SIU Cancer Institute Design Being Finalized, Summer Groundbreaking Planned

The permanent facility for the new SIU Cancer Institute in Springfield has been designed to serve as a center of care and hope for patients from around the state as well as a dramatic new front door entrance to the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine campus in Springfield.

"This design provides the welcoming, secure and uplifting feeling we want to provide to every patient who comes to this institute for care. It signals strength and hope and the combination of traditional brick and great expanses of glass shown in the renderings sends that message," said Dr. J. Kevin Dorsey, Ph.D., dean and provost, in announcing the building design. "It also lets us build on existing cancer expertise here at SIU and in Springfield by giving us a facility to help us recruit cancer subspecialists to this area."

SIU faculty, staff and patients helped finalize building details with architects from BSA Life Structures of Chicago and Hanson Professional Services of Springfield.

The SIU Cancer Institute will face east on a partial city block (two-plus acres) bound by Carpenter, Rutledge and Miller Streets, a few blocks from downtown Springfield. Six medical buildings, five belonging to SIU, are located to the north in the next three blocks along Rutledge.

"We’ve worked to design a building that serves all our missions of research, patient care and medical and community education, while providing a comforting mood," said Dr. K. Thomas Robbins, interim director of the institute. "The central 'spine' of glass that runs through the building will provide natural light on the upper floor and symbolically anchors the lower floors ."

The building for the institute will be three stories tall with its main entrance on the corner of Rutledge and Carpenter. It will consolidate the School's multi-disciplinary cancer clinics, now located in several hospital buildings, along with research and outreach service programs.

The building features an open, two-story lobby. Chemotherapy suites will be on the first floor along with two clinics to be used by SIU's organ site working groups, teams of cancer specialists and subspecialists. One clinic will have eight exam rooms and two procedure rooms for patients with prostate and gastrointestinal cancers. A second clinic will have 12 exam rooms and two procedure rooms for treatment of general, lung, and head and neck cancers.

A resource library, a meditation room-chapel, a support group meeting room and a multi-purpose conference room for public programs and medical meetings all will be on the first floor.

The Women's Cancer Care Center for treatment of breast and gynecologic cancers will be on the second floor with eight exam rooms and rooms for diagnostic imaging procedures.

The institute's administrative offices will be on the second floor as well as offices for the physician faculty and nurse coordinators. The area will house an outreach center, focused on activities for downstate Illinois such as epidemiology studies and public and physician education. The area also will house the clinical trials office, which coordinates research involving patients, including national drug trials. Sixteen different clinical trials are currently underway.

The third floor will contain translational and bench research labs where research scientists and physicians can work together, and offices for researchers and support staff. Translational research focuses on understanding the basic molecular mechanism of the formation of tumors (known as tumorigenesis) as well as identifying markers for early detection. The labs will augment the eight new cancer research labs already developed in existing medical school buildings.

Detailed building drawings and specifications are now being prepared and construction bids will be requested late this summer. It is hoped that construction would begin in the fall of 2005 and be completed in 2007. A National Institutes of Health construction grant application for $2.6 million was submitted in December. These funds would help complete the research area.

While the building is being finalized, other efforts for the institute are proceeding. A research scientist, Rupinder K. Grewal, has been recruited to manage the core molecular oncology program. Cheryl H. Lee has joined the staff as outreach coordinator. The institute is finalizing a major recruitment for the position of associate director for basic science.

SIU faculty members in Springfield and Carbondale continue to apply for new cancer research grants. They currently have 24 national grants for cancer research and 11 smaller institutional start-up grants. The current total is now $8.6 million.

The SIU Cancer Institute is focusing the medical school's efforts in cancer research, physician and public education, and treatment for patients from across central and southern Illinois. More than 55 SIU physician and basic science faculty are involved.

The SIU Board of Trustees approved plans for the institute in 2000 and the General Assembly approved $14.5 million for design, land acquisition and construction in 2002. The School also sold $6 million of revenue bonds in order to increase the total budget for the building.

The SIU Cancer Institute has a web site at http://www.siumed.edu/cancer/. The main phone number is 217-545-6818.

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Note to media : Two JPG images are available SIU Cancer Institute (looking south; looking north)