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Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

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Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is a cancer research and treatment center located in Buffalo, New York. Founded by surgeon Roswell Park in 1898, the center was the first in the United States to specifically focus on cancer research. The center is usually called Roswell Park in short. The center, which conducts clinical research on cancer as well as the development new drugs, provides advanced treatment for all forms of adult and pediatric cancer, and serves as a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is as of 2019, the only upstate New York facility to hold the National Cancer Institute designation of "comprehensive cancer center".

The Roswell Park campus, spread out in 15 separate buildings of approximately two million square feet, occupies 28 acres (11 ha) on the 100-acre (40 ha) Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC) in downtown Buffalo, and includes 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 m2) of space equally distributed between clinical programs and research/education functions. A separate hospital building, completed in 1998, houses a diagnostic and treatment center. The campus also includes a medical research complex as well as research and education focused spaces.

In 1898, the program that would later become the cancer center was established by Roswell Park, who was a professor of surgery at the University of Buffalo School of Medicine. Park said that "Only through a deliberate well-planned, combined attack from various directions by means fitted for such work could real advances be made and further the relationship of laboratory work, clinical study and education must be closely associated."

Research started in three rooms in the University of Buffalo School of Medicine but not long thereafter, it outgrew the rooms. Seeing the importance of dedicated cancer research, select Buffalo citizens donated funds to purchase land and construct a new building. The largest contributor was Mrs. William Gratwick (wife of William H. Gratwick, the founder of Gratwick, Smith & Fryer Lumber Co.), who donated $25,000. The Gratwick Research Laboratory of the University of Buffalo was constructed in 1901 and was located at High and Elm streets.

Park wrote books, gave lectures, and was the administrator at the cancer research center. In 1904, Park stepped down and Harvey R. Gaylord took over as the center's second director. Park remained as the chairman of the board of trustees.

In coming decades the center was renamed the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a name it retained for decades until 2018, when its current name was implemented. The Roswell Park Cancer Institute was usually called Roswell Park or RPCI for short.

Drs. Gerty and Carl Cori jointly won the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, "for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen." Their research leading to the discovery began during their tenure at Roswell Park (then called the New York State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases), from 1922 to 1931.

Thomas Dao (1921–2009), served as director of the breast surgery department from 1957 to 1988, where he developed breast cancer treatment alternatives.

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