It wasn’t hard to determine what the focus of our premier issue would be. KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway has declared the fight against cancer to be our University’s number one priority. Kansas lawmakers included five million new dollars in this year’s state budget to grow the KU Cancer Center. With a commitment fueled by passion and innovation, the University of Kansas Medical Center, in collaboration with many partners, is emerging as a world-class adversary of cancer.

In these pages, we will illuminate what motivates our physicians and researchers to pursue this quest and the considerable expertise they bring to this fight. We will share with you our plans to develop a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center designed to serve as a resource for the entire region. Most important, we will tell the story of cancer from the perspective of those whose lives have been impacted by this disease. In these pages you will learn why the University of Kansas is pursuing the goal of ending suffering and death from cancer.

One in two men and one in three women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer. While those statistics are sobering, hope can be found in the medical miracles emanating from the minds and labs of our physicians and scientists. Investments in cancer research are paying dividends. Last year, for the first time, the number of deaths from cancer in our nation was less than the year before. In fact, there are now more than 10 million cancer survivors in the U.S., and KU is committed to finding the new therapies, drugs, and prevention strategies to help that number grow significantly. The intersection of 39th and Rainbow is where those breakthroughs will be born. So, while we have decided to call this edition of our magazine The Cancer Issue, you should know that for KU cancer is always the issue.