Cancer Center Opens
A new building advances Stanford’s plan to raise its profile
in cancer treatment and research
By Rosanne Spector
Photograph Leslie Williamson
On March 1, the first Stanford patients stepped into the light-filled
atrium of the new cancer center. Gone were the long windowless hallways
of the old cancer facilities. It was opening day for Stanford’s
new center and the start of a new era in cancer research and treatment
at the medical center.
With the cancer center’s opening, patients experience a level
of comfort and convenience on a par with Stanford’s clinical care.
But the new building is more than just a big deal to patients. It’s
a key player in the medical center’s long-range plans to raise
its already high stature as a cancer treatment and research center.
For a decade, medical center and university leaders have worked toward
creating the facility. They won support within Stanford. They negotiated
with neighboring Menlo Park and Palo Alto, which had concerns about a
bigger, busier medical complex’s potential environmental impact.
And they raised the funds needed to make their $147 million vision real.
Now the work begins to pay off. When patients enter the new center,
they are greeted by escorts who guide them to their appointments. They
walk through an environment designed with their needs foremost, moving
through the atrium, past a flat screen display of a waterfall and into
their appointment, which, if they wish, begins with a 15-minute massage.
The new 150,000-square-foot facility, designed to welcome patients in
a healing environment, is more than double the space previously dedicated
to outpatient cancer care. The medical center expects 70,000 cancer-related
service billings this year — 3,000 more than last year.
The building’s design aims not only to pamper patients but to
encourage interdisciplinary faculty encounters. In the old facility,
faculty worked within departmental boundaries. Now they’re housed
according to cancer specialty, with surgeons and oncologists specializing
in a single type of cancer all rubbing elbows.
Some of the excitement about the new cancer center comes from the role
it’s expected to play in Stanford’s effort to join 39 other
institutions in becoming a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive
Cancer Center — one of the school’s major goals. The NCI
ranks high in importance the grant applicant’s ability to provide
patients a comfortable environment and to support a thriving research
program.
The NCI designation would mean more money for cancer research and would
make Stanford an even more appealing collaborator for multisite clinical
trials. Stanford already has about 200 clinical trials in adult cancer
treatment under way and about 100 in pediatric cancer treatments.
“I look forward to the challenge and opportunity of making the
new Stanford Cancer Center one of the most significant treatment facilities
in the world,” says the center’s newly recruited director,
world-renowned radiation oncologist Steven Leibel, MD, the Ann and John
Doerr Medical Director of Stanford Cancer Center.
Leibel will be leading Stanford’s 200 cancer specialists in a
healing and energizing environment and working with the most advanced
technology available. Stanford was a great center of cancer care and
research before. Now, what’s stopping it from being the greatest?
Comments? Contact Stanford Medicine at
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