UH Cancer Center director has been doing great job

The University of Hawaii Cancer Center is a success that apparently some seek to derail.

The new building is finished, and the center is running smoothly, despite contrary efforts of some disgruntled faculty. It has good support from the university and community, and researchers are busy making major cancer discoveries.

As senior faculty of the center, we take exception and are compelled to counter misleading information ("UH Cancer Center faculty calls for removal of director," Star-Advertiser, Dec. 12). For balance, it is important to highlight just a few of many accomplishments since Dr. Michele Carbone assumed leadership of our center.

Since 2012, under him, we are a successful, designated Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health), the only one in Hawaii. When the NCI reviewed us in 2012, it rated Carbone’s performance as director "outstanding."

When Carbone became director in 2009, the center was struggling to grow. One reason: We were unable to reach agreements to work with local hospitals. Since we don’t have a dedicated clinic, the center cannot survive without support of the hospitals, which in turn benefit because the center provides the strong research component essential to develop clinical trials. A mutually supportive relationship improves the quality of cancer care for all of Hawaii’s people.

One of Carbone’s earliest accomplishments was to re-establish a good relationship with the hospitals. He laid the groundwork for the Cancer Center Consortium, and with tremendous support, including from center faculty, former UH leaders and the hospitals, we were able to turn things around. With the consortium established, we got our NCI Center Grant renewed, then were able to move into the new building, made possible by a cigarette tax.

All these accomplishments speak truth contrary to the claim of being an "institution in decline," as stated in the article. We have hired many new faculty members, including in the last four months, from the NCI, Harvard and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Our researchers have international reputations and many are recognized experts. Carbone himself is among the nation’s leading experts in mesothelioma, a deadly type of cancer most often caused by exposure to airborne asbestos fibers.

Our researchers publish in top journals and have secured peer-reviewed funding. Indeed, most faculty in the new building have significant funding from NIH, putting them among the top 15 percent of researchers in the nation.

Rather than a hostile work environment, as alleged, Carbone has fostered a collegial environment enjoyed by the center’s large majority. This is measured by the large amount of collaborative research we do: Researchers in different areas of expertise work together to get results not possible on their own. We have never had more or better collaborations than we have today.

And though the center does not have a teaching mission, we teach the next generation of graduate students, we mentor postdoctoral researchers, and we host undergradu- ates and high school summer interns.

The center faculty and Carbone work hard together to bring Hawaii the best cancer research and to improve treatment for cancer patients here. We are particularly disturbed when public accounts do not reflect this. A lot of taxpayer money has been invested in this center. It takes years to build anything, but only a short time to destroy it.

The Cancer Center has been successful even though we are the smallest in the nation. Carbone deserves credit for making changes that have improved the quality and impact of the work being done. He has insisted on high standards, and has been an agent of change. He also has been very successful with fundraising, has attracted talented faculty and has gotten us national visibility because of our research. This is the sort of person the UH needs to retain.

With continuing support, the center is poised to make even greater contributions to UH, the people of Hawaii and beyond.

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This piece was co-signed by Brian Issell, associate director for Clinical Sciences and Translational Research; Wei Jia, associate director for Shared Resources; Joe Ramos, director of Cancer Biology Program; Marcus Tius, deputy director; James Turkson, director of Natural Products and Experimental Therapeutics Program; Thomas Wills, researcher; and Herbert Yu, associate director for Cancer Control and Population Sciences.