KU News Release

University of Kansas Cancer Center receives $1 million gift

Floriene and George Lieberman

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Floriene and George Lieberman of Leawood have given $1 million to the University of Kansas Cancer Center to aid in its pursuit of National Cancer Institute designation.

Thirty-two years ago, as Floriene Lieberman was battling breast cancer, no NCI-designated cancer center existed in the area. Instead, she and her husband traveled from Kansas to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for treatment.

“There is a huge difference between having to get on a plane when you are sick, hurting and scared, and then staying in a hotel room, versus being comfortable in your own surroundings,” Floriene Lieberman said. “It makes a difference in fighting the disease.”

The gift will establish the Floriene and George Lieberman Family Professorship, which will fund a leadership faculty position in the Phase I clinical trials program. The program tests new drugs coming out of the laboratory for cancer patients.

“It is my hope and dream that within a very few years we will be a comprehensive, NCI-designated cancer center and we will get the newest in the way of clinical trials,” Lieberman said. “I base that hope on getting some of the best doctors and researchers. We already have many of them in our community.”

Dr. Roy Jensen, director of the cancer center, said endowed professorships like the one this gift will establish are important in facilitating recruitment of the staff necessary to develop an NCI-designated cancer center.

“All of us at the University of Kansas Cancer Center are deeply appreciative of this gift from the Lieberman family,” Jensen said. “This gift will help us recruit a world-class researcher and move us closer to our ultimate goal of ending suffering and death from cancer.”

NCI-designated cancer centers are institutions recognized by the National Cancer Institute for their scientific excellence and extensive resources focused on cancer and cancer-related problems. These centers are a major source for the discovery of the biology of cancer and of the development of more effective approaches to cancer prevention, detection and treatments.

The gift will be managed by KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.

-30-

The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.