A New Translation

Cancer treatment is evolving. In the era of genomic medicine with new knowledge emerging from research, two trends are paramount in cancer center design—supporting personalized medicine and creating rapid translational research from bench to bedside. The approach of translational research is a two-way street. Basic scientists provide clinicians with new tools for use in patient care and for assessing their impact, and clinical researchers make novel observations about the nature and progression of disease that stimulate basic investigations.

So the new design challenge is how to bring these two types of researchers and their divergent environments together to accelerate new knowledge and help foster development of genetic-specific treatments. This must be done while also creating healing environments that support each patient’s unique psychological and social needs to create a customized experience that aligns with the new personalization of genomic medicine.

Growing needs bring down barriers

In 2005, the cancer center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) found itself at a crossroads. Twenty years of success yielded a program that had doubled in size and no longer fit in its initial 11-story, 180,000-square-foot building, expanding far across the university campus and scattering patient care, practitioners, and scientists.

Realizing that its future success depended upon growth and consolidation to support translational medicine, increase access for patients, and attract and retain top talent, UAMS needed a smarter facility solution to advance cancer care. The prospect was exciting—creating the optimum translational environment to deliver personalized cancer care—but creating institutional support and finding funding would be significant challenges.

Leadership recognized the underserved population and growing needs within Arkansas, plus the potential economic benefits a comprehensive cancer center could provide the state, but they lacked a platform to highlight its need and value. UAMS, home to Arkansas’s only research-based cancer center, saw Arkansans leaving the state because treatment was not available for some diseases. For a great number, traveling for care was not financially possible, leaving many without options.

When Winthrop P. Rockefeller, Arkansas’s former lieutenant governor, was diagnosed with a disorder that can lead to leukemia and had to leave Arkansas for care, the rally cry for improved access and a truly amazing partnership between the university, government, and philanthropic community to raise the funds was born. The state legislature approved a dollar-for-dollar match to philanthropic funds raised, thereby generating the financial support needed to grow programs and recruit top researchers and clinicians. The legislature’s vote was unanimous, a first in Arkansas.

Foresight neutralizes challenges

As UAMS worked with FKP Architects and Cromwell Architects Engineers to plan its facility expansion, it became clear that the existing facilities, while presenting several space limitations, had been built with forethought and held multiple opportunities for positive reuse towards the dual goals. Located on a tight urban site in Little Rock, Arkansas, UAMS’s situation was atypical in that it had immediately adjacent land area to expand. Additionally, the existing building’s internal circulation held pathways toward the adjacent site and had ample floor-to-floor ceiling height, making alignment of an expansion much easier.