Top Cancer Scientists Leaving UCLA Center

As the field of cancer care explodes with unparalleled opportunities, top scientists at UCLA’s prestigious Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center are leaving for lucrative jobs at other institutions.

The departures are occurring as significant advances in cancer research are making the leap from the laboratory into the clinic, where experts say that patient care is about to be revolutionized.

During the last year, lucrative positions at private hospitals as well as aggressive recruiting by academic institutions in other states have taken both junior and senior scientists away from UCLA’s well-known cancer center, which once boasted of virtually no turnover.

“We aren’t used to people leaving,” said Dr. Richard Steckel, the center’s veteran director. “People came here and stayed. It was a terminal event.”

But as one UCLA oncologist, Dr. John Glaspy, explained, the field of cancer is undergoing “tremendous change” due to new molecular biological techniques for diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

“What’s taken so long to evolve in the laboratory is finally penetrating the clinical practice of oncology,” Glaspy said. “This is why there may be a fair amount of upheaval, not just here, but in the community overall.

“We’re on the brink of a new era,” he said. “We’re about to undergo a revolution in how we practice oncology.” Universities, private hospitals and biotechnology companies are all jockeying for position “to ensure that they’ll all be ready for the change that’s happening,” he said.

During the last year, eight oncologists have left or have made plans to leave the UCLA center. The latest to leave is Dr. Donald Morton, director of surgical oncology, perhaps headed to a community hospital just a few miles down the road from UCLA--St. John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica, which is gearing up for new cancer business in a big way. Several other UCLA surgeons, researchers and support people are expected to leave with Morton.

In addition to capturing these doctors, St. John’s is hoping to work out an alliance with the heirs of John Wayne, who until recently have been big financial supporters of the UCLA cancer center. Earlier this month, the Wayne family severed ties with UCLA and revoked permission to use John Wayne’s name in the title of their cancer clinic.

During the last year, UCLA has been hit by the loss of several other nationally renowned scientists. Last summer, Dr. Gregory Sarna left as director of the center’s oncology clinic to go into private practice at the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center, operated by Salick Health Care Inc. Dr. Richard Champlin left his job last year as director of UCLA’s bone marrow transplantation to join the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

A third senior scientist, Dr. David Golde, director of medical oncology at UCLA, is scheduled to leave this fall for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Three other less prominent but well-respected oncologists have left or are leaving UCLA.

In some cases, the scientists voiced frustration with UCLA’s leadership and priorities, but others said simply that their new jobs were too good to refuse.

Steckel acknowledged that the departed scientists are a major loss for UCLA’s cancer center, one of 24 such facilities nationwide specially designated by the National Cancer Institute. The center receives more than $80 million a year in research grants and treats 2,300 patients annually.

But Steckel added: “This does not constitute a complete evisceration of our oncology program. We still have the vast majority of people who are staying. . . . Many programs would give their eye teeth to have (the people) who are staying here.”

The center, which has about 50 oncologists, is recruiting to fill vacancies, Steckel said.

About a million new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States. Cancer accounts for nearly 10% of the nation’s health care costs.

“Cancer is big business. It’s a huge and growing field,” said David Langness, spokesman for the Hospital Council of Southern California. As hospitals struggle to survive the financial ill effects of a rapidly changing health scene, government cuts, empty beds and growing competition for patients, hospital administrators are eager to capture a piece of the lucrative cancer market.

“When I started out,” Golde said, “cancer was sort of like the poor stepchild of medicine . . . . Now, it’s a pre-eminent area of patient care. Every hospital of any size has or wants to have some kind of cancer center.”

In the last six years, for example, cancer clinics in various forms have been established or greatly expanded at many local hospitals, including for example, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Long Beach Memorial Hospital.

In some cases, the cancer clinics are independent entities located on the hospital premises. In others, they are owned by a chain.

Salick Health Care Inc., for example, operates eight cancer centers across the country, which allows “a pooling of brain power and sharing (of) clinical research activities,” said Les Bell, the company’s chief financial officer. The company generated $70 million in revenue, realizing after-tax profits of $4.7 million during the year ending in August, 1990.

Sister Marie Madeleine Shonka, chief executive officer at St. John’s, acknowledged that the upscale Santa Monica hospital is planning to develop a major cancer institute but declined to give details or discuss staffing.

Morton said “it’s premature” for him to discuss his new job prospects but that “if things happen and agreements are concluded, there will be a significant story in two or three weeks.”

“Morton almost suredly, though it’s not certain, will be leaving to go to St. John’s,” Steckel said. The big question, he said, is how many other surgeons will go with him.

Offers from St. John’s come at a time of turmoil and unrest in the division of surgical oncology, some UCLA surgeons say.

Dr. Kenneth Ramming, a UCLA cancer surgeon who said he has not decided whether to accept St. John’s offer, said there are “a lot of ruffled feathers” among the surgeons at UCLA because of cramped laboratory space and administrative policy changes that have affected surgeons’ private practices.

“In the midst of this, we have an enormously intriguing offer at St. John’s,” Ramming said. “I never thought I’d want to leave UCLA . . . but no one ever saw an offer quite like this.”

Dr. David Hoon, a cancer researcher who said he is planning to leave UCLA, said that St. John’s will provide significantly more research space. An intriguing component of the St. John’s plan, he said, is that satellite clinics eventually would be set up at other hospitals across the country.

“It will be like a network,” Hoon said. “We’ll be the core center and other places in the United States can take advantage of our therapy and new product trials.”

St. John’s is prepared to make a $15-million commitment to its new cancer program, according to Michael Wayne, son of actor John Wayne.

The Wayne family has been closely allied with the UCLA oncology program for the last decade, contributing more than $1.5 million. In particular, they have helped fund Morton’s work.

Michael Wayne said the break with UCLA is amicable. “We’ve outstripped what UCLA is able to give us in terms of space, staffing and money for research,” Wayne said.

He said he hopes to help set up a new program, possibly at St. John’s, that will reach more patients. His aim is help in the delivery of quality care to the greatest number of patients, he said.

“The hope is to spread it out across the United States and eventually across the whole world,” Wayne said.

“It’s nothing against UCLA, it’s just that we’re on to bigger and better things.”