Last time, cancer researchers used about $10 million to help lure more than $30 million in research funding. That could happen again.

The National Institutes of Health’s Center of Biomedical Research Excellence program has renewed its commitment to KU distinguished medicinal chemistry professor Gunda Georg, who receives a $10.4 million grant to help mentor researchers and support cancer research across Kansas.

That grant will help KU meet its goal of building a top-rate cancer program.

It “represents a tremendous step forward,” said Roy Jensen, director of the Kansas Masonic Cancer Research Institute, the cancer research arm of KU Medical Center.

Georg and researchers received about $10 million in a five-year grant in 2000 from the National Institutes of Health. KU recently announced the renewal of that grant.

The cancer research by Robert Ward, a Kansas University professor who works in Haworth Hall, is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. KU distinguished medicinal chemistry professor Gunda Georg is receiving a 0.4 million grant to help mentor researchers and support cancer research across Kansas.

The funds support researchers who are just starting their research careers. The grant provides mentoring, training and collaborative opportunities with the expectation that researchers will be awarded larger grants to continue and expand their work.

Georg, who also serves as director of the Center for Cancer Experimental Therapeutics at the Masonic Cancer Research Institute, said the funds helped pay for a grant-writing workshop, for example.

“We could have done this before, but we didn’t because it’s very expensive,” she said. “Normally, people around here wouldn’t have had the opportunity.”

Assisting Georg on the grant will be Richard Himes, KU professor emeritus in the department of molecular biosciences. Himes was a key contributor in KU’s success in securing the first grant, as well as in winning the new grant.

Researchers come from KU, KU Medical Center, Kansas State University, Wichita State University and Emporia State University.

Kathy Suprenant, professor and molecular biosciences chairwoman, said monthly research meetings were key.

“It fosters a nice collaborative environment that you wouldn’t have otherwise,” she said.

The Center of Biomedical Research Excellence program provides research funding to 23 less-populated states, including Kansas. The federal government has deemed these states generally receive less overall NIH funding than other, more populous states.

Federal cancer center designation would make KU’s Lawrence and medical center campuses eligible for millions of dollars in federal funding and clinical trials that could bring cutting-edge drugs to area cancer patients.

Jensen said a key piece to getting cancer center designation is building a critical mass of researchers.

“This grant as much as anything else : is helping to do that,” he said. “Grant money is like honey. There’s nothing like it to draw people into the field.”