The idea that sparked the formation of the Cancer Institute took shape in the early 1970s between colleagues Kent Westbrook, M.D., and James Y. Suen, M.D. During fellowships at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — Westbrook in surgical oncology and Suen in head and neck surgery — the doctors saw the need for patients to receive comprehensive cancer care close to home. They also realized that this was lacking in their home state of Arkansas.
Together they began to develop the cancer program at UAMS. For the next decade, the two doctors worked to establish multidisciplinary programs, with Suen focused on his specialty of head and neck surgery and Westbrook on surgical oncology. Suen has served as chairman of the UAMS Department of Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery for 33 years, while Westbrook has moved from chief resident at UAMS in 1969 to distinguished professor today.
In 1984, they got the go-ahead from former UAMS chancellor the late Harry Ward, M.D., to formalize their plans for a cancer institute, then called the Arkansas Cancer Research Center. Westbrook took on the role of founding director, a position he held for 14 years.
The first four floors of the Walker Tower opened in 1989, with half the space dedicated to research and half to patient care. An additional seven floors were added in 1996, and a 12-story expansion is set to open in 2010.
The same year the Cancer Institute opened its doors, another cancer pioneer was arriving in Arkansas. Bart Barlogie, M.D., Ph.D., was inspired to concentrate his career on what he calls the “orphan disease” of multiple myeloma in the early 1980s. At that time few other clinician-scientists had focused on myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells.
Barlogie’s vision for a comprehensive myeloma program began to take shape at UAMS after he arrived in 1989. It has since developed into the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, which has more than doubled the annual survival rate of myeloma patients upon diagnosis from three years to seven years and beyond.
After Westbrook stepped down as director, Barlogie assumed the role from 1998-2001. He was followed by Suen, who served as director from 2001-2007.
A national search brought the Cancer Institute’s current director, Peter D. Emanuel, M.D., to the Cancer Institute in July 2007, the same year that the institute’s name was changed to honor the late Arkansas Lt. Gov. Winthrop P. Rockefeller.
Widely recognized as an expert in leukemia and lymphoma, Emanuel previously served as acting director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His goal of strengthening the Cancer Institute’s research, outreach and clinical programs puts the organization on the path to becoming a National Cancer Institute designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.
