New KU Cancer Center Receives $10M from The Cinelli Family Foundation

Posted September 10, 2024

The Cinelli Family Foundation has donated $10 million to help a new therapeutic laboratory at the new University of Kansas Cancer Center.

The Lawrence-based organization’s donation will create a cellular therapeutics Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) laboratory. The gift is also the first the building has received, bringing its total amount of funding raised to around $247 million, according to a release.

Cancer therapy processing from GMP laboratories is not readily available in the Kansas City region. Patients wait for custom treatments developed by laboratories outside the religion from the patient’s cells. The cells are needed to support CAR T-cell therapy which finds and destroys cancer cells.

Establishing an in-house GMP laboratory will reduce the costs and wait time for creating these specialized cells.

“In 1976, my mother died of leukemia, thus starting a decades-long journey for my siblings and me to really understand what it was like to have a parent die of cancer,” Janet Cinelli, executive director and president of the Cinelli Family, said in the release. “Fast forward to now, having lost my wonderful stepmother to pancreatic cancer. In her last days, she was very clear she wanted the foundation to support research into the three cancers that have impacted our family—leukemia, breast and pancreatic.”

The University of Kansas Cancer Center building’s funding is comprised of sources including individuals, private foundations and the state of Kansas.

Infrastructure work to support the new building will begin this fall, while a groundbreaking is planned for spring 2025.