A new clinic building and research tower at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center offer tangible proof of its expanding reputation in disease research.
By LISA GREENE
Published June 28, 2003
[Times photo: Toni Sandys]
Laboratories flank both sides of the new Vincent A. Stabile reseach Building at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center. Conference rooms and lounges connect the building's wings.
TAMPA - When Richard Jove and his wife left the University of Michigan's prestigious cancer center for a fledgling research facility in Florida, their fellow scientists were puzzled.
"Moffitt Cancer Center? Never heard of it," some of them said.
Eight years later, it's a good bet they have.
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute opened in 1986 and began serious research only a decade ago. Yet the cancer center already has mushroomed into a national leader.
But can Moffitt keep up that pace?
Leaders here don't want to be just a very good cancer center. They want to be the best.
"You gotta dream, right?" said William Dalton, who last year became Moffitt's CEO. "If you say, "We want to be good, too,' that's not enough. We want to be the leader."
On Friday, Moffitt took a "major, major, major step" forward, in Dalton's words, when it unveiled a new $186-million research tower and clinic expansion.
But to meet its goal, the cancer center still has a long way to go.
Moffitt was named one of 39 "Comprehensive Cancer Centers" in the country by the National Cancer Institute two years ago. More than 700 researchers now work on finding cancer cures, from vaccines for tumors to ways to target and kill cancer-causing molecules.
Moffitt also has developed teams for patient care. Doctors are grouped together by disease, rather than by specialty. The purpose: to encourage specialists to confer and make care easier for patients.
Last year, Moffitt rose to 10th place on U.S. News & World Report's list of top cancer centers - just behind Jove's old employer, the University of Michigan.
At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the New York facility ranked second on the list, executive vice president John Gunn still remembers the 1980s visit by H. Lee Moffitt, Florida's former House speaker and a cancer survivor. Moffitt peppered him with questions.
"He wanted to create as good a cancer center as there was anywhere in the world down there in Florida," Gunn said.
At the time, it seemed an impossible dream. A state review agency said a cancer center would cost too much. Leaders from more than 50 Florida hospitals opposed it. A spokeswoman for the National Cancer Institute flatly said that Moffitt's plan was not "within the realm of anything realistic."
These days, Devi Vembu, an NCI program director, has only compliments.
"With the little time they have had, they have done exceedingly well," she said. "They have come to be a wonderful center."
Gunn thinks Moffitt is already "pretty close" and can be as good as Sloan-Kettering "if they keep plugging away."
For all the talk of being the best, Moffitt leaders say their ultimate dream isn't to compete with anyone. It's more basic: the cure.
"The biggest goal," said vice president Trish Goldsmith, "is the day we can close the doors and go out of business."
Still, Moffitt faces significant hurdles if it wants to move from very good to great. First of all, while it wins plaudits from its peers, Moffitt isn't as well-known in Florida - or even in Tampa Bay.
"People don't expect it, perhaps - "What, in our own backyard?' " Jove said. "We have come such a long way in such a short time, it has taken everybody by surprise."
At Sloan-Kettering, Gunn said, half the patients arrive without a doctor's referral because they've already heard of the center.
"Whenever I get calls from people in Florida I refer them" to Moffitt, Gunn said. "I'm not sure they've developed the reputation that Memorial has up here. . . . That's the kind of thing they're going to have to work on."
Then there's money. Earlier this week, Dalton spelled out a program of five new initiatives to his board. They included research to help map the genes of tumor cells and a "total cancer care" system to address more of patients' needs. Cost: $30-million.
"What money does is get you there faster," Dalton said. "If you've got cancer, your clock is ticking. You want to know someone is working night and day."
But the amount of donations Moffitt receives is dwarfed by those the larger centers get. Dalton recently met a Vero Beach resident who had just given $15-million for research - to Sloan-Kettering.
"And I went, "yi-i-i-i,' " Dalton said, clutching his heart in mock despair. "I think we've got to get out more."
Dalton also hopes that Moffitt research can lead to marketable drugs, returning a profit. At Sloan-Kettering, Gunn said that one such drug brings the center about $50-million a year.
Moffitt's research funds have risen steadily, but they, too, lag behind. That's why Moffitt leaders are excited about the new research tower. Moffitt had stopped recruiting new scientists because it ran out of space. With the tower opening, Moffitt hopes to hire 40 new researchers in the coming year and more after that.
On Friday, Moffitt hosted tours of the new research tower and the adjoining clinic for employees and the media. Groups trooped past the new MRI, whose 13,800-pound magnet had to be hoisted into the building with a crane, and by two new CT scanners, which cost $1.4-million apiece.
On the fourth floor, recliners with Internet connections and TVs are part of an expanded space for patients receiving chemotherapy treatments.
Next door, a futuristic atrium soars through the middle of the Vincent A. Stabile Research Building. The building's research labs are designed to encourage scientists to work together. Instead of separate rooms, black lab benches line up in long rows. Jove's new work space is in a 2,000-square-foot lab - big enough for a nice-sized house.
As Jove walked through his new lab earlier this week, he showed off an expensive scanner, designed to help sort and scan tumor genes, with the glee of a man who loved to take apart radios as a child.
"We have lots of neat toys like this," he said.
He has just moved his office into the new tower as well.
"We took a big risk to come here," said Jove, leader of Moffitt's molecular oncology program and Moffitt's 2002 scientist of the year. "But Moffitt has more than exceeded my expectations, which were very high."
