Richard Nixon was president, Diana Ross and the Supremes gave their farewell concert in Las Vegas, and a book by Alvin Toffler titled “Future Shock” was rocketing up the bestseller list.
Also in 1970, newspaper headlines around the state focused on a new medical landmark in Birmingham: The Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute for clinical cancer research, named in honor of Governor George Wallace’s wife who died of cancer in 1968 and had to travel to Texas for her treatments.
“When the Institute was built, it was pretty much state of the art,” says Edward Partridge, MD, director of UAB’s Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC). “But the art changes.”
Partridge says the Center has grown dramatically in recent years, “both in terms of the numbers of scientists and clinicians, and in the amount of extramural grants we bring in, which has roughly quadrupled in the past 20 years or so. Those achievements have been nothing short of transformational.”
As a result, UAB unveiled in August a thoroughly renovated and updated version of the old CCC facility, with major enhancements to benefit physicians, staff, and patients.
“The footprint of the building itself is the same,” says Pam Bounelis, PhD, assistant dean for biomedical research, who was closely involved with the CCC redesign, “but pretty much everything inside those walls was gutted and rebuilt. There were a few lab benches we were able to re-use, but even those were taken out and refinished to fit the new way the labs are organized.
“So while the building looks the same from the outside, everything inside is dramatically different. The main new feature is a skylight, and the offices are organized around that central atrium. Another nice touch are floor tiles of different colors, which help people find their way around. The floor tiles in the labs are either white or cream, and there are paths made of maroon or red tiles that lead to emergency equipment: fire extinguishers, emergency showers, and eyewash.”
Another improvement is a new lighting system for lab benches, with fixtures installed directly over each bench to prevent shadows.
The architects and planners had their work cut out for them in transforming the 40-year-old structure. “One problem with the old building was that there was no real front door,” Partridge says, “and once you walked in, it was exceptionally dark. And because of the configuration, the labs were somewhat isolated.
“But our architects came back with a wonderful design that allows sunlight down through all four of the research levels. And there’s a nice entrance on the Seventh Avenue side of the building to that open atrium. The labs themselves are completely open, with no walls between, which allows technicians and researchers to communicate better with each other.
“This is the way labs are being built in new research space across the nation. Science is advancing so fast that it’s difficult to do research in isolation any more, and it’s essentially impossible for a single brain to assimilate all that information. Multi-disciplinary teams are the wave of the future, and our new space is exceptionally conducive to that.
“So between the light and the new space, it all makes for a huge psychological effect.”
From a diagnostic standpoint, it’s the basement of the building where the real riches are: two large PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanners, for non-invasive three-dimensional imaging of patients’ tissue, and a new cyclotron, or particle accelerator, that’s the largest of its kind in the United States. Having the cyclotron on-site is important, says Partridge, because some of the radio-isotopes it generates have a half-life of only a few minutes. The cyclotron’s time will be divided between therapeutic and research uses.
The daunting process of transforming the familiar six-story structure on Birmingham’s Southside began in 2007, Bounelis says, when then-medical dean Robert Rich took a proposal to Alabama’s governor for a complete renovation of CCC that would benefit cancer patients throughout the state.
People who worked in the building began moving to other space the following year (no small undertaking, with 25 different lab teams alone), and demolition of the upper floors began in 2009.
The construction progress has gone “pretty smoothly,” says Bounelis, though the inevitable dust and noise required some patience from those in the vicinity. “Fortunately a lot of the little odds and ends were completed at the same time, which was preferable to having disruption after some people had already moved in.”
With the hard lifting done and the sunlit facility fresh from its open-house celebration, Partridge says the result was well worth the time and effort involved. “It’s just a spectacular building, and the entire State of Alabama should be proud of their investment.”
