photo by: Sara Shepherd

The Murphy Administration Building on the campus of the University of Kansas Medical Center, 3901 Rainbow Blvd. in Kansas City, Kan.

The University of Kansas on Thursday announced a key recruit for the KU Cancer Center and KU School of Medicine, in Kansas City, Kan.

Weijing Sun has been hired as the new Sprint Foundation Professor of Medical Oncology and medical oncology division director, beginning Sept. 1. Sun also will be associate director for clinical research for the KU Cancer Center.

KU officials, in the announcement, said Sun would play a key role in enhancing the Cancer Center’s clinical research efforts.

The center is involved in a multiyear, multimillion-dollar quest to obtain next-level certification from the National Cancer Institute.

It earned certification as an NCI-Designated Cancer Center in June 2012 and now is seeking a higher-level certification, that of NCI-Comprehensive Cancer Center. KU submitted its application in September and expects to find out in midsummer if it has achieved the new designation.

Sun is a professor of medicine and medical oncologist at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also serves as director of the gastrointestinal cancers section of hematology-oncology and co-director of the university’s gastrointestinal cancer center. In addition, he directs the NCI’s Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network for the Pennsylvania Cancer Consortium at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

Sun earned his medical degree from Shanghai Medical University, now Fudan University, in China and a master’s degree in immunology and microbiology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.