Milestones

 

Facility Expansion

  • 1921: Installation of first radiation therapy machine (pictured right) at Long Hospital (now Indiana University Hospital).
  • 1954: The Cancer Research Wing opened at Riley Hospital for Children.
  • 1983: The Elks Cancer Research Center, now located in the Cancer Research Institute, opened.
  • 1987: The Walther Oncology Center was established with a gift from Joseph E. Walther, M.D., local physician and philanthropist. IU Simon Cancer Center member, Hal Broxmeyer, PhD, now leads this center.
  • 1989: Herman B Wells Center for Pediatric Research was established in honor of the long-time Riley Memorial Association board member and Indiana University President and Chancellor Herman B Wells.
  • 1991: IU Breast Care and Research Center was established.
  • 1992: The National Cancer Institute awarded a planning grant to the IU School of Medicine for a cancer center. The IU Simon Cancer Center was established and began development under Stephen D. Williams, M.D.
  • 1993: Radiology Oncology Linear Facility opened.
  • 1994: The Riley Hospital for Children's Cancer Center opened.
  • 1995: The National Institutes of Health established one of three National Gene Vector Laboratories at the IU School of Medicine, the Indiana University Vector Production Facility, and currently supports research at the IU Simon Cancer Center as well as other centers around the country.
  • 1996: Indiana Cancer Pavilion, financed in part by $10 million in federal funding, was dedicated.
  • 1997: IU Cancer Research Institute opened, financed in part by $10 million in federal funding.
  • 1999: IU Simon Cancer Center received National Cancer Institute designation as a clinical cancer center.
  • 2000: Indiana Center of Excellence in Biomedical Imaging established. The facility’s state-of-the-art imaging capabilities assist the research efforts of the IU Simon Cancer Center.
  • 2000: The Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN) launched with a $105 million grant from Lilly Endowment to the IU School of Medicine, which supports shared facilities, program development, and educational initiatives.
  • 2003: Biotechnology Research and Training Center (BRTC) opened one mile north of the main campus. Among other things, it houses the IU Simon Cancer Center's Transgenic and Knockout Mouse basic research facility.
  • 2003: The Research II building opened, allowing expanded space for Walther Oncology Center.
  • 2005: Work begins on Research III; the focus of the research in this new facility will be on cancer.
  • 2005: A ground-breaking ceremony for a 405,000-square-foot patient care building is held.
  • 2006: The IU Cancer Center becomes the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center to reflect the philanthropic support of Melvin and Bren Simon of Indianapolis.
  • 2008: In August, a new 405,000-square-foot patient care building is dedicated.
  • 2009: In October, Joseph E. Walther Hall (Research III) is dedicated. At 238,000 square feet, it is IU's largest research building. It is home to scientists in a broad range of disciplines, but the focus of much of the research is on cancer.

Research Success

  • 1974: Distinguished Professor Lawrence Einhorn, MD, developed and treated the first patient, John Cleland (pictured left in photo below) with cisplatin chemotherapy. With this new regimen, the cure rate of testicular cancer escalated from 10 percent to nearly 95 percent today.
  • 1984: Distinguished Professor John Donohue, MD, developed a nerve-sparing surgery for urologic cancers, a procedure which has since been proven to preserve reproductive function in men.
  • 1985: Dr. Jan Jansen performed Indiana’s first bone marrow transplant at Riley Hospital for Children.
  • 1988: Hal Broxmeyer, PhD, developed the use of human umbilical cord blood as a source of stem cells for transplantation. He prepared the cells for the first cord blood transplantation that cured patient with Fanconi anemia - a pre-cancerous, genetic condition in children.
  • 1993: First positron emission tomography (PET) scanner in Indiana.
  • 1997: First Gamma-Knife facility in Indiana – a state-of-the-art, non-invasive technology that uses radiation as a "scalpel" to arrest the growth of tumors deep inside the brain.
  • 2000: First combined PET/computerized tomography (CT) system in Indiana.
  • 2000: IU faculty are the first to study bevacizumab – an antibody that prevents the growth of blood vessels that supply cancer cells with the nutrients needed to grow - in advanced cancer patients. Bevacizumab is currently approved by the FDA for metastatic colorectal cancer and under investigation for use in other cancers.
  • 2003: IU faculty are the first to use and report positive results with an extracranial stereotactic body radiation therapy for early stage lung cancer patients who were not considered candidates for surgery because of medical complications. Two open cancer clinical trials at IU are building on the success of this treatment pioneered at IU.
  • 2003: First 3 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (3T MRI) scanner in Indiana.
  • 2004: Center of Excellence for Individualization of Therapy for Breast Cancer established and funded by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. Led by George Sledge, MD, researchers are studying methods for individualizing treatment for women with advanced breast cancer.
  • 2005: An interim analysis of bevacizumab in a phase III trial led by Kathy Miller, MD, indicated an improvement in progression-free survival when administered with chemotherapy to patients with metastatic breast cancer. This study is the first to find a benefit of antiangiogenic therapy in patients with breast cancer.
  • 2007: Lawrence Einhorn, MD, in a retrospective study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that testicular cancer patients who do not respond to traditional therapy can be cured with high-dose chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. It is rare for the NEJM to carry a retrospective study from a single institution that is not a randomized study. Dr. Einhorn and colleagues demonstrated that the disease is potentially curable with a high dose chemotherapy and stem cell transplant using cells harvested from the patient before the initial chemotherapy infusion.
  • 2008: David Flockhart, MD, PhD, demonstrated that women taking the cancer drug tamoxifen with certain antidepressants double their chances of the disease returning. The FDA altered the tamoxifen label to include this information.
  • 2008: Wade Clapp, MD, David Ingram, MD, and colleagues discovered how to block certain signals that neurofibromatosis tumor cells use to "talk" to each other, leading to a series of on-going clinical trials that may reduce morbidity and mortality of children with neurofibromatosis, especially the plexiform variant. 
  • 2008 & 2009: The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Research Grants and Awards Program presented $1 million to the IU Simon Cancer Center to expand its tissue bank. Researchers, led by Susan Clare, MD, PhD, and Anna Maria Storniolo, MD, with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Tissue Bank at the IU Simon Cancer, collect and share healthy breast tissue samples with researchers worldwide to help understand how breast cells turn cancerous.