State Pledges $50M a Year to UNC Cancer Research

(Aug. 1, 2007) The budget that N.C. legislators adopted and Gov. Mike Easley signed this week includes an unprecedented commitment to research, detection, treatment and prevention of cancer – an affliction that will affect one in three North Carolinians.

Over the next three years, state support for the University Cancer Research Fund will grow to $50 million a year – the equivalent of a billion-dollar endowment that distributes 5 percent in earnings each year.

“This is a transformative gift not to UNC … but to the people of North Carolina,” said Dr. William Roper, CEO of the UNC Health Care System. “With this gift, the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is poised to become the leading public cancer center in the country.”

Dr. John E. Niederhuber, the director of the National Cancer Institute, describes the state’s investment as “truly visionary,” Roper said. “He’s just really in awe of what the state of North Carolina has done here.”

Though UNC already ranks among the top 15 cancer centers in the country in funds from the National Cancer Institute, officials say the state fund should help raise UNC to the level of top-ranked centers – Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and M.D. Anderson in Houston.

Dr. Shelton Earp, the director of the Lineberger Center, said that one-third of cancer patients don’t survive, and others have fragmented care.

“None of those is acceptable,” Earp said. “The extraordinary thing that the legislature and the governor have done is recognize that cancer research is the key. … There is nothing like it. This is, in essence, a $1 billion endowment.”

The state money will help leverage other research dollars, expand research trials and make treatments available to patients across the state, especially to those at lower socio-economic levels. “There’s a time it takes to bring trials to bear – and it’s too long,” Earp said.

Building on the model of an extensive breast-cancer study at UNC that found differences in cancers contracted by African-American and Caucasian women, for example, researchers plan to use North Carolina as the laboratory for the largest lung-cancer study ever done.

Another study is assessing the effectiveness of “one-stop shopping” for radiation of breast tumors – treatment in a single trip, rather than over six weeks.

The N.C. Cancer Hospital already sees 15,000 patients a year from all 100 counties. But with the number of patients projected to double over the next 30 years, researchers say the new fund will help them distribute findings through clinics, hospitals and agencies that stretch from East Carolina University in Greenville to Memorial Mission Hospital in Asheville and beyond.

Though the public knows there are risks associated with smoking or not seeking mammography or colorectal cancer screening, UNC researchers will also study the best ways to disseminate their findings.

“All of those are researchable questions,” said Earp. “It starts with the DNA. It starts with a cell. But it extends all the way through society.”

One study has already worked through local advocates to raise mammography rates among African-American women in three eastern counties. Another works with beauticians and salon operators to tell customers the benefits of early detection. Another effort uses a necklace with different-sized beads to show that smaller tumors can be detected through digital mammography or MRI screening.

“By far, the brightest gem in that budget is the investment we are making in cancer research,” said Sen. Walter Dalton, D-Rutherford, a lead Senate budget writer. “It hits every family. It’s hit our Senate family.”

Dalton said he knows a few cancer patients in his district who have sought treatment in New York or Houston – but far more who couldn’t afford it.

Though the investment will raise UNC’s profile in cancer research and create economic-development opportunities, he said, “All of that pales when it comes to the people of North Carolina. It will save lives.”

“The really great thing is we’re going to have world-class cancer research available to all of our citizens of this state,” said House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman, a lung-cancer survivor and major advocate for the fund in the House.

The fund will grow from $25 million in 2007-08 to $40 million in 2008-09 and $50 million in 2009-10, and continue at $50 million a year after that. The money will come from three sources:

• $8 million a year from the state’s Tobacco Trust Fund, which receives part of the state’s 1998 settlement with cigarette makers;
• An increase from 3% to 10% in the tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars, which will raise $16.5 million in 2008-09, in its first full year.
• And the remainder from the state’s General Fund.

No matter the source of the money, Melissa Blackwell, a patient from Mebane whose breast cancer was diagnosed in 2005, appeared at a news conference in Raleigh to thank legislators for investing in cancer research and UNC doctors for making her part of the team for her own care.

“I’ve chosen God and UNC Hospitals to walk with me together,” Blackwell said. “I want to see my kids grow up. I want to see my grandkids. I want to walk on the beach with the person I love.”