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Fox Chase Cancer Center Expansion Plan
Fox Chase says expansion is vital
By Michael Hinkelman, Daily News Staff Writer
EVERY afternoon at 3:30, staff and volunteers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Northeast Philadelphia gather in the cafeteria to sip tea and munch on cookies.
This is more than just a quaint tradition dating back to 1943.
It's one way that Fox Chase is working on a cure for cancer.
Consider one afternoon last summer. Dr. Louis Weiner, the center's chief of medical oncology, and a colleague, Kerry Campbell, were schmoozing during teatime about their respective research projects.
Weiner was interested in mobilizing the patient's immune system to treat cancer. He learned that Campbell already was doing research on a specific kind of immune-system cell called a "natural killer cell."
Soon, the two had conjured up an experiment designed to turn natural killer cells into killing machines that would attack and destroy cancerous cells.
And a few weeks later Weiner hired a researcher from Israel, Dr. Liat Binyamin, to begin work on the experiment. He says it "holds promise."
"This never would have happened if he and I were on different campuses. We never would have had that informal opportunity," Weiner said.
That's why Fox Chase officials say it's important that scientists in labs and doctors treating patients work closely together - and why it's important that both continue to work at the existing campus.
Fox Chase wants to annex 19.4 acres of nearby Burholme Park to accommodate a planned $1 billion, 20-year expansion. The Fairmount Park Commission could vote today on the center's request.
But the expansion plan is bitterly opposed by some neighborhood residents, who would lose part of the well-used park and, they argue, a big chunk of their community life.
The debate at the park commission has largely revolved around land - whether city-owned park land near Fox Chase can be used for commercial development and swapped for park land elsewhere in the city.
But there's another part of the argument, too. Fox Chase is running out of room in which to save the lives of cancer patients, including many living in surrounding neighborhoods.
The center is bursting at the seams. Researchers are being shoe-horned into every nook and cranny of lab space. Boxes are piled atop refrigerators, and bookcases have been propped up in the halls of labs.
Weiner has backed off recruiting scientists because he's out of lab space for new hires. He even gave up half of his own lab space to accommodate the needs of other investigators.
Meanwhile, the number of new patients at Fox Chase jumped by 57 percent from 1994 to 2004. Outpatient visits at the center have jumped 77 percent since 1994 - to 63,406 last year.
Officials recently added 10 beds to the center's hospital; the beds were filled within days.
The center's one, six-story parking garage is routinely filled to capacity. Patient Armando Rivera said he sometimes parks on the street and walks 15 minutes to the center just to avoid the parking hassle. "Finding a parking spot is horrendous," he said.
New research facilities and parking garages are among the first things that would be built under the expansion; a 200-bed hospital would come later.
Crowding has even cut into prevention programs. When the new Cancer Prevention Pavilion opened in January 2000, officials hoped to use most of the five-floor facility for research and counseling at-risk people on how to avoid getting cancer.
But, just nine months after it opened, the swelling patient population forced Fox Chase to convert a number of conference rooms for counseling into outpatient-treatment clinics.
The flood of patients is unlikely to wane. Fox Chase expects to treat 6,500 new patients this year and guesses the figure could double in 10 years, primarily because of the region's aging population.
Most new cancers strike people after age 40, with 38 percent occurring at age 60 and beyond. Almost half of all Philadelphia residents are 40 or older, according to recent census estimates.
"There is going to be an unprecedented increase in the number of cancer patients in this region over the next 20 years, and somebody is going to have to see them," Weiner said.
"It would be a real tragedy if Fox Chase wasn't one of those places."
"If we are unable to grow to meet the demands of modern science, we will have a very difficult time remaining great," Weiner continued. "What will happen is that the people who make this place great won't want to be here anymore."
Research is a big deal at Fox Chase, which attracts more than $53 million a year in government grants and private contributions. Two Fox Chase researchers have won Nobel prizes in medicine and chemistry, including one last year.
Weiner, also vice president for translational research, said many researchers and doctors at Fox Chase are wooed by other institutions inside and outside of the city. "I'm talking about people who are doing cutting-edge research," he said.
Rivera is concerned with a slightly different problem.
Like almost one out of every four new patients and 31 percent of outpatients, according to 2003 figures, Rivera comes from a neighborhood within five miles of the center on Cottman Avenue.
He's 42, a US Airways stock clerk who lives with his wife and 4-year-old daughter in Lawndale, just south of Fox Chase. And he is part of a clinical trial there to treat a rare form of bone cancer that attacks the cartilage and tissue surrounding joints.
He said he has noticed a lot more patients in the waiting room since he was diagnosed with cancer in March 2002.
But if Fox Chase wasn't there, he said, treating his cancer would be even harder. He is responsible for dropping off and picking up his daughter at school between visits to the center.
Rivera said the relationship between the center and the park was a "tough issue."
But, in the end, it was more important for the center to grow and do more research.
"My family and I have used the park for recreation," he said, "but once you're diagnosed with cancer, then you look at things a little differently."