Mayo Clinic Receives Gift for Cancer Care and Research

Thursday, December 08, 2005

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Mayo Clinic has received a $48.98 million gift from The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation to establish a center devoted to finding and implementing new treatments for cancer. The Mayo Clinic Schulze Center for Novel Therapeutics will occupy the 19th floor of the Gonda Building on the downtown campus of Mayo Clinic in Rochester. The gift also will support the infrastructure and programs of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center.

In Arizona, the funding will complement activities in the areas of biomedical informatics and exploration of the signaling pathways in cancer cells.

"We are extremely grateful for this generous gift," said Laurence J. Miller, M.D., deputy director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. "This funding will provide enormous support for clinicians and researchers working together across the Mayo system to improve and develop new therapies for our cancer patients."

Translating laboratory findings into novel methods of treatment will be the principal mission of the center. The goal is to discover, develop and implement novel therapies for cancer that are effective and will minimally affect a patient's quality of life before, during and after treatment. The benefactors intend that the center's research will translate into treatment for cancers that do not typically receive major funding.

"A diagnosis of cancer is one of the most feared in medicine," says Denis Cortese, M.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic. "This gift and the research it will support will have an enormous impact on the lives of many patients as new cancer treatments are discovered and made available. We are thankful the Schulze family has chosen to share their personal wealth and interest in a way that can make such a difference for so many people."

With its presence in Arizona, Jacksonville, Fla. and Rochester, Minn., Mayo Clinic Cancer Center is the only multisite comprehensive cancer center designated by the National Cancer Institute. Although the broad objective is a campaign against all cancers, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center researchers also will pay special attention to malignancies that have provided Mayo Clinic physicians with extensive clinical experience, for example, women's cancers such as: breast, ovary and endometrial (uterine); kidney cancer; mesothelioma (lung); glioblastoma (brain); hematologic malignancies (chronic myeloid leukemia); liver cancer and cholangiocarcinomas (liver bile ducts).

"This substantial gift will allow us to make great strides in cancer research and treatment," says Franklyn Prendergast, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. "We are very grateful for the Schulze family's generous support of this work. Now we must learn how to use modern technologies and the new knowledge of cancer biology to develop more effective and humane therapies for patients who have cancer. For some patients, new therapies may come too late, so we must seek new treatments, especially for pain, to care for all patients. We also are mindful of the need to keep patients' immune systems strong while they are undergoing treatment."

"This gift is far more than an expansion of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center because it launches a vigorous program aimed directly at improving patient care. We are immensely grateful to Mr. Schulze and his family for their remarkably generous support," says Hugh Smith, M.D., chair of the Mayo Clinic Rochester Board of Governors.

"The opportunity to play a role in the support of so many gifted and motivated scientists and physicians at Mayo Clinic was too strong an opportunity to pass up," says Richard Schulze. "We welcome the opportunity to support research that focuses on creating a better life for patients and their families not only by improving treatments, but also by prevention and, hopefully, cures. It is our sincere belief that the prospect of improved treatment and potential eradication of some cancers is closer than some would believe. Mayo Clinic's talented group of leaders, physicians, and researchers shares this belief. If the outcomes are positive, we believe others will follow and support the Mayo Clinic in this initiative."

Key aspects of the research include expansion of the center's already substantive activities in cancer genomics especially towards acquiring disciplined data sets to partially populate the Mayo Life Sciences System. When fully implemented, this system will allow Mayo Clinic to conduct quickly population-based research across a broad range of diseases and translate those research results into improved patient care. A major informatics program will be initiated to translate laboratory discoveries into new methods for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Eventually, this will make it possible to plan treatments for individual patients.

The Schulze gift also will endow two named professorships: the Sandra J. Schulze Professor and the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation Professor. These professorships will recognize outstanding scientists internationally renowned for their work in cancer research.

Additionally, the gift will support postdoctoral fellowships. Appointments to this program, known as Mayo Clinic Schulze Scholars, will go to the brightest young scientists/physicians in medical research.

Finally, Mayo Clinic will establish an annual symposium on Novel Cancer Therapeutics. The symposium will be rotated among the three Mayo Clinic sites and organized in collaboration with other leading academic institutions engaged in cancer therapy-related research. 

The center will be under the general authority of the director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center with oversight provided by the institutional internal Cancer Center Oversight Committee. An External Advisory Committee that includes the benefactors will provide additional oversight. Physicians and researchers from the center also will collaborate with researchers and scientists in other academic medical centers and with industrial partners.

Construction on the center within the Gonda building in Rochester will begin in 2006, with partial occupancy in 2007.

Mayo Clinic Cancer Center is one of only 39 U.S. medical centers that have been named as a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Comprehensive Cancer Center. To receive this designation, an institution must meet rigorous standards demonstrating clinical excellence in treating cancer patients and scientific excellence in its research programs. Mayo Clinic Cancer Center is ranked by the NCI as one of the top 10 cancer centers in the nation, and is the only national, multi-site center with the NCI's Comprehensive Cancer Center designation. In Arizona, Mayo's clinical and research experts work together to address the complex needs of cancer patients, with a dedication to understanding the biology of cancer; discovering new ways to predict, prevent, diagnose and treat cancer; and transforming the quality of life for cancer patients today and in the future.

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