Hospitals Join To Fight Cancer

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December 16, 1999

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HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

By William J. Cromie
Gazette Staff

Harvard Medical School, five of its affiliated hospitals, and the School of Public Health are joining together to fight cancer.

The collaborators, which conduct more than $235 million in cancer-related research each year, include Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. The combined effort, the largest private cancer-research initiative in the United States, has taken the name Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

"All of the member institutions conduct incredible basic, clinical, and population-based research," said David Nathan, president of Dana-Farber and director of the new Center. "Now we will have the mechanisms to knit these undertakings together to share resources and coordinate our efforts in a more focused and efficient manner."

"The Center is already creating this research synergy because we know researchers have found each other who would not have [done so] through our old system," notes Joseph Martin, Dean of the Medical School.

In the old system, each hospital and group of researchers competed for grants and other funds on its own. Some of this research overlapped but the scientists were not aware of it, Martin says.

Dana-Farber and Children’s Hospital have worked together for many years to provide care for children with cancer. Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General combined their adult cancer progams with those of Dana-Farber about three years ago. Discussions that led to the new center were initiated by Martin and Nathan some two years ago.

By last June, more than 800 Harvard faculty members based at the five hospitals had signed on to become members of the Center. More than half of these researchers have now begun collaborative projects, according to a statement released by the Medical School.

Earlier this year, the Schools and hospitals committed funds to create or enhance facilities that will be used jointly. The facilities include resources like gene-mapping operations and laboratories to diagnose diseases. This month, the Center launched an intranet Web service to link all the researchers.

For 26 years, Dana-Farber has been designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of a network of large regional centers that specialize in cancer studies and treatments. Harvard has submitted a proposal to the NCI to expand the Dana-Farber designation to include all the facilities of its new Center.

A key element in obtaining such a designation – and the funds that go with it – are 18 core facilities. These include large laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment that is too expensive for one institution to build or maintain. An example is a lab that develops viruses and other so-called "vectors" to carry genes into cells for the purpose of correcting errors that cause cancers.

The Center already has in place collaborative programs to study cancers of the breast, prostate, female reproductive system, bone marrow (leukemia), and lymph nodes (lymphoma). Future planning includes programs to cover lung, brain, colon, stomach, head, neck, skin, and AIDS-related malignancies.