The gift will enable the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center to implement a broad range of supporting programs and recruit 30 top cancer specialists to provide a critical mass for the major varieties of cancer, empowering it to achieve recognition as a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center on an accelerated timetable.

"My family and I are very encouraged about the major progress being made [at the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center], and we want to do what we can to ensure that the people of Texas have access to the finest cancer care in the country," said Mr. Simmons. "We feel that UT Southwestern can make it happen, and we're excited about what the future will bring."

The $50 million gift, part of the medical center's $500 million Innovations in Medicine campaign, equals the largest gift in UT Southwestern's history as well as the largest gift ever made to a Dallas organization.

In 1988 the Simmons family donated $41 million to UT Southwestern. Of that, $24 million established the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, a gift that was supplemented in 1999 with $5 million and in 2004 with an additional $15.4 million. Mr. Simmons also gave $2.5 million for endowed distinguished chairs in cancer research named for his wife and daughters. Last month, he and Mrs. Simmons donated $500,000, in memory of Dr. Charles Sprague, the first president of UT Southwestern, for a chair in clinical oncology.

"The Simmons gift is an investment in the future of Dallas and the nation, and it bolsters our hope to reduce the impact of cancer, and of eventually preventing and curing it," said Dr. James Willson, director of the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate dean for oncology programs. "It will enable us to pr
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Contact: Rachel Skei Donihoo
rachel.donihoo@utsouthwestern.edu
214-648-3404
UT Southwestern Medical Center
2-Nov-2005