$2.1 Million Gift Will Benefit Cancer Patients at UChicago
This is significant because it will be the only cyclotron at any academic medical center in Illinois.
—Chin-Tu chen, PhD
William F. O’Connor is a
legendary figure in financial
circles in Chicago. He was
a tenacious businessman,
an innovative chairman of
the Chicago Board of Trade,
and an extremely kind and
generous person who took
care of the people around
him.
In 1999, O’Connor died
from pancreatic cancer.
Before his death, he had the
vision to form the William
F. O’Connor Foundation to help support cancer research,
as well as art and culture in the Chicago area.
His widow, Mary Jane O’Connor, said he wanted The University of Chicago to be one of the primary beneficiaries of the foundation. She said he liked the collaborative process at UChicago and felt that several minds working collectively on a treatment were better than one. That individualized attention, she said, is uncommon at other hospitals.
The William F. O’Connor Foundation is donating $2.1 million over the next 2 years to support the purchase of a new cyclotron for the Molecular Imaging Program and to support the Center for Personalized Therapeutics, under the leadership of Mark Ratain, MD, Leon O. Jacobson Professor of Medicine, who was one of O’Connor’s physicians. Mary Jane said O’Connor’s faith in Dr. Ratain and his work formed the basis of O’Connor’s strong personal belief in the quality of care at UChicago.
Center for Personalized Therapeutics
In 2010, Dr. Ratain launched the Center for Personalized
Therapeutics (see Pathways, Winter 2011). The center aims
to discover and incorporate broad genetic information
into routine clinical practice allowing for patient-specifictreatment decisions regarding both drug and
dosage.
The gift will enable further advancement
of the center and the “1,200 Patients Project,”
which will help to identify the genetic variants
that influence how individuals metabolize
particular drugs.
Molecular Imaging Program
The acquisition of a cyclotron and development
of a radiochemistry program at UChicago
will help speed the advancement of personalized
medicine.
A cyclotron is a particle accelerator that
generates radioisotopes used in medical imaging.
Imaging at the molecular level, using
technology such as positron emission tomography
(PET), provides a non-invasive way
to monitor and assess a patient’s response
to treatment and allows that treatment to be
adjusted as necessary. Because radioactive
isotopes produced by the cyclotron are very
short-lived, it is essential that the cyclotron is
housed on campus.
“This is significant because it will be the only cyclotron
at any academic medical center in Illinois,” said Chin-Tu
Chen, PhD, associate
professor of radiology.
“The cyclotron will revitalize
our radiochemistry
program, which had
been preeminent from
the ’50s to the ’90s. We
will be able to create
PET radiotracers that,
for example, will not
only help to find more accurate ways to apply radiation
therapy, but will also allow us to assess the effectiveness of
gene therapy.”
Dr. Chen said the goal is to have the cyclotron installed by the end of the year. “We’ve already been contacted by Northwestern University, Rush University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago to see if they can utilize some of our cyclotron-based radiotracers for their own research programs,” he said. “I think we will be able to work out some sort of collaborative agreement.”
Previous Collaborations
The William F. O’Connor Foundation has made several
generous contributions to UChicago over the past 11
years. These contributions have spurred new discoveries
in cancer research and treatment, including the development
of a simple blood test to predict a patient’s response
to the powerful chemotherapy drug irinotecan (Camptosar
®), which is used to treat people with colon or rectal
cancer.
“My husband was a great visionary and he was willing to take risks,” said Mary Jane O’Connor. “He participated in clinical trials and he created our foundation because he strongly believed that even if a treatment didn’t help him, it would benefit someone else. He was very special.”
