University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha, Nebraska

The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center became an NCI-designated cancer center in 1999. The mission of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is to coordinate basic and clinical cancer research, patient care, and educational programs, and to facilitate the application of new knowledge about the etiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer.

Research at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is conducted in four research programs: cancer genes and molecular regulation program, molecular and biochemical etiology program, gastrointestinal cancer program, and cancer prevention and control program. Notable programs in research include work on lymphoma and bone marrow transplantation, pancreatic cancer, and breast cancer.

Clinical care is provided by Nebraska Medicine at multiple locations throughout the area.

The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is also a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance that develops standards and sets guidelines for treatment. Multidisciplinary teams conduct research focused on discovering the mechanisms, which cause cancer to develop and then translate these discoveries into new approaches for early detection and new therapies for cancer treatment and prevention.

The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is partners with the UNMC Department of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, which provides enhanced access and increased accrual of children with cancer into clinical trials.

The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center reaches out to the medical community and the broader public through a variety of education and outreach programs for scientists, clinicians, health care workers, future scientists and healthcare providers, and the general public. For example, the Cancer Research Graduate Program trains students in the latest techniques of cancer research, awarding a Ph.D. upon completion. Community outreach programs are educating the public on the importance of cancer prevention and early detection. At several annual events, the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center provides free cancer screening to Nebraska’s underserved populations.

In 2013, as a result of a generous gift from Pamela Buffett through her foundation, the Rebecca Susan Buffett Foundation, ground was broken on a new cancer center complex on the campus shared by the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine.

The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center includes a ten story cancer research tower call the Suzanne and Walter Scott Cancer Research Tower, 108 inpatient beds called the C.L. Werner Cancer Hospital, and a multidisciplinary outpatient clinic that includes surgical, medical, and radiation oncology, a 24/7 infusion center, as well as radiology and lab services. The facility opened in June 2017.