The former chief executive of a New York-based cancer institute that specializes in personalized medicine will become CEO of the new Inova Comprehensive Cancer and Research Institute.
Dr. Donald L. Trump will start at Inova Health System’s cancer center on Jan. 5, Inova officials confirmed. He stepped down earlier this year as chief of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a comprehensive cancer center in Amherst, New York, affiliated with the University at Buffalo.
Inova has not yet announced the appointment, but a colleague at sister publication Buffalo Business First noticed the Inova job mention in an announcement that Trump was recently named to the board of directors at an Amherst college.
The appointment is a natural choice for Inova. The system has been gearing up to break ground on a 258,000-square-foot, seven-story cancer institute building — a space larger than most hospitals and Inova’s largest construction project in years — just north of Inova Fairfax Hospital. It received the OK from the county about a year ago. While officials originally said they were on track to break ground in 2014, they told me recently it’s been delayed until 2015. Look for more updates on that soon.
The cancer center is part of Inova’s larger push to establish itself as an academic destination for personalized medicine and a home for the cash and talent behind the growing movement. It has poured $150 million into building its Translational Medicine Institute, where scientific discoveries in genetic research can be translated into bedside treatments. Dr. John Niederhuber, former director of the National Cancer Institute, leads that effort.
A prostate cancer specialist, Trump became president of Roswell Park in 2007 and went on to grow Roswell Park from $480 million in revenue to a $550 million organization.
Roswell Park is one 40 NCI’s Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the U.S. and one of 21 members of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Trump served as principal investigator for Roswell Park’s $19 million, five-year grant from NCI, which was renewed this summer just ahead of Trump’s retirement announcement in Buffalo.
As an interesting side note, he’s even earned the attention and support of his namesake, real estate mogul Donald Trump, in his fundraising efforts for cancer research.
