Moneybench: The economic impact of cancer research at UAB

Published On: 12.12.16 |

By: 1117

Moneybench: The economic impact of cancer research at UAB

With a 14-to-1 return on investment, the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center has a significant financial impact statewide, its director, Dr. Ed Partridge, explained.

Research gives doctors new weapons in the fight against cancer, and moves them down the road to the ultimate goal: a cure. But along the way, it also has another benefit, Partridge said. “Our research enterprise at UAB, and at the Comprehensive Cancer Center in particular, is a major economic driver for Alabama.”

The Cancer Center counts around $10 million in base funding each year, spread among its “core grant” from the National Cancer Institute, philanthropy, and state and institutional funding. It leverages those funds to bring in an additional $140 million in annual grants and contracts, Partridge said. That money not only pays the salaries of the researchers and their staffs, but also reaches out to the community, he said.

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There are 40 different labs in the Wallace Tumor Institute alone, and every one “is really a small business,” Partridge said. The principal investigator is the CEO, the postdocs and the lab tech are the staff, and “UAB is the serial angel investor,” he explained, using the term for a person who provides startup capital for a new business.

The NCI core grant “funds the shared facilities and administration that sets the research strategy,” Partridge said. “Then with philanthropic dollars we recruit new investigators and invest in new science. When you attract high-caliber faculty and researchers, the impact trickles down to the community.

“Our recruits buy homes and settle their families here; but they also support the scientific workforce, for example, by hiring supply and equipment vendors, contractors and laborers for the construction and renovation of laboratory facilities, as well as administrators and managers who support the research infrastructure.”

The average budget for UAB’s cancer research labs is about $1.5 million per year, much of which reaches the surrounding community, Partridge said.

In addition to salaries, researchers constantly purchase supplies and equipment, much of it from local firms. In the same way that the Honda and Mercedes plants in Alabama have brought in a host of satellite businesses to serve their needs, UAB’s research engine powers many ancillary companies, Partridge noted. “It truly is a catalyst for economic growth.”