The Rush University Cancer Center comprises all cancer-related clinical, research and educational efforts at Rush, crossing 20 departments, divisions and sections; inpatient and outpatient areas; professional clinical activities; and the colleges of Rush University.

The Coleman Foundation Comprehensive Clinics

Rush, which serves both adults and children with cancer, is home to 12 Coleman Foundation Comprehensive Clinics. In these multidisciplinary clinics, a team approach is applied to patient care; the patient’s diagnosing physician meets with the care team at Rush to discuss the patient’s condition, review diagnostic tests and develop a treatment plan.

The Coleman Foundation Comprehensive Clinics are dedicated to the following:

• Brain and spine tumors
• Breast cancer
• Chest tumors
• Gastrointestinal cancers
• Head and neck cancers
• Inherited susceptibility to cancer
• Leukemia
• Lymphoma
• Melanoma and soft tissue tumors
• (includes the former Pigmented Lesion Clinic)
• Multiple myeloma
• Myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative neoplasms
• Prostate cancer

Support Services

In addition to treating cancer, Rush is committed to helping patients and their families cope with its psychological, emotional and spiritual effects. Support services available at Rush include the following:

• An American Cancer Society patient navigator who meets with patients and families to provide vital support, including information about available treatments, programs and community services.
• The Cancer Integrative Medicine Program through which patients have access to complementary therapies — such as psychosocial and nutritional counseling, massage therapy, yoga and acupuncture — that promote their well-being and help maintain their quality of life.
• A recently expanded palliative and supportive care program that offers distress screening, pain management and many other services.
• Survivorship services for lymphoma and breast cancer survivors.

Strategic Relationships

To provide the best possible care for patients across the region, Rush has formed key relationships with other institutions in Chicago and beyond, including those with the following institutions:

• Argonne National Laboratory
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County
• Rush Oak Park Hospital
• Rush-Copley Medical Center
• Rush Riverside Cancer Institute

Residency and Fellowship Programs

Rush offers a full range of selective residencies and fellowships, including the following programs for physicians interested in caring for patients with cancer:

• Residency in radiation oncology
• Fellowship in hematology/medical oncology
• Fellowship in orthopedic oncology
• Midwest hospice and palliative medicine
• fellowship

Advancing Medicine Through Research

Rush has a robust basic and clinical research program. Researchers at Rush were involved with evaluating the first vaccine to show benefits in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma as well as in clinical trials that led to Herceptin’s original approval for treating metastatic breast cancer. Physicians at Rush also helped bring Rituxan, Bexxar and Zevalin to the market to treat hematologic cancers. Today, the Rush University Cancer Center fosters research across four broad programs that aim to deepen our understanding of cancer in order to better prevent, detect and treat it. These programs include cancer biology; clinical, behavioral and translational research; molecular signatures and cancer outcomes; and tumor immunology. For a list of cancer clinical trial opportunities, visit www.rush.edu/cancerclinicaltrials.

Recognition and Accreditations

In 2011, Rush ranked among the top 40 hospitals in the nation for the treatment of cancer in U.S.News & World Report’s annual best
hospitals issue.

Rush has received outstanding achievement awards from the American College of Surgeons’ Commission on Cancer in each of its surveys.

Rush has been named among the top-performing academic medical centers in the country by the University HealthSystem Consortium in its annual quality and accountability performance
rankings.

The Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy has awarded accreditation to The Coleman Foundation Blood and Bone Marrow Transplantation Clinic.

Three times in a row, Rush has received Magnet status — the highest recognition for nursing excellence — from the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

The Rush Breast Imaging Center is an American College of Radiology-accredited Center of Excellence, which is awarded to centers that have received full accreditation in mammography, breast ultrasound, and stereotactic and ultrasound-guided needle biopsies.

Decades of Innovation

Rush has always been a home for medical pioneers. In 1837, two days before Chicago’s official founding, Rush Medical College became the first medical school in the city. Today, physicians and researchers at the Rush University Cancer Center remain on the frontier of cancer care — continuing a long tradition of exploration that has resulted in achievements such as the following:

1968
George M. Hass, MD, a pathologist at Rush, produces leukemia and malignant lymphoma by restricting magnesium in the diet of animals — the first demonstration of a causal relation between an essential dietary component and the development of malignant disease.

1975
Frank R. Hendrickson, MD, a radiation oncologist at Rush,
helps found the Fermilab Cancer Therapy Facility, which is involved
in groundbreaking clinical trials involving the use of neutrons in
cancer therapy.

1982
Richard D. Penn, MD, along with J. A. Paice, PhD, and W. Gottschalk, MD, achieves a medical first at Rush by implanting a computerized programmable pump into a cancer patient’s abdomen for the delivery of analgesia.

1985
Rush opens its comprehensive breast cancer center and its pigmented lesion center, both the first of their kinds in the Midwest.

1994
Rush purchases the first positron emission tomography scan machine in Chicago, allowing doctors to measure the activity levels of various organs, including the brain, helping them to make better, more accurate treatment decisions.

2002
Melody Cobleigh, MD, a medical oncologist at Rush, leads the
multicenter study that identifies Herceptin as the first effective targeted therapy in metastatic breast cancer when used as both a single agent and in combination with chemotherapy.

2011
Researchers at Rush help evaluate the first vaccine to show benefits in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma.