With $150M gift, MD Anderson and Texas Children’s look to end cancer

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Texas Children’s Hospital have both engaged in studies of cancer, but they say their work is poised to hit another level.

The Kinder Foundation has given the two organizations $150 million to expand cancer research and treatment, and they are planning to build the new Kinder Children’s Cancer Center. A facility for the new cancer center will be built on the campus of the Texas Medical Center and connect to Texas Children’s Hospital. Officials say the new cancer center will launch in early 2026.

Research leaders at MD Anderson and Texas Children’s are anxious to offer better care for patients. But they are motivated by the prospect of expanding studies that could lead to better treatments and ultimately cures for childhood cancer.

Richard Gorlick, MD, head of the division of pediatrics at MD Anderson Cancer Center, doesn’t talk casually or boastfully about aiming to eliminate cancer.

“Obviously, the mission is really bold,” Gorlick tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “You know, obviously it's always scary to say your mission is to end childhood cancer. That's a tall order, but you have a lot of resources that are being brought to bear, and I think it's the right mission. Because to say you're going to do anything less isn't really, you know, bold enough for this particular scale of an enterprise.”

Gorlick doesn’t address the goal lightly. But he says it’s not enough to set a goal of aiming to reduce mortality.

“I think it's the right mission, but, yeah, it is a tall order,” he says. “A lot of great people have worked on childhood cancer for a long period of time, and they've made staggering progress, but they haven't ended it. There's not a lot of cancers that have been ended.”

“So it is a big claim, but I still stand by it,” he adds. “I think it's the right claim, because that has to be what we're driving towards.”

(See more on the new cancer center in this video. The story continues below.)

‘Better together’

Donald “Will” Parsons, MD, interim director of the Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Center, says he’s looking forward to expanding the scope of care for patients.

But he’s also very enthusiastic about the cancer studies that will be done in cooperation with MD Anderson.

“The research, I think, is even more exciting in some ways, because this is why both Texas Children's and MD Anderson are special in some ways,” Parsons says.

“We're doing a great job and have an intense focus on taking the best possible care of our patients now and their families, but also in parallel, thinking about how we're going to be doing it even better in the future is in some ways, what underlies the whole mission,” he adds.

Texas Children’s and MD Anderson have worked together in the past, and Parsons says the contribution from the Kinder Foundation allows the organizations to pursue different areas.

“I think the way this really helps us is it allows us to be even more strategic about how we want to focus those research dollars to build upon areas of strength between the two institutions, and there's a large number of them, in terms of treating specific diseases, in terms of our survivorship programs, in terms of all sorts of things,” Parsons says.

Pediatric cancer researchers are accustomed to collaborating. Parsons says it’s a “very small and close community.”

“We're very comfortable and accustomed to doing things as a team,” he says. “I mean, this is really how we think of things. And so to me, this is simply a logical extension of that of working, defining an even more formal collaboration, so that we can be strategic and smart, and build something great with our colleagues at MD Anderson.”

Gorlick notes that both MD Anderson and Texas Children have strong research programs in cell therapy.

“Cell therapy is a powerhouse of both organizations, but largely driven by different approaches,” Gorlick says. “It'll allow those to be compared side by side, used side by side, investigated together.”

“Drug development, genetic predisposition testing, so many things are strengths that will just be synergized by us working together,” he adds. “I just say it again and again, we're going to be better together, and we're going to be incredibly synergistic.”

Researchers at Texas Children’s, MD Anderson and Baylor College of Medicine have been working to harness the immune system to fight cancer, Parsons says. He also points to work at Texas Children’s to develop more knowledge of genetics and develop genetic testing to take better care of patients.

From bench to bedside

Both Gorlick and Parsons point to the goal of making sure that researchers and physicians are collaborating, so that work in the laboratory can be applied to patient care.

“As we've actually started to brainstorm and think about the operational aspects of how we're going to implement this, it's become clear that you don't have the clinic on one side and the clinical research on the other side,” Parsons says. “It's all part of the same two sides of the same coin. It's what we're doing for our patients every day and what we need to be doing even better in the future.”

Both Gorlick and Parsons marveled at the generosity of the Kinder Foundation. And they are aiming to meet the expectations that come from such a gift and the attention that surrounds it.

Gorlick says he envisions building the world’s best pediatric cancer program, but he says the goal still ultimately needs to be focused on ending cancer.

“Even saying we're going to be the best program in the world is sort of a bold statement,” he says. “But what does that mean for the patients? Us being the best, doesn't mean we've done what we need to do.”

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