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John Carothers |
UNMC Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D., announced the gift Monday at a news conference at the Lincoln County Fairgrounds.
“The establishment of the Dr. John and Ethel Carothers Research Fund will provide us with additional resources to find cures to devastating diseases and illnesses in the areas of cancer and cardiology,” Dr. Maurer said. “We’re especially grateful that the gift was directed from a man who spent most of his life in rural Nebraska. UNMC is truly a 500-mile-wide campus, and we are proud to advance the health care of all of Nebraska’s citizens through education, research, patient care and community outreach.”
The gift will support promising research activities in cancer and cardiology at UNMC. Ken Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UNMC Eppley Cancer, said Carothers’ support of cancer research is truly a gift to people across Nebraska.
“A gift like this speaks to how the research programs at the University of Nebraska Medical Center have an impact on people statewide,” Dr. Cowan said. “The Eppley Cancer Center is deeply grateful for this gift that will assist scientists with the cutting-edge cancer research UNMC is world-famous for.”
UNMC Eppley Cancer Center is the region’s most established NCI (National Cancer Institute) designated cancer center. The center is internationally respected as one of the most prolific research and treatment centers for leukemia, lymphoma and other types of cancer such as breast, prostate, pancreatic and gastrointestinal. The UNMC Eppley Cancer Center is one of 19 founding members of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of the world’s leading cancer centers that develop standards for treating patients.
Additionally, this gift will benefit research in cardiology at UNMC and efforts to better understand, treat and possibly cure cardiovascular disease, which is the leading killer of Nebraskans.
“While we have made great strides in the past decade in reducing the death and disability from cardiovascular disease, there is much more to be done,” said John Windle, M.D., chief of the section of cardiology at UNMC. “This gift will help us to build or enhance cardiovascular research programs to help all Nebraskans.”
According to Windle some of the most promising cardiovascular research in the world is occurring at UNMC.
“We are pioneering methods to identify inflammation in arteries before they cause heart attacks,” he said. “We are learning to deliver therapy in bubbles the size of a single red blood cell and then release them at a specific target within the heart. We are building systems to map abnormal electrical impulses in a single heart beat, thereby allowing us to find and destroy the tissue causing the abnormal heart rhythm. This generous gift will be a tremendous boost for the cardiovascular research program at UNMC.”
Carothers was born in Lincoln in 1921 to Dr. John and Ethel Carothers. His father, a prominent physician, died in 1927 when his son was 6.
The younger Carothers graduated from Lincoln High School in 1938 and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1942. Prior to attending UNL, Carothers and his mother moved to a ranch in Lincoln County, just south of Hershey. He returned there after college and continued ranching until 2000 when he moved to Linden Court nursing home in North Platte.
“He always spoke fondly of his father’s medical profession and was very fond of the University of Nebraska Medical Center,” said Carothers’ friend, Mike Polk, of North Platte. “In his will, he wanted to leave a legacy to his mother and father at UNMC. This gift is accomplishing what he hoped to achieve.”
John Gollan, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the UNMC College of Medicine, commended Carothers for his generosity and foresight in directing this gift to medical research.
“Through the establishment of this fund Mr. Carothers honors his parents’ memory in a very significant way,” Dr. Gollan said. “Cancer and heart disease touch families from North Platte, Scottsbluff, Omaha and all the communities in between. This gift will help UNMC scientists better understand how to diagnose, treat and possibly eliminate these diseases and influence the quality of life for many in this state and beyond.”