A $1 million donation will help the Kansas University Cancer Center fund a new professorship for cancer drug trials.

The new position will oversee trials where drugs are introduced to human patients for the first time, said Roy Jensen, director of the KU Cancer Center.

Floriene and George Lieberman of Leawood donated the funds for the new professorship.

Jensen said the donation allows the center to recruit a highly specialized and qualified person to add to the center’s staff.

“It helps make us much more competitive in terms of the caliber of people we can attract to the center,” Jensen said.

He said the gift helps with the ongoing effort at the KU Cancer Center to achieve National Cancer Institute designation.

Also, Jensen said the gift coincides with a vote in Johnson County on a one-eighth cent sales tax that would fund three elements of higher-education projects in the county.

One of the three projects is a building for the KU Cancer Center that would be dedicated to exactly the kind of clinical trials that the new professorship would be conducting.

“The timing of this gift couldn’t be better,” Jensen said. “Floriene and George have been one of our strongest supporters. We were very gratified with this level of commitment that they’ve made and we were obviously very appreciative of them and the entire Lieberman family.”

The sales tax initiative in Johnson County would also contribute funds to an expansion of KU’s Edwards Campus in Overland Park and the Kansas State University Innovation Campus in Olathe.