Scripps
Cancer components join to form regional center
Continued from B-1
A hematologist-oncologist, Saven has been named director of the new Scripps Cancer Center for a three-year term.
Beutler and Saven said that historically many of the leaders at the three Scripps institutions didn't talk to each other.
"In the past it's true that we haven't been altogether a happy family," Beutler said. "But I felt, and many others did, too, that we should not allow differences to keep us from moving forward to create something truly worthwhile."
Collectively, the Scripps hospitals have provided care for 18,000 patients with cancer in the past two years, which amounts to about one-third of all cancer patients in the county. The system also receives about $17 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health for basic cancer research.
Designation as an NCI comprehensive cancer center would not only bring in additional federal grant money but is a draw for clinical research projects on drugs, financed by private pharmaceutical companies.
Another benefit to the coordinated effort could be that compounds developed by Scripps researchers for certain types of cancer, but which pharmaceutical companies are not interested in developing, could be tested in larger cohorts of patients recruited from the different hospitals within the six-hospital Scripps system.
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"Now when we go to pharmaceutical companies, they might ask us how many patients ran you accrue. And we say 'x.' With the new concept, we'll have our centers together, and well accrue five times 'x' and be more likely to evaluate compounds here," Saven said.
In time, Beutler and Saven said, if the county supervisors' concept for a regional cancer center gets off the ground, the Scripps cancer center may become a part of that.
"It's easier to put together a few pieces than to try to put together a lot of little fragments," said Beutler. "That's why we're taking the fragments out of our system."
Saven is the Scripps representative on the steering committee for a San Diego Regional Cancer Institute.
County supervisors Ron Roberts and Dianne Jacob proposed the idea of a creating a regional NCI-designated center last spring. They said cancer efforts here are uncoordinated, so patients who hope to participate in clinical trial of some drugs must travel outside the county, often as far as Boston or Seattle.
Next Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to begin the process of hiring a company to develop a business plan for a center.
The $100 million for a regional county center is 10 percent of $1 billion estimated to come to the county over the next 25 years as part of a settlement between eight states and the nation's four major tobacco companies.
The Scripps effort to establish a regional cancer center surprised several health care officials, including Judith Yates, spokeswoman for the Hospital Council of San Diego and Imperial Counties, and Dr. Robert K. Ross, head of the county health department.
"I don't recall hearing about it," Ross said. "It could be they're getting their own house in order, and that's fine."
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