Facts about the Cancer Center Expansion:

• The expansion of the Cancer Center, costing more than $40M, provides four floors of new space for clinical care, basic and translational research activities, and the administrative offices as well as renovation of existing space.
• Doubles the square footage of the original Cancer Center, from 100,000 SF to 200,000SF
• More than 160 research scientists collaborate on over than 200 research projects.
• There are more than 110 cancer specialists (areas include diagnostics, medical oncology, hematology, bone marrow transplantation, radiation oncology, surgical oncology, psycho-oncology, palliative care and genetics counseling.
• 1,800 new patients are seen each year and there are more than 31,000 patients visit annually.
• Last year, Dartmouth brought in about $150M in research funding - more than two thirds of that was for the Medical School and the Cancer Center secured $55M of that funding.
• 30-45 Cancer Center-Initiated Clinical trials are open at any one time.
• Core funding from the National Cancer Institute is $1.8 million/year (25th consecutive year of funding).
• Research funding to Cancer Center members results in $48 million in NIH and NCI peer-reviewed grants and contracts.
• Norris Cotton Cancer Center is one of only 40 NCI designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers.

Facts and Links about the Construction

• The Norris Cotton Cancer Center Expansion is part of the DHMC Project for Progress.
• The Architects for the project are Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott (SBRA)

Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) Lab

The GMP Lab is a sterile area appropriate for translational research, melding basic science discoveries into therapeutics appropriate for patient care. This facility gives us the ability to work with human specimens and develop such things as cancer vaccines. It is also the site of the lab work associated with bone marrow transplant. It will be staffed by medical technicians. This is an unusual research asset; it is the only GMP Lab in northern New England.

As you enter the GMP Lab, the first room is for suiting up in sterile gowns and gloves. The inner room to the right is the gene transfer lab, which includes a warm/cold environment room [note the temperature indicators outside the door]. The large rooms contain 4 liquid nitrogen hookups for freezers that maintain minus 120 and minus 180 degree temperatures. These are used to preserve bone marrows until the patient is ready to receive them.

Please note that the GMP has a pneumatic tube station in the first room. Throughout DHMC, all human specimens travel through a pneumatic tube system-no one walks the halls with a vial of blood in hand. Human tissue removed in surgery travels through pneumatic tubes directly to pathology laboratories or to a facility like this GMP for cancer research purposes.