEO of UAB/Ascension St. Vincent’s Alliance

Selwyn M. Vickers, M.D., FACS

O’NEAL COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER SENIOR LEADERSHIP

Director

Barry Sleckman, M.D., Ph.D.

Deputy Director

Bassel El-Rayes, M.D.

Associate Director, Administration

Michael Bertram, Ph.D., MBA

Associate Director, Basic Research

Etty (Tika) Benveniste, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Cancer Prevention & Control

Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, Ph.D., R.D.

Associate Director, Community Outreach & Engagement

Monica Baskin, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Education & Training

Lalita Shevde-Samant, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Shared Resources

Erwin Van Meir, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Translational Research

Mary-Ann Bjornsti, Ph.D.

O'NEAL COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER SENIOR ADVISORS & AD HOC MEMBERS

Vice President, O'Neal Cancer Service Line

Jordan DeMoss, MSHA

Director of Cancer Network, O'Neal Cancer Service Line

Gregory Kennedy, M.D., Ph.D.

Director of Clinical Affairs, O'Neal Cancer Service Line

Helen Krontiras, M.D.

Senior Advisor, Cancer Outcomes & Survivorship

Smita Bhatia, M.D., MPH

Senior Advisor, Drug Discovery & Development

Richard Whitley, M.D.

Senior Advisor, Globalization & Cancer

Isabel Scarinci, Ph.D., MPH

O'NEAL COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER OFFICE OF DEVELOPMENT & COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Senior Director of Development

Lisa E. Roth

Director of Communications

Julie Cole Miller

Director of Development

Danya Segrest

Corporate and Special Events Manager

Mary Jane Gibson

Marketing Specialist

Anna Waters

Program Coordinator

Lauren Cicatiello

Communications Coordinator

Emma Holmes

Development Coordinator

Chase Hoyle

O’NEAL COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER MAGAZINE

Editor and Art Director

Anna Waters

Medical Advisor

Barry Sleckman, M.D., Ph.D.

Copy Editor

Emma Holmes

Writers

Joseph D. Bryant

Claudia M. Hardy

Emma Holmes

Anna Waters

Matt Windsor

Photographers

Nik Layman

Andrea Mabry

Dustin Massey

Ryan Meyer

Gregory Miller

Julie Cole Miller

Mike Strawn

Arden Ward

Steve Wood

Archival Photos

UAB Archives

Other Photo Sources

Children's of Alabama

UAB Medicine

UAB News

1971

WALLACE'S DEATH SPARKS STATEWIDE FUNDRAISING DRIVE

After former Alabama Governor Lurleen Wallace died of cancer in 1968, a grassroots fundraising campaign, called the Courage Crusade, began to raise $5 million to help fund the build of what would become the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB. With this $5 million, plus another $10 million from federal and state funds, a total of $15 million was eventually designated to build the Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute and Radiation Therapy Building, as well as the Wallace Patient Tower.

NIXON SIGNS NATIONAL CANCER ACT OF 1971

When former President Richard Nixon signed the country’s second National Cancer Act on Dec. 23, 1971, he declared a “war” on cancer. The National Cancer Act of 1971 restored and reorganized much of the authority of the National Cancer Institute, created the presidentially appointed National Cancer Advisory Board and gave the NCI more agency to develop a new National Cancer Program that would establish 15 new cancer research centers across the United States.

UAB RECEIVES FIRST CORE GRANT, CANCER CENTER DESIGNATION FROM NCI

In February 1972, two months after the National Cancer Act of 1971 was signed, UAB's cancer program director, John Durant, M.D., and his staff received a formal notice of award totaling $4.3 million in funding from the National Cancer Institute over the next three years. Upon receiving that first NCI cancer center support grant, not only was Alabama's first cancer center a reality, but it was also given the status of an NCIDesignated Cancer Center.

1973

2019

UAB 1 OF FIRST 8 CANCER CENTERS TO BE NAMED COMPREHENSIVE BY NCI

In 1972 and 1973, the National Cancer Institute began to distinguish between cancer centers that met its criteria for basic science research, centers that met its criteria for clinical research and centers that met the criteria for both. The NCI designated centers that met both sets of criteria as “comprehensive” and announced those centers in batches over the course of a few years, beginning with the first eight in June 1973. These initial eight NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers included the newly established cancer center at UAB.

CANCER SERVICE LINE BECOMES UAB MEDICINE SIGNATURE SERVICE LINE

In 2019, UAB Medicine relaunched the O'Neal Cancer Service Line as one of its signature service lines. The O'Neal Cancer Service Line is the operational arm responsible for the delivery of cancer care at UAB and, before 2019, had fallen under the sole purview of the UAB Health System. This relaunch formalized the priority of cancer care and research at UAB by housing the service line within the O’Neal Cancer Center itself, which had previously been considered a purely academic, university enterprise separate from the UAB Health System.

2022

CANCER CENTER RECEIVES

HIGHEST SCORE YET ON NCI CORE GRANT RENEWAL

In October 2021, the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center completed the final step of its 10th and most recent National Cancer Institute cancer center support grant renewal, culminating in a grant score of 20, which equates to the rank of "outstanding" in the NCI's grant application scoring system. The successful renewal of its core grant also maintains the O'Neal Cancer Center's ongoing status as an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

CENTER STAGE

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE CANCER UNIVERSE

O'Neal Cancer Center celebrates 50th anniversary of NCI designation as its comprehensive vision comes full circle

O'Neal Cancer Center staff, faculty and leadership celebrate the successful submission of the Cancer Center's 1994 National Cancer Institute core grant renewal application.

By Anna Waters

For decades after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the first National Cancer Act in 1937, most academic medical centers were still deeply hesitant and even reluctant to pursue cancer research or invest resources in clinical care for cancer patients.

The National Cancer Act of 1937 established the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, marking the first time that Congress had ever appropriated funds to support the research of a noncommunicable disease. However, after Congress approved the Public Health Service Act of 1944, which dialed back the authority of the U.S. Public Health Service, the NCI was restructured and reorganized as an operating division under the authority of the NIH.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, many clinicians, scientists and institutional leaders in medicine still believed that what little was known about cancer at the time was not enough to justify investing resources in cancer research, that the care of cancer patients was a futile exercise and that federal involvement in the research of a particular disease—in this case, cancer—would lead to a disparate allocation of resources and would indirectly take time, money and laboratory space away from other important research areas.

In their 2021 book, "Centers of the Cancer Universe: A Half-Century of Progress Against Cancer," authors Donald L. “Skip” Trump, M.D., and Eric T. Rosenthal explain that this resistance to cancer research and care was common for many scientific and medical institutions at the time.

“In the scientific community, there was—and would continue to be—reluctance to commit what some considered ‘disproportionate’ resources to any particular area of scientific research,” Trump and Rosenthal write. “In addition, there was great skepticism that the time was right for meaningful progress against cancer.”

However, interest in cancer research and federal funding was growing among the general public, driven by a wave of cancer advocates, grassroots organizations and powerful philanthropic supporters. In 1969, the Citizens Committee for the Conquest of Cancer even paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times.

The ad called for then-President Richard Nixon to expand federal support for cancer research, comparing the mission of finding a cure for cancer to that of landing a man on the moon.

By 1970, cancer had become the No. 2 cause of death in the United States, leading to the formation of a team of respected physicians and scientists, called the National Panel of Consultants on the Conquest of Cancer, who presented a report to the president and to Congress that laid out a new plan for progress on the cancer front. In the report, the panel wrote: “The long-term future may belong to the immunologist and the geneticist, the intermediate future to the chemotherapist, but the present and immediate future belong in the main to the surgeon and to some extent the radiologist.”

After a series of additional reports, panels, bills and directives from both advocates and critics of the expanded federal intervention in cancer research funding favored by the panel, Nixon signed the country’s second National Cancer Act on Dec. 23, 1971, declaring a “war” on cancer.

This National Cancer Act of 1971 restored and reorganized much of the authority of the NCI. In addition to creating the presidentially appointed National Cancer Advisory Board, the act gave the NCI more autonomy than other divisions of the NIH, including the agency to award funding and contracts for cancer research, to appoint advisory committees, to create a global cancer research data bank, to expand cancer research facilities across the country and, with the help of the National Cancer Advisory Board, to develop a new National Cancer Program that would establish 15 new cancer research centers throughout the United States.

These 15 new cancer research centers, then called National Research & Demonstration Centers, were each awarded an NCI support grant of up to $5 million to develop the infrastructure to support “clinical research, training and demonstration of advanced diagnostic and treatment methods relating to cancer,” according to the original language of the bill. Among those 15 was the University of Alabama at Birmingham—then called the University of Alabama in Birmingham, which also housed the University of Alabama School of Medicine, now named the UAB Heersink School of Medicine.

1946

First plans drawn for cancer facility in Alabama

1955

First longrange planning document shows cancer institute

1968

1968

1968

Courage

1968

Dr. John Durant recruited to UAB as cancer planning coordinator

1970

UAB

1970 Courage Crusade reaches goal of raising $5 million in donations and pledged donations for Lurleen B. Wallace Memorial Hospital Fund

1970

UAB awarded planning grant from National Cancer Institute

Gov. Lurleen Wallace dies from cancer while serving in office

Gov. Lurleen Wallace's successor, Gov. Albert Brewer, initiates statewide fundraising drive known as the Courage Crusade

formalizes cancer program and appoints Dr. John Durant program director

Crusade establishes objective of building Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute at UAB

1971

President Richard Nixon signs National Cancer Act of 1971

1971

UAB named one of 15 new cancer research centers to join NCI's National Cancer Program

1972

UAB officially receives first NCI cancer center support grant, totaling $4.3 million in funding over three years

1972

UAB becomes one of nation's first NCI-Designated Cancer Centers

1972

NCI matches

Courage Crusade pledges with grants to fund construction of first Cancer Center structure, the Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute

1973

UAB Cancer Center named one of first eight NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers

1973

Construction for Lurleen B. Wallace Memorial Hospital, later called Wallace Patient Tower, receives $2 million pledge from state revenue sharing

1973

Courage Crusade ensures pledges fulfilled and donations received as additional local, state and federal funds reach total of $10 million

LASTING LEGACY

KEMP RECALLS NEARLY 50 YEARS AT CANCER CENTER

Joan Kemp is a living legend at the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB. When she began her career working for John Durant, M.D., in September 1969, he had only been serving as the cancer planning coordinator at UAB for about 14 months. At the time, Kemp was the sole member of Durant’s support staff.

“There was not much in the way of cancer at UAB during this time,” Kemp said.

Once UAB formalized its cancer program in 1970, Durant was named its director and Kemp assistant to the director. She worked with Durant to submit UAB’s first National Cancer Institute planning grant and, over the next 48 years at the Cancer Center, submitted the first nine NCI core grant renewal applications, all of which were successful in securing the Cancer Center’s comprehensive designation from the NCI.

When Durant left UAB in 1982, Kemp continued to serve in her role as assistant to former directors Albert LoBuglio, M.D., who led the Cancer Center from 1983 to 2004, and Edward Partridge, M.D., who assumed the position in 2007. Kemp remained assistant to the director, as well as director of operations, throughout Partridge’s tenure until they both retired in 2017.

“Once I started there, I never even looked for another job," Kemp said.

In 2012, the LoBuglios, the Partridges and the wife of the late Durant, Mary Sue Durant, established an endowment to create the Joan Kemp Outstanding Service Award. The award is presented to staff who carry on Kemp’s legacy of passion and service to the Cancer Center.

“I always went to Joan for perspective,” said Beena Thannickal, the award's current holder and the O'Neal Cancer Center's former communications director. “You could say that know-how came from her long history with the Cancer Center, but I would also say it’s who Joan is. She's kind, she's humble and she cares."

History in the making

After the death of former Alabama Governor Lurleen Wallace to cancer in 1968, a grassroots fundraising campaign, called the Courage Crusade, was well on its way to its $5 million goal to build the state’s first cancer hospital. In its first issue, published in June 1971, the Courage Crusade’s newsletter printed a letter from the president of the Lurleen B. Wallace Memorial Cancer Hospital Fund inviting the people of Alabama to contribute to the fund. A copy of the newsletter, including the letter, was sent to Nixon after his visit to Birmingham in May, just a few months before he signed the National Cancer Act of 1971.

“It is particularly heartening to learn about the University of Alabama’s deep concern and interest in cancer research and training,” Nixon wrote back in his response, adding “the time has now come for us to put our money where our hopes are, and I am hopeful that by working together, the government and the men and women in our great medical research centers will find a cure against cancer and eliminate this enemy of mankind from our world.”

As public interest in building this new cancer research and treatment facility in Alabama continued to grow, UAB recruited John Durant, M.D., to serve as cancer planning coordinator in 1968 and, upon formalizing the cancer program in 1970, named Durant its first director. Alongside Durant was a young Joan Kemp, who had begun working as Durant’s assistant just 14 months after he joined the faculty at UAB.

In 1970, Kemp helped Durant submit UAB’s first NCI planning grant, the first of many grants she would submit in her 48 years as assistant to the director.

“He was such a visionary in how he pulled off our first designation,” Kemp said. “He used his creative talents and all the resources that he could pull together at UAB with very little support and very little manpower. He was the perfect person to be the founding director.”

Their hard work paid off a few months later when Durant and Kemp received an award letter for a $254,334 planning grant from the NCI to help lay the foundation of what would become the state of Alabama’s first cancer center.

CENTER STAGE 1973

The public push for an in-state cancer center at that time was largely led by the Courage Crusade, but more than half of the $5 million raised for the proposed center came from small, individual contributions, each generally between $5 and $20. Even schoolchildren donated their boxes of pennies and nickels to the fund.

As a result of this statewide demonstration of dedication to the cause, the NCI seemed to trust that Durant, the medical school and the institutional leadership at UAB would follow through on their commitment to establishing and maintaining the kind of cancer center that the NCI and the people of Alabama hoped to build.

In February 1972, roughly two months after Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, Durant and Kemp received another letter in the mail from the NCI—a formal notice of award totaling $4.3 million in funding over the next three years. With their first NCI cancer center support grant in hand, it was official: The cancer center was a reality.

Designation in the details

Initially, before the term was formalized, the NCI referred to all its National Research & Demonstration Centers as “comprehensive cancer centers,” but the need to differentiate the rising quantity of these centers soon beget the need to define what it meant for a cancer center to be truly “comprehensive.”

Many of the chronological details have been lost to time, but from 1972 to 1973, the NCI began making distinctions between cancer centers that met its criteria for basic science research, centers that met its criteria for clinical research and centers that met its criteria for both. Fifty years later, these centers are categorized as “NCIDesignated Cancer Centers,” “NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers” or “Basic Laboratory Cancer Centers,” the latter of which generally focus on basic science and preclinical, translational research while working with other institutions to apply their scientific findings.

The NCI designated centers that met its criteria for both clinical research and basic science research as “comprehensive” and identified the centers worthy of that designation over the course of a few years, announcing them in batches, beginning with the first eight in June 1973.

These first eight NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers included UAB, where researchers, clinicians, staff and leadership had already been working diligently to address the burden of cancer for the people of Alabama.

Over the next three years, the NCI announced additional NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, bringing the total number of all designated centers to 19 in 1976. By then, the Cancer Center at UAB had moved into the 38,000-square-foot Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute and Radiation Therapy Building, which represented the culmination of the years of public and philanthropic advocacy that the Courage Crusade had kicked off in 1968.

Also in 1976, the NCI launched its Cancer Information Service, a toll-free telephone service for health professionals and the general public. To use the service, anyone could call 1 (800) 4-CANCER and speak to a team typically staffed by each cancer center. The service came to UAB a few years after its initial launch, and in 1980, Cancer Center staff members received their first call.

“A diagnosis of cancer has always been one of the scariest realities one can face, and it deserves a team of professionals who understand each patient’s needs,” said Jordan DeMoss, MSHA, vice president of the O'Neal Cancer Service Line at UAB. “Today, we still use dedicated phone lines for our patients that link each of our new cancer patients to a nurse navigator who remains by the patient’s side through the treatment journey.”

Combined total of $15 million designated for construction of Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute and Wallace Patient Tower

1974

UAB earns national acclaim for studies in antibody-assisted cytotoxicity under the direction of Dr. Edward Lamon

1974

UAB breaks ground on Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute

1974

Alabama Breast Cancer Project, led by Dr. William Maddox and other faculty, is initiated to evaluate results of radical versus modified radical mastectomy

1974

Statewide program, led by Dr. John Carpenter, is instituted to evaluate adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer

1975

Dr. Max Cooper recruited to UAB to initiate Cancer Center's immunobiology program

1975

UAB awarded cancer control developmental grant led by Dr. Richard Gams

Cancer Center staff and volunteers operate the Cancer Information Service, a toll-free telephone line established by the NCI in 1976. The service, funded by the NCI and the American Cancer Society, was introduced at UAB in 1980.

1975

Dr. William Crist recruited to UAB to start pediatric oncology program

1975

Today, the distinction between a cancer center designated by the NCI and a cancer center designated as “comprehensive” by the NCI is similar to what it was back in the early 1970s, but with the addition of criteria for cancer epidemiology, prevention and control. While an NCI-Designated Cancer Center must meet the NCI’s standards for one of three areas—cancer prevention, basic science research or clinical research and services—an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center must meet the standards for all three of those areas.

In their book, Trump and Rosenthal describe six essential characteristics of an effective NCI-Designated Cancer Center that leaders of the NCI Office of Cancer Centers, senior advisors to the NCI and individual cancer center leaders have identified as necessary for cancer centers to address in their NCI cancer center support grant—commonly called a “core grant”— application. These characteristics include the center's physical space, organizational capabilities, transdisciplinary collaboration and coordination, scientific focus and institutional commitment, as well as the center director’s expertise and vision.

“Continued growth and improvement in these six essential characteristics enable the O’Neal to meet its mission of advancing our understanding of cancer to improve prevention, detection, treatment and survivorship for all people and to make our vision of life without cancer a reality for everyone,” said Barry Sleckman, M.D., Ph.D., who joined the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB in January 2020 to serve as the Cancer Center’s new director.

To be eligible for the NCI's comprehensive designation, cancer centers must have at least three research programs, a shared resource for biostatistics and a robust clinical trials program that effectively accrues participants to studies and provides substantial education to assure and inform the public on how trials work. An NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center must also identify the geographic area it serves or intends to serve, referred to as its catchment area; define the problems with cancer that are most relevant to its catchment area; and serve its catchment area, as well as a broader population, via the research it conducts, the cancer control activities it undertakes, the communities it engages and the outreach it performs.

“We are forging new partnerships across the state in alignment with our UAB Health System affiliations to play a role in filling the gaps in care across our state to ensure no patient leaves Alabama for cancer care,” DeMoss said.

In 2017, the NCI began requiring each of its comprehensive cancer centers to incorporate into the center’s institutional structure an office dedicated to community outreach and engagement. This move has contributed to much of the success of the O’Neal Cancer Center, its Office of Community Outreach & Engagement and its programs in cancer control and population sciences, which are also required for the NCI’s comprehensive designation. Similarly, the center is expected to train biomedical scientists and health care professionals to achieve its scientific mission, as is the case in the O’Neal Cancer Center's Cancer Training & Career Development Office.

Comprehensive autonomy

Upon officially receiving its first NCI core grant in 1972, the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center was established as an NCI-Designated Cancer Center, and upon the NCI’s decision to further designate cancer centers as “comprehensive” in 1973, the O’Neal Cancer Center became one of the NCI’s first eight NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers. Since its original comprehensive designation from the NCI, the O'Neal Cancer Center and UAB Medicine have worked together to bring comprehensive care and research to the people of Alabama.

In 2008, the O’Neal Cancer Center created the Integrated Multidisciplinary Cancer Care Program to unite the various specialists, modalities and treatment approaches in cancer care and to streamline the process of receiving cancer treatment at UAB for patients and their families. Then, in June 2011, the O’Neal Cancer Center launched the Cancer Care Network, an affiliation between the Cancer Center and other community cancer centers and hospitals in Alabama and Georgia, that allowed the Cancer Center to support the growth of its affiliates’ cancer programs at a local level by providing each affiliated center with access to the O’Neal Cancer Center’s best practices in cancer care, to its novel clinical trials and support services, to educational resources and opportunities for providers and to the expertise of its researchers.

Dr. Richard Compans recruited to UAB to establish virology program 1975

Dr. Charles Balch recruited to UAB to lead surgical oncology program 1975

Dr. Seng-jaw Soong recruited to Cancer Center to develop newly established Biostatistics Unit 1975

Southeastern Cancer Study Group centered at UAB and chaired by Dr. John Durant 1976 Cancer Center moves into new, 38,000square-foot Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute and Radiation Therapy Building 1976

Dr. Max Cooper establishes initial delineation of pre-B cell leukemia as distinct category of childhood leukemia

Drs. Richard Whitley and Charles Alford recognized as first in the world to demonstrate that intravenous drugs can be used to successfully treat viral infection 1977

Dr. Seng-Jaw Soong named director of Cancer Center Biostatistics Unit

1979

“Being comprehensive is dynamic and in continuous evolution,” DeMoss said. “From ensuring our patients have access to the latest in precision oncology to finding novel ways of supporting cancer patients and their families through our virtual Arts in Medicine program, we will never stop refining what comprehensive means in terms of cutting-edge cancer care.”

One of the goals of the National Cancer Act of 1971 and of the NCI’s National Cancer Program was to protect the autonomy of the NCI director and that of cancer center directors, who are required by the NCI to have more institutional authority than department chairs and to have some control over the provision of clinical cancer care. At many matrixed academic medical centers like UAB, that provision of clinical cancer care is managed by a cancer service line, the operational arm of all clinical cancer care at an institution.

In 2019, UAB Medicine revamped the O’Neal Cancer Service Line, which had traditionally fallen under the sole purview of the UAB Health System. Its relaunch as a “signature service line” formalized the priority of cancer care at UAB and UAB Medicine, while reworking the existing organizational structure to ensure that the service line was ostensibly housed within the O’Neal Cancer Center, which had previously been considered a purely academic, university enterprise separate from the UAB Health System.

While the NCI does not evaluate the clinical outcomes of its designated cancer centers, the designation itself has become important to other measures, such as U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals list, which ranks hospitals across the country using criteria that include consideration for a cancer center's NCI designation. Last year, UAB was ranked No. 25 in the 2020-2021 list of Best Hospitals for Cancer— the highest rank the O’Neal Cancer Center has ever achieved.

“What distinguishes cancer care at NCIDesignated Cancer Centers from care at other facilities are the NCI requirements that comprehensive cancer centers must carry out cutting-edge research in cancer prevention and care and that they must make what is learned from this research available to cancer patients through clinical trials,” Sleckman said. “It is really what makes cancer care at NCI-Designated Cancer Centers the best of cancer care.”

FROM THE ARCHIVES

FORTY YEARS OF PIONEERS, IN KEMP'S OWN WORDS

The following remarks were originally made by Joan Kemp, former assistant to the director of the O'Neal Cancer Center, on Feb. 24, 2011, at the unveiling of a commissioned portrait of the Cancer Center's first three directors. In her own words, Kemp fondly describes each of the three directors under whom she served in her 48 years at the Cancer Center.

"First, the founding director, Dr. John R. Durant, AKA the visionary. The most remarkable thing that I can share with you today regarding Dr. Durant is that I was always in 'the current day.' Dr. Durant was 20 years in the future."

1983 – 2004

"This man can do more with a yellow pad and a No. 2 pencil than any individual on the face of the earth. During his tenure as director, he did not have a computer on his desk. The staff would jokingly refer to the pencil and paper as his hard drive. The software was his brain."

2007 – 2017

"Then there's Dr. Edward Partridge, the true Southern gentleman and consummate leader, who has spent the last 20 years of his life building the community infrastructure to make sure that every individual in our region, no matter their socioeconomic status, has access to quality medical care and screening."

Lurleen B. Wallace Patient Tower opens at UAB in University Hospital

1981

Dr. Richard Whitley’s research on pharmacology of Ara A and its efficacy in herpes zoster positions UAB as leader in field of antiviral chemotherapy

1981

NCI funds nutrition center at UAB to examine problems related to nutrition in cancer

1982

Dr. John Durant steps down from position as Cancer Center director

1983

Dr. Albert LoBuglio recruited to UAB to direct Cancer Center and Division of Hematology & Oncology

1983 Cancer Center launches nutrition program under leadership of Dr. Carlos Krumkieck

1983

Dr. Robert Wells recruited to UAB to head molecular genetics program

1983

UAB Hematology & Oncology Clinic opens in Russell Ambulatory Center

1984

Dr. Robert Diasio recruited to UAB to begin cancer pharmacology program

On Edward E. Partridge, M.D.

On Albert F. LoBuglio, M.D.

On John R. Durant, M.D. 1970 – 1982