A Dana-Farber Cancer Institute fund-raising campaign has hit the $1 billion mark a year earlier than expected - despite the ragged economy - setting what is believed to be a record for New England health care institutions.
The drive’s success, which will be announced today, appears to have few national parallels, although at least one other cancer center has embarked on a similar campaign.
“Wow,’’ said Karen Rouse, a senior vice president in the New England Division of the American Cancer Society. “It’s remarkable.’’
Dana-Farber, with a long tradition of treating patients and researching cancer, collected more than 1.7 million gifts since the campaign began in late 2003. Deep pockets were deeply tapped: 107 of the donations were for $1 million or more.
Half the money is being used for research and patient care, and about $200 million is going to new technology and construction of a new building on the in stitute’s Longwood campus.
Dana-Farber leaders and outside analysts attributed the campaign’s success to the institute’s deep imprint in New England and across the nation, a consequence of the thousands of patients it has treated as well as its long relationship with the Boston Red Sox. But they said there is also something deeply elemental about cancer that compels donors to open their wallets.
“Cancer touches virtually everyone,’’ said Massachusetts Hospital Association president Lynn Nicholas, who could recall no other medical institution raising so much in a financial drive. “My own father died of lung cancer, my mother is a breast cancer survivor, all my favorite aunts and uncles died from cancer.’’
The campaign, which will continue until its scheduled completion in about a year, is being conducted at a seminal moment in cancer research, when advances in genetics have rewritten the fundamental gestalt of cancer research: The location of a tumor - in the lung or breast, for example - now matters less than its genetic composition.
Scientists increasingly focus on identifying key genetic features of individual tumors and developing drugs that address those deadly genetic quirks - research that is labor intensive and stunningly expensive.
“The public is rightly impatient to see [genetic discoveries] translated into things that help our patients, and this is really what these donations are helping us to do,’’ said Dr. Barrett Rollins, Dana-Farber’s chief scientific officer. Already, the money has underwritten the opening of the Center for Cancer Genome Discovery at Dana-Farber.
The donations are also being used to develop drugs and methods that would allow doctors to diagnose tumors with sophisticated pictures rather than through surgical biopsies. Since the campaign started, Dana-Farber’s research budget has grown by nearly $100 million and is projected to be $307 million for the upcoming budget year. The increase is attributable to fund-raising and federal grants.
In the nearly four decades since the United States declared war on cancer, there have been unequivocal triumphs. Advances in treating childhood leukemia and lymphoma and testicular cancer in adults have transformed those diseases from death sentences into survivable conditions.
But for many other kinds of tumors, including the brain glioma that killed Senator Edward M. Kennedy, as well as pancreatic and lung cancer, progress has been frustratingly slow, with costly new drugs often adding mere months to patients lives.
As leaders of the fund-raising campaign sought to pry open the checkbooks of donors, they trumpeted the new frontiers of cancer research, said Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, cochairman of the drive. “We stressed that we were at a pivotal point,’’ said Lucchino, who has been treated for cancer twice at Dana-Farber. “I was proof-positive that progress was being made in these miserable diseases.’’
The campaign was fueled by a series of major donations, including $153 million from the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, an annual bike-a-thon; $50 million from Susan F. and Richard A. Smith; $30 million from the Yawkey Foundation; and $20 million from the Linde Family Foundation. The Smith family’s association with Dana-Farber has spanned three generations and six decades, and both Susan and Richard Smith, former chairman of General Cinema Corp. and former owner of the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich publishing house, are trustees of the institute. The Yawkey Foundation, the charity of former Red Sox owners Tom and Jean Yawkey, is also a prominent supporter of health care. Boston real estate developer Ed Linde’s foundation typically supports arts and educational charities but was intrigued by the prospect of translating research into treatment more swiftly.
The president of the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, Bill McGinly, described Dana-Farber’s accomplishment as “overwhelmingly significant. It would be significant in the college or university world, but even more so in health care.’’
That’s because, he said, universities have been immersed in large-scale fund-raising far longer than hospitals, their efforts fueled by loyal graduates.
So far, Dana-Farber, which has an annual budget of about $750 million, has received 83 percent of the $1 billion, with the remainder owed in pledges. Historically, virtually all donors have made good on their pledges, according to the institute.
One watchdog group, Charity Navigator, gives Dana-Farber its highest rating for cost-effective fund-raising. A Dana-Farber spokesman said in the most recently completed budget year, fund-raising costs were 9.2 cents per dollar raised, a figure considered well within accepted standards for philanthropic expenses.
Dana-Farber’s president, Dr. Edward J. Benz Jr., said the achievement of the $1 billion goal places a new onus on the institute. “People are counting on us,’’ Benz said. “They expect us to deliver improvements on the outlook for cancer patients and that’s what we need to do to justify reaching this goal, especially in these economic times that are so difficult for people.’’
Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmith@globe.com