Personalized medicine expert fills leadership role at KU Cancer Center

Nov 8, 2010

Kansas City, Kan. -- A leading scientist in the field of personalized medicine and drug development has joined The University of Kansas Cancer Center. Andrew K. Godwin, PhD, will serve as the Cancer Center's Associate Director of Translational Research, filling a key leadership position and moving the Cancer Center closer to its goal of attaining National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation.

Godwin arrived at The University of Kansas Cancer Center on October 25 from Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pa., where he was the director of the Clinical Molecular Genetics Laboratory, the co-leader of the Women's Cancer Program, and the initiator and director of one of the top biospecimen repositories in the country. His specialty is developing tests to determine whether a drug will work on a particular patient or tumor.

The University of Kansas Cancer Center already has unique expertise in the area of drug discovery. Godwin will make that aspect of the Cancer Center's research even stronger.

"The wave of the future is drug discovery. Now that Dr. Godwin is here, we have one of the best people in the world to do that," says Roy A. Jensen, MD, director of The University of Kansas Cancer Center. For example, Jensen says, it's now common practice for people who are diagnosed with colon cancer to take a test to determine whether a particular gene (known as the K-RAS gene) will respond to a specific drug. Godwin's lab helped establish that test, Jensen says.

Godwin, who earned his Bachelor of Science degree in cellular biology from the University of Kansas before going on to earn a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania, says he is happy to be back in the area after 26 years on the East Coast. "I am excited about the opportunities at the Cancer Center and am looking forward to working with its leaders to achieve our goal of establishing a comprehensive cancer center in the middle part of America. I felt it was time to give back to my home state and help provide a place for cancer patients in the area to come for the latest therapies so they can remain near family and friends."

KU Cancer Center leaders are especially proud of the fact that their newest recruit is from Kansas. "He grew up in Lawrence, graduated from KU, then spent twenty-some years at Fox Chase, which is one of the premier cancer centers in the world," Jensen says. "He's a Kansas native who made good, and now he's coming home."

Godwin will also be a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and director of molecular oncology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is a KBA Eminent Scholar, and holds the Chancellors Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences endowed professorship.

For more information on the University of Kansas Cancer Center, click here.